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.

The text is an analysis of two hoards of copper shillings (szeląg) of John Casimir Vasa (1648–1668) dating from the years 1659–1666, found in one of the arable fields at Rokitno (Lubartów County) in 1981 and 2011. The first one is made up entirely of 3,530 copper shillings (so called boratynka in singular), while in the other one, with 10,218 pieces, the same coin type accounts for 99.9%. The structures of these two hoards from Rokitno correspond with some other representative deposits of the same coin type from the localities such as Idźki-Wykno, Przasnysz, Terespol. This particular structure refers, among other things, to percentage shares of the Polish Crown and Lithuanian shillings as well as to how the individual mints and years of issue are represented in these types. The hoard unearthed in 1981 was deposited most probably in the early fourth quarter of the 17th century, whereas the one found in 2011 – shortly after 1695.

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.

The assemblage of coins found in the Old Town district of Lublin (6a, Wincentego Pola St., presently known as Archidiakońska St.) on 1 July 1981 consists of 21 false groschen of Sigismund III Vasa (1587–1632) and 2 fragments of unspecified coins. As a result of the research analysis, it has been found that the coins were minted in tin-coated copper. Despite the fact that the dates are decipherable only on 10 groschen coins, it may be inferred from the identity of the coin dies that 15 of them (71.4%) bear the year 1608, while 5 (23.8%) – 1607. No date has been determined for only one coin. The groschen of 1607, struck with the use of one pair of coin dies, imitate the bust / eagle type. This particular variation tends to prevail also among the pieces with the date 1608 (13 out of a total number of 15 pieces), which had been coined with the use of two pairs of dies. 1 groschen with a bust and 2 groschen with a crown image had been struck by means of some other coin dies. The fact that the forged coins were found at the site of the former townhouse owned by the mayor Jan Szembek (since 1608) allows us to presume that they may have been deposited there as a result of some administrative action taken against the illegal practice. Beginning from the early decades of the 17th century, conditions for the growth of such practices had been created and fuelled by the atmosphere of the increasing economic crisis and the resulting perturbations spreading across the monetary markets of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

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.