The ongoing growth of the human population will increase the rate of wildlife-human interactions. High levels of animal tolerance and flexible responses towards human presence seem to be among the key mechanisms behind successful wildlife-human coexistence, but this behaviour remains unexplored for most populations and species of animals. Here, we investigate the escape behaviour (measured as flight initiation distance) of the Crimean population of a charismatic and declining bird species, the lesser grey shrike (Lanius minor). We examined its relationship with starting distance of the approaching human, directness of that approach (direct or tangential), habitat type (rural or suburban), and height of the perch used by shrikes. We found that the starting distance was significantly associated with escape responses of shrikes to approaching humans. In contrast, we found no significant association between escape responses and directness of approach, habitat type, or height of perch. Our results indicate that the lesser grey shrike may exhibit low flexibility in their escape responses towards humans which may have implications for their conservation management. Our results also indicate that the widely used 30 m threshold for minimum starting distance may be insufficient for rural populations, even of small passerines.
Using the planning in Prague between the 1960s and 1980s as an example, the article deals with the transformation of the concept of a socialist city among urbanists and architects. The author describes how the generation of the inter-war modernist avant-garde inspired by works of Karel Teige (1900-1951) started reasserting itself again after Khrushchevʼs speech on architecture in 1954. Its infl uential member, Jiří Voženílek (1909-1986), became the Chief Architect of Prague. It was under his leadership that the General Plan of the Capital City of Prague was drafted at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. The author analyzes the plan as an example of the socialist modernism and urbanistic optimism of its creators who believed that, subject to a correct application of principles of inter-war avant-garde architecture, an urbanistic transformation might become the base of a social transformation of socialism. The plan envisaged sacrifi cing not only all residential quarters of Greater Prague built at the turn of the century, but also the very principle of a traditional city with a network of living streets which socialist urbanists saw as an incarnation of all evils that the development of towns and cities had thitherto been governed by: mixing of functions, too high density of population, lack of light and air. New housing projects comprising high-rise prefab residential buildings set in greenery were to become the opposite of traditional streets. The article explains how criticism of the housing schemes, the chief representative of which was urbanist Jiří Hrůza (1925-2012), had been growing stronger since as early as the mid-1960s. Infl uenced by works of US journalist and urbanistic activist Jane Jacobs (1916-2006), he presented a comprehensive critique of socialist modernism and questioned they very principle of urban planning as a tool of social transformation. The intellectual skepticism was soon thereafter refl ected in urban planning practices in Prague; they abandoned the modernistic principle of zoning and acknowledged the value (fi rst urbanistic, later architectural) of traditional quarters. In the end of the article, the author analyzes how the urbanistic turning point was confronted with building industry practices and political preferences demanding rapid construction of fl ats and apartments. and Překlad: Blanka Medková
The East-Central European post-socialist transformations have now reached a new stage, with the need to address the problems of further modernisation and maintenance in the context of the EU. The role of elites in this process is as intermediators between the influence of the European context and the needs and interests of differentiated internal social structures. Their attitudes and behaviour exhibit a high degree of internal fragmentation and division corresponding to various strategical orientations favouring various societal models. The post-socialist Czech economic elite was initially reproduced out of former state socialist managers and their cadre reserves. After the first phase of economic developments, inspired by neo-liberal radical privatisation and elements of 'shock therapy', and once the new, more European phase ushered in many new factors, there was a distinct decline in the number of 'old-new' economic elite on the scene. In the empirical part of the article the results of several surveys are used to briefly describe the changes in the composition of the Czech economic elite in the 1994-2005 period and to summarise their attitudes and behaviour. The analysis concludes that the current image of a liberal and pro-European Czech elite is consistent with the stable and remarkable progress of the Czech economy since 1999, the considerable wealth, strong profits, and high salaries enjoyed by top elites, and the enhancement of their role in the European economy. There are also some limitations and weak points that diverge from this general picture. The article's conclusions touch on the question of the role of the economic elite in the progress of arriving at more consensual attitudes and behaviour among societal elites as a whole, favouring further economic growth, modernisation and the strengthening of social cohesion in the context of the EU.
This was the Opening Address at ''Fateful Eights in Czech History: Historical Anniversaries of 2008 and Their Signifi cance for the Czech Republic Today'', an international conference organized by the Czech Embassy in Washington, held at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C., on 23-24 October 2008. In this essay the author provides a basic overview of twentieth-century Czech history, weighing the gains and losses, the victories and defeats, the ups and downs of the Czechs, the Czech nation, Czech society, on the way from gaining independence in a democratic state to loosing it, and the German occupation, to the renewal of Czechoslovak independence and the destruction of democracy under the Communist regime, to the failed attempt at the reform of that regime, and the victory of the democratic revolution - all marked by the historical milestones of the years 1918, 1938/39, 1945-48, 1968, and 1989 - as well as the author’s refl ections on the long-term changes in the mentality of the country.
With Denmark faring reasonably well through the global financial crisis, the policy changes to the social housing sector caused by the crisis have been limited. Nevertheless, changes have taken place nonetheless both in terms of policy and in the residential composition of the sector which policies are trying to react upon. This means that the sector is at a cross-road as this paper will show. The future remains uncertain; depending to a large extent on the application of the policies already in place and policy reactions to the current challenges.
Adipocyte hormone leptin (OB protein) is considered to be an "adiposity signal" regulating body weight homeostasis and energy balance. We have previously reported that oestrogens (oestradiol-benzoate) significantly decrease the body weight in male rats, increase anterior pituitary and serum levels of the intracellular messenger cAMP, which activates cAMP-dependent protein kinase A , their targets include hormone-sensitive lipase and they influence the brain sympathetic system. The present study tested our hypothesis that oestrogens could influence serum leptin levels in male mice. We found that chronic administration of oestradiol-benzoate significantly attenuated serum levels of leptin, in the dependence on the duration of its administration, and simultaneously decreased body weight. We suppose that oestrogens affect leptin levels interacting with the signal transmission system of cAMP, possibly at the genome level. Our observations that the food consumption of mice with simultaneously decreased body weight and levels of serum leptin support the idea that there exists a satiety factor that counters the effect of low leptin.
We identified and characterised the deep red state (DRS), an optically-absorbing charge transfer state of PSII, which lies at lower energy than P680, in the red algae Cyanidioschyzon merolae by means of low temperature absorption and magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopies. The photoactive DRS has been previously studied in PSII of the higher plant Spinacia oleracea, and in the cyanobacterium Thermosynechococcus vulcanus. We found the DRS in PSII of C. merolae has similar spectral properties. Treatment of PSII with dithionite leads to reduction of cytochrome (cyt) b559 and the PsbV-based cyt c550 as well as the disassembly of the oxygen-evolving complex. Whereas the overall visible absorption spectrum of PSII was little affected, the DRS absorption in the reduced sample was no longer seen. This bleaching of the DRS is discussed in terms of a corresponding lack of a DRS feature in D1D2/cyt b559 reaction centre preparations of PSII., J. Langley, J. Morton, R. Purchase, L. Tian, L. Shen, G. Han, J.-R. Shen, E. Krausz., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy
Current debates on the nature of explanatory understanding have converged on the idea that at least one of the core components of understanding is inferential. Philosophers have characterized the inferential dimension of understanding as consisting of several related cognitive abilities to grasp a given explanation and the nexus of complementing explanations to which it belongs. Whilst analyses of both the subjective epistemic abilities related to grasping and objective features of the inferential links within explanations have received much attention, both within theories of explanation and in the literature on understanding, the criteria for evaluating the specific structure and organization of explanatory clusters or nexuses have received much less attention. Nevertheless, two notable exceptions stand out—Khalifa’s characterization of an explanatory nexus and theories of explanatory unification. I take Khalifa’s ideas, together with the basic criteria of successful explanatory unification, as my starting point. To both, I make some corrections and additions, in order to arrive at a more robust notion of an explanatory nexus and ultimately show that its structural properties and the inter-explanatory relations it contains are relevant to the resulting understanding. I propose to represent such nexuses as directed graph trees and show that some of their properties can be related to the degree of understanding that such nested explanatory structures can offer. I will further illustrate these ideas by a case study on an eco-logical theory of predation.
Very high pressure is required to generate hard faeces - 5-10 atmospheres. This is much more than can be supplied by the mechanical force from the muscular wall of the colon. Osmotic pressure (at least 200 mOsm) can generate the necessary suction forces required to consolidate faeces. The colon has a hypertonic absórbate (net above plasma - 500 mOsm) in uiuo. Fluorescence imaging of perifused rat descending colonic mucosa shows high steady state Na+ concentrations (600 mM) in the intercryptal extracellular space and low [Na + ] present in the crypt lumen. This [Na + ] distribution generates an osmotic pressure gradient across the crypt luminal wall resulting in a fluid inflow into the crypt lumen. Direct observation using confocal fluorescence microscopy of FITC dextran (mol. wt. 10 000) shows that there is concentration polarisation of the dextran in the upper 30 % of the crypt lumen. The time course and steady state distribution of concentration polarisation of fluorescent dyes within the crypt lumen permit an estimation of the fluid convection rate along the length of the crypt lumen. This is sufficient to account for the majority of fluid absorption by the colon. Observation of the suction force on agarose gels by rat descending colon in vivo shows that the colon generates up to 4 000 cm H2O suction pressure on the stiff gels, this is accompanied by a hypertonic absórbate from the gels of 800 mOsm. Disruption of the colonic musoca by bile salts reduces the suction pressure to about 40 cm H2O.