The Corded Ware culture societies inhabiting the Carpathian zone used various outcrops of flints to processing axes: Volhynian, Turonian (the Świeciechów and the Gościeradów types), Jurassic A and G-type, cretaceous K-type as well as siliceous marl and radiolarite. From the analysed area 81 axes associated with the Corded Ware culture are known. Most of them come from funeral sites — from grave pits or burial mounds. The predominance of the Volhynian flint is observable in the whole area to the east of Wisłok River, basins of the San River, and in the upper basins of the Tisza and Dniester Rivers. Axes from niche graves on the Rzeszów Foothills, where the Świeciechów flint prevails, are specific in this scope or raw materials distribution. Dispersion of flints can be used indirectly as basis for reconstructing movements of human groups using these raw materials, as well as determining directions of their interactions. It can be noticed that communities of the Corded Ware culture from the Dniester Basin resembled in this respect their counterparts from the Roztocze and the Sokal Ridge, while those from the Rzeszów Foothills shows connections both with the“Volhynian zone” and the Lesser Polish Małopolska Upland.
The paper presents the latest research results concerning the correlation between changes in the room acoustics of school spaces and noticeable changes in the communication and functioning of students and teachers at school.
The primary school covered by the research is the second largest school of this type in Poland. The large number of students and hard interior finishing made the acoustic conditions in the school building very unfavourable. The measurements showed that school rooms were very noisy and reverberant. The measured values of reverberation time T were in many rooms 3–4 times higher than the acceptable values specified in the mandatory Polish acoustic standard PN-B-02151-4:2015-06. Also the speech intelligibility measured by the speech transmission index was very poor, in the extreme case STI = 0:31. This situation (very characteristic for most of Polish schools) became the basis for the first such comprehensive acoustic treatment of the whole school building in Poland. This intervention allowed to meet PN-B-02151-4:2015-06 demands almost in every room accessible for students. This case gave an excellent opportunity to assess the influence of improved room acoustics on teachers’ and students’ performance and wellbeing.
Measurements of the equivalent sound level LAeq, reverberation time T and STI speech transmission index were made before and after acoustic treatment. The questionnaire survey used the Acoustic Change Feelings Scale (ACFS-S, ACFS-T) for teachers and students. 378 students, and 44 teachers were included in the study. Both students’ and teachers’ answers show significant improvement of their performance and wellbeing. Positive changes were noticed in students’ level of concentration, short memory capacity and pace of work. After acoustic treatment students (both in teachers’ and their own opinion) can better hear and understand teachers’ instructions and are much more capable of task fulfilling. Both teachers and students observed clear reduction of aggression level. Teachers reported considerable drop in students’ fatigue and their own voice effort.
The present study investigated the expression of androgen receptor (AR) in neurons of the anterior pelvic ganglion (APG) and celiac-superior mesenteric ganglion (CSMG; ganglion not involved in the innervation of reproductive organs) in the male pig with quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) and immunohistochemistry. qPCR investigations revealed that the level of AR gene expression in the APG tissue was approximately 2.5 times higher in the adult (180-day-old) than in the juvenile (7-day-old) boars. Furthermore, in both the adult and juvenile animals it was sig- nificantly higher in the APG than in CSMG tissue (42 and 85 times higher, respectively). Immu- nofluorescence results fully confirmed those obtained with qPCR. In the adult boars, nearly all adrenergic (DβH-positive) and the majority of non-adrenergic neurons in APG stained for AR. In the juvenile animals, about half of the adrenergic and non-adrenergic neurons were AR-posi- tive. In both the adult and juvenile animals, only solitary CSMG neurons stained for AR. The present results suggest that in the male pig, pelvic neurons should be considered as an element of highly testosterone-dependent autonomic circuits involved in the regulation of urogenital func- tion, and that their sensitization to androgens is a dynamic process, increasing during the prepu- bertal period.
European beaver (Castor fiber), the largest rodent species inhabiting a wide area of Eurasia, feeds mainly on dry parts of plants, bark or wood. Such kind of nourishment needs to be properly digested in each part of the gastrointestinal tract. The time of stomach digestion, which directly influences all the following steps of the digestion process, is precisely controlled by the pylorus and its innervation. However, virtually no data is available on the organization of the enteric nervous system in most of the wild animal species, including beavers. On the other hand, a pecu- liar diet consumed by beavers, suggests that the arrangement of their stomach intramural nerve elements can be atypical. Therefore, the present study investigated the distribution and chemical coding of neurons and nerve fibers in the pylorus of the European beaver.
The experiment was performed on stomachs obtained from a group of 6 beavers caught in Northeastern region of Poland (due to beaver overpopulation). Pyloric wall tissue cryosections were double immunostained with a mixture of antibodies against pan-neuronal marker PGP 9.5 (to visualize enteric neurons) and ChAT (cholinergic marker), nNOS (nitrergic marker), SP, CGRP, Gal (peptidergic markers).
Confocal microscopy analysis revealed that the majority of enteric nerve cells were clustered forming submucosal and myenteric ganglia and all the studied substances were expressed (in various amounts) in these neurons.
We conclude, that the anatomical arrangement and chemical coding of intramural nerve elements in the beaver pylorus resemble those found in other mammalian species.