The National Technical Library in cooperation with the Czech Technical University and Instutute of Chemical Technology in Prague cosponsored the international conference Knowledge, Research and Education on September 8-9, 2011. Research metrics was the topic of this meeting. Organizers sought to draw attention to the often controversial mechanisms for evaluating the results of research and their subsequent impact on its continued financing and institutional support. The conference brought together university dignitaries, senior members of the faculties, library staff and representatives of the publishing industry for the purpose of facilitating discussion of research trends and policies that inform their respective fields of interest shared by all. One of the key lectures was given by the co-Director of CERGE-EI Štěpán Jurajda. He reviewed currend evidence of the productivity of Czech science (by field) based on bibliometric data, pointed to typical mistakes made in recent evaluation exercises and analyses, illustrated these by using examples typically drawn from social sciences, and offered a few tentative bibliometric facts. and Štěpán Jurajda.
Results of research by scientists from the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the ASCR have been published on the U.S. National Library of Medicine website. Their work on the STIM1-directed reorganization of microtubules in activated mast cells could help in fighting allergies. The study reports that activation of bone marrow-derived mast cells (BMMCs) induced by FcεRI aggregation or treatment with pervanadate or thapsigargin results in the generation of protrusions containing microtubules (microtubule protrusions). In the study, formation of these protrusions depended on the influx of extracellular Ca(2+). Changes in cytosolic Ca(2+) concentration also affected microtubule plus-end dynamics detected by microtubule plus-end tracking protein EB1. Experiments with knockdown or reexpression of STIM1, the key regulator of SOCE, confirmed the important role of STIM1 in the formation of microtubule protrusions. Although STIM1 in activated cells formed puncta associated with microtubules in protrusions, relocastion of STIM1 to a close proximity of cell membrane was independent of growing microtubules. In accordance with the inhibition of Ag-induced Ca(2+) response and decreased formation of microtubule protrusions in BMMCs with reduced STIM1, the cells also exhibited impaired chemotactic response to Ag. Institute geneticists proposed that rearrangement of microtubules in activated mast cells depends on STIM1-induced SOCE, and that Ca(2+) plays an important role in the formation of microtubule protrusions in BMMCs. and Petr Dráber a Pavel Dráber.
The text is inspired by the article of Steve Fuller named Making Agency Count (Fuller 1994) where Fuller introduced the concept of agency in medias res in order to treat agency as a kind of social "scarce good". My aim is to show that while Fuller claim seems plausible in the light of the agency negotiation in the legal determination of patents, the fetal medicine or the fetal fissue research, there are nevertheless several problems in its implications. First, if we consider moral action as an example of agency, an altruistic actor, in order to not consume much form the stock of available agency, would resign from a moral action, or, in extreme case, would act immorally to provide more space for moral actioon. Second, agency is always connected to multiple meanings therefore what is considered as agency by one actor, could be considered as non-agency by another one. Agency can by multiplied by diversification of attributed meanings, what is not the case of economic goods. In concluding the article I make a hypothesis that there is an interesting kind of agency (quasi-agency), which is produced by a social protection. Children, animals, fetuses are claimed to be actors but, in fact, this action magnify temporarily mainly the agency of claimants than those objects of protection., Martin Hájek., and Obsahuje použitou literaturu