Soil Respiration in the Profiles of Forest Soils in Inland Dunes

Forest soil profiles of two dunes within the European belt of inland dunes were analysed in the laboratory. We carried out respirometric measurements of carbon dioxide production and oxygen consumption for every horizon of the studied soils while simultaneously quantifying the organic matter and humidity. Oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide excretion decreased exponentially with depth. The oxygen consumption decrease was less rapid than the decrease in carbon dioxide production. We found a statistical significant linear dependence between oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide excretion, and organic matter content and soil water capacity. Respiration processes in the profiles were divided into two strata;oxygen respiration dominated in the first and fermentation processes in the second. We estimated total respiration in the studied profiles for an area of 1 m2 down to around 1 m depth. We concluded that when assessing the soil’s role in carbon cycling in an ecosystem, it is necessary to consider both the respiratory and fermentation strata, as both produce large quantities of carbon dioxide. The main factor determining carbon dioxide production intensity is organic matter content;thus the distribution of organic matter in the soil profile determines carbon cycling intensity.

The influence of old leather tannery district on chromium contamination of soils,water and plants

The paper demonstrates the actual level of chromium contamination at the site of the old tannery waste lagoon in Serniki community (SE Poland). Despite the fact that since 1994 this area is not exploited, the chromium presence is still detected in soil, water and plants. The current study is the 4th phase (after 1989, 2001 and 2004) of checking and controlling the chromium concentration in this territory. The chromium content was assessed after soil and plant mineralization using FAAS method. Total chromium concentrations in soil samples reached values of 2.25 - 18.25 mg·kg-1 dry mass. Levels of chromium in water samples ranged between 0.008 and 0.017 mg·dm-3 for Wieprz River and the trough, situated in the tannery centre, respectively. Absorption of chromium by plants depended from the plant species. The highest Cr content in the stalks of Oenothera biennis, whilst the lowest in Phragmites australis were detected. Finally, it was assumed that soil chromium content noted in 2009 was by 42% - 83% lower in relation to the data from 2004. Consequently, nowadays the tannery waste lagoon site is not so threat to the health of local residents and to the surrounding ecosystem.

Response of soil catalase activity to chromium contamination

The impact of chromium（Ⅲ） and （Ⅵ） forms on soil catalase activity was presented. The Orthic Podzol, Haplic Phaeozem and Mollic Gleysol from different depths were used in the experiment. The soil samples were amended with solution of Cr（Ⅲ） using CrCl3, and with Cr（Ⅵ） using K2Cr2O7 in the concentration range from 0 to 20 mg/kg, whereas the samples without the addition of chromium served as control. Catalase activity was assayed by one of the commonly used spectrophotometric methods. As it was demonstrated in the experiment, both Cr（Ⅲ） and Cr（Ⅵ） have an ability to reduce soil catalase activity. A chromium dosage of 20 mg/kg caused the inhibition of catalase activity and the corresponding contamination levels ranged from 75% to 92% for Cr（Ⅲ） and 68% to 76% for Cr（Ⅵ）, with relation to the control. Catalase activity reached maximum in the soil material from surface layers （0-25 cm）, typically characterized by the highest content of organic matter creating favorable conditions for microorganisms.

PNN-SVM Approach of Ti-Based Powder’s Properties Evaluation for Biomedical Implants Production

The advent of additive technologies has provided a significant breakthrough in the production of medical implants.It has reduced costs,increased productivity and accuracy of the implant manufacturing process.However,there are problems associated with assessing defects in the microstructure,mechanical and technological properties of alloys,both during their production by powder metallurgy and in the process of 3D printing.Thus traditional research methods of alloys properties demand considerable human,material,and time resources.At the same time,artificial intelligence tools create opportunities for intelligent evaluation of the conformity for the microstructure,phase composition,and properties of titanium powder’s alloys.It provides new possibilities for the efficient production of biocompatible implants for various functional purposes.However,the accuracy of the methods and models used should be as high as possible.In this paper we designed a hybrid PNN-SVM(Probabilistic Neural Network-Support Vector Machine)high-precision approach for the intelligent evaluation of alloy properties for additive manufacturing of biomedical implants.We have proposed a new approach for extending the dimensionality of input data space by the outputs of the summation layer of the modified PNN topology.Subsequent classification based on the expanded dataset is performed using SVM.We conducted experimental modeling of the proposed approach using a data set on the properties of titanium alloys Ti-6Al-4V and Ti-Al-V-Zr.We have demonstrated a significant increase in the accuracy of the PNN-SVM scheme compared to the single classifiers that form it and other machine learning methods.

Complete ablation of tumors using synchronous chemoradiation with bimetallic theranostic nanoparticles

Synchronous chemotherapy and radiotherapy,termed chemoradiation therapy,is now an important standard regime for synergistic cancer treatment.For such treatment,nanoparticles can serve as improved carriers of chemotherapeutics into tumors and as better radiosensitizers for localized radiotherapy.Herein,we designed a Schottky-type theranostic heterostructure,Bi_(2)S_(3)-Au,with deep level defects(DLDs)in Bi_(2)S_(3) as a nano-radiosensitizer and CT imaging contrast agent which can generate reactive free radicals to initiate DNA damage within tumor cells under X-ray irradiation.Methotrexate(MTX)was conjugated onto the Bi_(2)S_(3)-Au nanoparticles as a chemotherapeutic agent showing enzymatic stimuli-responsive release behavior.The designed hybrid system also contained curcumin(CUR),which cannot only serve as a nutritional supplement for chemotherapy,but also can play an important role in the radioprotection of normal cells.Impressively,this combined one-dose chemoradiation therapeutic injection of co-drug loaded bimetallic multifunctional theranostic nanoparticles with a one-time clinical X-ray irradiation,completely eradicated tumors in mice after approximately 20 days after irradiation showing extremely effective anticancer efficacy which should be further studied for numerous anti-cancer applications.

Why Does Personalism Turn Towards Animal Ethics？

The intellectual heritage of modernity needs rethinking. It is marked by radical humanism and implied by the ideas of Descartes and Kant above all, which introduces an unbridgeable gap between animals and human persons （nonhuman and human animals）. Intuitive sensibility to the question of the welfare of nonhuman animals meets a theoretical ally in the rapidly growing knowledge on their subjectivity and makes us pose a questions about their ontological status. This context arouses a possibility of a turn to personalist ethics, yet not to its anthropocentric version implied by Kant, but to personalism conceived of as an instance of value ethics as exemplified by Antonio Rosmini and Karol Wojtyta （John Paul II）.

Board Members Oversight System- A Polish Example

The goal of the study was the development of a system to monitor the members of supervisory and management boards. The system currently covers 8,454 joint stock companies registered in Poland. The main purpose of the system is to monitor every change in the composition of every board of every joint stock company, from March 2001 up to the present, and it is updated every month. This system, however, also enables us to confirm some of the theories from the field of corporate governance. A generation change has been identified in the boards of the joint stock companies which were examined. Women constitute a large, and continuously increasing, section of the board members. The number of family companies, and of family involvement in boards, is still increasing. Board members of financial institutions （and not just of banks） possess significantly more directorates than board members of non-financial institutions. The number of interlocking directorates is positively linked to the macroeconomic development indicator of the total investment as percentage of GDP for Poland.

Semantic representation of proved and disproved statements extracted from scientific papers: Meat science case study

The article presents an ontology called“Science”designed for representing proved and disproved statements extracted from scientific papers from the database of the ProOptiBeef project.We argue that the proved and disproved statements are the best characterization of the content of the papers they are extracted from.We show that ontological representation of proved and disproved statements not only facilitates the access to the content of the papers and increases the precision of a semantical search,but also allows for an automatic generation of new statements from the ones already coded in the ontology.

^(60)Co γ射线辐照改性As_2S_3玻璃的纳米压痕试验（英文）

采用纳米压痕技术对^(60)Coγ-射线辐照改性10年后As_2S_3玻璃的表面机械性能(即硬度和弹性模量)进行超纳硬度仪(UNHT)测试,压痕深度为200~1 600 nm。结果表明:经平均量子能1.25 Me V、累计剂量2.41 MGy的^(60)Coγ-射线辐照后,g-As_2S_3(g-表示玻璃态)的表面硬度和弹性模量与辐照前相比得以提高。对于g-As_2S_3表面机械性能的长期辐照诱导改性,具有辐照诱导氧化层的辐照样品与经过清洗和抛光处理除去氧化层的辐照样品相比,其实验数据显示宽分布特性。