The article attempts to reach the elements that control the efforts of constituting a specific type of vision of the past, with which — as I believe — we are dealing in the contemporary public discourse about history.

Architecture created in Poland of 21st C. is somewhere a mode of selfpresentation, in another cases is a method of shouting down the others. It is also aomwhere talking without any thesis, instead with a large dose of a badly understood assertiveness. Whe should to built a clear architectural activity, more objectified, and tied with a contemporaneity. We should begin from the most basic rules, from the certain architectural grammar. The identity can be understood as a set of features, which e.g. let to distinguish architecture growing out in Poland, in contrary to architecture rooted somewhere elsewhere. Those are not always any formal features. In order to understand what a spirit of the place really is, e.g. in ancient Rome there was an idea of the watchman spirit. This spirit gives life to the people and to the places, accompany them since they a born until they are dead. It determines their character or the content.

The article focuses on the translation of non-literary Chinese proper names, a subject which to date has not enjoyed much research interest as a result of the common belief that proper names are untranslatable. The article discusses techniques used in the translation of Chinese anthroponyms, toponyms and brand names into Polish and English. The author refers to the strategies used in the process of transferring names to the target language and presents the consequences of applying given techniques from the cognitive perspective, which entails analysing the names in terms of their structure and meaning. Particular attention is paid to the connotations of the names, the impact they have on the speakers of a given language, as well as the mental images that can be derived from their structure. In the contrastive analysis of the names of tourist locations in Beijing and their Polish and English equivalents, the author applies the cognitive grammar approach as developed by Ronald W. Langacker. The image schemas of the names are used to present the distinct conceptualizations embodied in the names with the same references in diff erent languages. One of the chapters describes how European names are adapted into Chinese. The study also provides an overview of the characteristics of the Chinese onomasticon, a factor which makes translation from Chinese to European languages particularly complicated. The observations made in the course of the analysis permit conclusions to be drawn on the linguistic worldview created by Polish, Chinese and English propria.

In the paper a new method of Random Telegraph Signal (RTS) noise identification is presented. The method is based on a standardized histogram of instantaneous noise values and processing by Gram-Charlier series. To find a device generating RTS noise by the presented method one should count the number of significant coefficients of the Gram-Charlier series. This would allow to recognize the type of noise. There is always one (first) significant coefficient (c0) representing Gaussian noise. If additional coefficients cr (where r > 0) appear it means that RTS noise (two-level as well as multiple-level) is detected. The coefficient representing the Gaussian component always has the highest value of all. The application of this method will be presented on the example of four devices, each with different noise (pure Gaussian noise signal, noise signal with two-level RTS noise, noise signal with three-level RTS noise and noise signal with not precisely visible occurrence of RTS noise).

MDAP-2 is a new antibacterial peptide with a unique structure that was isolated from house- flies. However, its biological characteristics and antibacterial mechanisms against bacteria are still poorly understood. To study the biological characteristics, antibacterial activity, hemolytic activi- ty, cytotoxicity to mammalian cells, and the secondary structure of MDAP-2 were detected; the results showed that MDAP-2 displayed high antibacterial activity against all of the tested Gram-negative bacteria. MDAP-2 had lower hemolytic activity to rabbit red blood cells; only 3.4% hemolytic activity was observed at a concentration of 800μg/ml. MDAP-2 also had lower cytotoxicity to mammalian cells; IC50 values for HEK-293 cells, VERO cells, and IPEC-J2 cells were greater than 1000 μg/ml. The circular dichroism (CD) spectra showed that the peptide most- ly has α-helical properties and some β-fold structure in water and in membrane-like conditions. MDAP-2 is therefore a promising antibacterial agent against Gram-negative bacteria. To deter- mine the antibacterial mechanism(s) of action, fluorescent probes, flow cytometry, and transmis- sion electron microscopy (TEM) were used to study the effects of MDAP-2 on membrane perme- ability, polarization ability, and integrity of Gram-negative bacteria. The results indicated that the peptide caused membrane depolarization, increased membrane permeability, and destroyed membrane integrity. In conclusion, MDAP-2 is a broad-spectrum, lower hemolytic activity, and lower cytotoxicity antibacterial peptide, which is mainly effective on Gram-negative bacteria. It exerts its antimicrobial effects by causing bacterial cytoplasm membrane depolarization, increas- ing cell membrane permeability and disturbing the membrane integrity of Gram-negative bacte- ria. MDAP-2 may offer a new strategy to for defense against Gram-negative bacteria.