The article discusses the monks’ names mentioned in the village register books of Kasina Wielka in the 17th and 18th century. The majority of them are the names of the priors of the Dominican monastery in Krakow and monks performing particular duties, for example stewards. There are 65 names of these kinds from a total of 89 male monastic names. All of them “had” a patron saint (except for Alan and Przecław). Only a few of them were also given to peasants. The names come from various languages and are interesting to study from the onomastic point of view.

Combined retrograde tracing and double-labelling immunofluorescence were used to investi- gate the distribution and chemical coding of neurons in aorticoerenal (ARG) and testicular (TG) ganglia supplying the urinary bladder apex (UBA) in the juvenile male pig (n=4, 12 kg. body weight). Retrograde fluorescent tracer Fast Blue (FB) was injected into the wall of the bladder apex under pentobarbital anesthesia. After three weeks all the pigs were deeply anesthetized and transcardially perfused with 4% buffered paraformaldehyde. TG and ARG were collected and processed for double-labelling immunofluorescence. The presence of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) or dopamine beta-hydroxylase (DBH), neuropeptide Y (NPY), somatostatin (SOM), galanin (GAL), nitric oxide synthase (NOS) and vesicular acetylcholine transporter (VAChT) were inves- tigated. The cryostat sections were examined with a Zeiss LSM 710 confocal microscope equipped with adequate filter blocks.

The TG and ARG were found to contain many FB-positive neurons projecting to the UBA (UBA-PN). The UBA-PN were distributed in both TG and ARG. The majority were found in the left ganglia, mostly in TG. Immunohistochemistry disclosed that the vast majority of UBA-PN were noradrenergic (TH- and/or DBH-positive). Many noradrenergic neurons also contained immunoreactivity to NPY, SOM or GAL. Most of the UBA-PN were supplied with varicose VAChT-, or NOS- IR (immunoreactive) nerve fibres.

This study has revealed a relatively large population of differently coded ARG and TG neu- rons projecting to the porcine urinary bladder. As judged from their neurochemical organization these nerve cells constitute an important element of the complex neuro-endocrine system involved in the regulation of the porcine urogenital organ function.

This paper discusses the question of how the old Kazakh custom of the ban on uttering the name of a husband and his male relatives by his wife is still observed in modern Kazakhstan. To do this, material from five main regions of Kazakhstan (North, South, Central, East and West) was collected and analysed. The study aims to do a sociolinguistic analysis of the result of the questionnaire. Although this old tradition is well known and described a long time ago by such researchers as Nikolaj Ilminskii, Nikolaj Grodekov, Ybyraı Altynsarın, Grigorij Potanin, Aleksandr Samoilovich and others, no modern fieldwork was done to check whether this tradition is still alive and how it changes. As is known, present-day Kazakhstan had changed significantly since the 19th century, when Ilminskii first studied the Kazakh language and traditions, Wilhelm Radloff and the researchers mentioned earlier, who were linguists and explorers. However, many cultures are still observed. As Grodekov noted, the avoiding of the pronunciation of a husband’s name and his male relatives by his wife is familiar to the Kazakhs and Kirghiz. Somoilovich, basing on Mustafa Shoqaı’s materials, devoted a paper to this question. Perhaps the best story was related by Altynsarın, who has registered an anecdote how a woman who went to bring water and saw a wolf killing an ewe rushed back to her house and shouted for help, transforming the words ‘lake’, ‘reed’, ‘wolf’, ‘sheep’ and ‘knife’, since her husband and his male relatives bore names composed of these words.

Genetic variability of two populations of Arctic freshwater crustacean Lepidurus arcticus (Crustacea, Notostraca) occuring in small tundra reservoirs near the Polish Polar Sta− tion in Hornsund (Spitsbergen) was studied. The allozyme polimorphism analysis of 11 en− zyme systems indicates a considerable distinctness and genetically heterogeneous character of the populations of L. arcticus inhabiting freshwater reservoirs of similar hydrological con− ditions situated close to each other (2 km). Our research revealed a complicated and geneti− cally heterogeneous character of the populations. Three hypotheses about genetic structure and type of reproduction were tested: hypothesis M – the free transfer without assigning a clone for particular reservoir and the lack of doublemutations; hypothesis I – separation of in− dividuals between reservoirs and the possibility of doublemutations; hypothesis S – presence of partial sexual reproduction in the population, probably with males. In conclusion participa− tion ofmales in reproduction is probable, despite their presence was not recorded in our study. Males usually occur in low numbers or not every year. The populations' clonal structure as well as the genetic diversity typical of species reproducing sexually was observed. The Hardy−Weinberg genetic equilibrium is maintained as new clonal lines appear due to the ge− netic diversity increasing incidentally as a result of sexual reproduction.

Southern elephant male seals (Mirounga leonina Linnaeus, 1758) were studied at King George Island (62°14´S, 58°40´W) from September to December 1999. The first males came ashore at the beginning of September. Twenty-five adults were immobilized, hot iron branded, and measured. Thirteen out of the 25 marked males spent an average of 66 (+/-8) days on land. Early arrival was positively correlated with the time spent ashore (r = 0.88, P < 0.05). Nine harems were formed in the study area. At the maximum haul-out of females (28 October) mean harem size was 32ą42 females (range 3–107). During the course of harem development, 10 changes in male harem dominance were observed. These changes were more frequent during the early (1–20 October, n = 6) than during the mid (21 October – 10 November, n = 2) and late (11–29 November, n = 2) periods of harem development. Overall, there were 14 dominant males; five of these in two different harems and nine in one harem. Of the 25 marked males, 44% were resighted in the following breeding or moulting season, and 16% seemed to improve their potential breeding success.

In 2018, the 90th anniversary of Professor Vasiliy Danilovich Bondaletov`s birth will be celebrated. The aim of the article is to remind readers of the quantitative and qualitative method of statistical analysis in anthroponomastic research developed by Professor Bondaletov, as well as to show its advantages over simplified descriptions of the frequency of personal names. In this article, the detailed analysis of male Christian names found in customs books from Northern Russia (1633–1636 and 1678–1680) was conducted. The comparison of statistical data, according to the suggestion of Professor V. D. Bondaletov, enabled us to observe subtle differences between the abovementioned resources, namely to estimate the level of their (dis)similarity and describe the dynamics of the evolution of the resources of male Christian names throughout the 17th century, as well as changes in the popularity of various names.

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.