Lockean theories of personal identity maintain that we per-sist by virtue of psychological continuity, and most Lockeans say that we are material things coinciding with animals. Some animalists ar-gue that if persons and animals coincide, they must have the same intrinsic properties, including thinking, and, as a result, there are ‘too many thinkers’ associated with each human being. Further, Lockeans have trouble explaining how animals and persons can be numerically different and have different persistence conditions. For these reasons, the idea of a person being numerically distinct but coincident with an animal is rejected and animalists conclude that we simply are animals. However, animalists face a similar problem when confronted with the vagueness of composition. Animals are entities with vague boundaries. According to the linguistic account of vagueness, the vagueness of a term consists in there being a number of candidates for the denotatum of the vague term. It seems to imply that where we see an animal, there are, in fact, a lot of distinct but overlapping entities with basically the same intrinsic properties, including think-ing. As a result, the animalist must also posit ‘too many thinkers’ where we thought there was only one. This seems to imply that the animalist cannot accept the linguistic account of vagueness. In this paper the author argues that the animalist can accept the linguistic account of vagueness and retain her argument against Lockeanism.
The short-term predictions of annual and seasonal discharge derived by a modified TIPS (Tendency, Intermittency, Periodicity and Stochasticity) methodology are presented in this paper. The TIPS method (Yevjevich, 1984) is modified in such a way that annual time scale is used instead of daily. The reason of extracting a seasonal component from discharge time series represents an attempt to identify the long-term stochastic behaviour. The methodology is applied for modelling annual discharges at six gauging stations in the middle Danube River basin using the observed data in the common period from 1931 to 2012. The model performance measures suggest that the modelled time series are matched reasonably well. The model is then used for the short-time predictions for three annual step ahead (2013–2015). The annual discharge predictions of larger river basins for moderate hydrological conditions show reasonable matching with records expressed as the relative error from –8% to +3%. Irrespective of this, wet and dry periods for the aforementioned river basins show significant departures from annual observations. Also, the smaller river basins display greater deviations up to 26% of the observed annual discharges, whereas the accuracy of annual predictions do not strictly depend on the prevailing hydrological conditions.
From the year 2000, the environmental state and the impact of human activities on fluvial lakes in the central part of the Czech section of the Elbe River is evaluated. For that reason, three oxbow lakes were chosen: Lake Labiště pod Opočínkem (east of Pardubice), Lake Doleháj (near Kolín), and Lake Obříství (near Mělník). All of them are situated within an area with a well-developed chemical industry and the nearby lowlands are one of the most intensively farmed areas of the Czech Republic. In spite of the identical origin during the river canalization, major differences were found. E.g. very low oxygen saturation in Opočínek (mean saturation 46 %) was determined. Nutrient concentrations and their seasonal dynamics (nitrites, nitrates, ammoniated ions, and phosphates) differed in each lake as well. The lowest concentrations of heavy metals (Ag, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Hg, Mn, Ni, Pb and Zn) in sediment were found in the Doleháj. In samples from Obříství after a big flood in September 2002, the Index of Geoaccumulation increased only for Pb and decreased for Hg. This result indicated that the pollution has probably not been occurred during such floods. and Od roku 2000 jsou v oblasti středního Labe hodnoceny přírodní podmínky starých labských ramen a posuzován vliv antropogenní činnosti na ně. Z toho důvodu byly pro výzkum vybrány následující tři slepé opuštěné meandry: Labiště pod Opočínkem (východně od Pardubic), Doleháj (v blízkosti Kolína) a jezero Obříství (v blízkosti Mělníka). Všechna tato fluviální jezera leží v oblasti s velmi rozvinutým chemickým průmyslem, přilehlé nížiny jsou též jedny z nejintenzivněji obdělávaných zemědělských ploch v České republice. Ačkoliv jezera vznikla stejným způsobem při regulacích řeky, byly mezi nimi zjištěny značné rozdíly. Například lokalita Opočínek vykazovala značně nízké hodnoty nasycení vody kyslíkem (průměrné nasycení 46 %). Koncentrace živin a jejich sezónní dynamika (dusitany, dusičnany, amonné ionty a fosforečnany) se též v každém případě lišila. Nejnižší koncentrace těžkých kovů (Ag, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Hg, Mn, Ni, Pb a Zn) v sedimentu byly zaznamenány v Doleháji. Ve vzorcích z lokality Obříství po velké povodni v roce 2002 se zvýšil geoakumulační index jen v případě Pb, naopak hodnota u Hg poklesla. Výsledky proukázaly nepřítomnost výrazného znečištění po této povodni.
V súčasnosti jednu z nových vzrušujúcich perspektív v onkológii predstavuje antiangiogénna liečba. Ide o liečbu zameranú na potlačenie uvoľňovania proangiogénnych faktorov, ktoré sa produkujú v bunke alebo voči receptorom pre angiogénne faktory na bunkách endotelu. Tento článok vysvetľuje princípy a aktuálne otázky antiangiogénnej terapie., Antiangiogenic therapy currently represents one of the new exciting prospects in oncology. It is a treatment that is focused on suppression of the release of proangiogenic factors produced in the cell or directed against the receptors for angiogenic factors on endothelial cells. This paper explains the principles and current issues of antiangiogenic therapy., Peter Kružliak, Jana Benkovičová, Ján Šlapák, and Lit.: 9