Śmierć intelektualistki: Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag is the most popular American intellectual. She died after a long and painful illness, i.e. cancer. The goal of this article is to show the relations between Sontag’s fi ction (Death Kit), her real life and intellectual attitudes (Illness as Metaphor, Regarding the Pain of Others). The analysis shows dependencies between Sontag’s writings and her own suffering as well as the experience of deat

Cultural Baggage: Autobiographical Writings by Wanda Rutkiewicz and Arlene Blum

The article aims to compare and contrast two autobiographical stories, Wanda Rutkiewicz\u27s Na jednej linie [On One Rope] (1986), co-authored with Ewa Matuszewska, and Arlene Blum\u27s Breaking Trail, published in 2005. Unfolding the experiences of the female mountaineers from two different cultural backgrounds, it analyzes how their mutual encounters are narrated by Blum, the American icon of climbing, and by Rutkiewicz, the first Polish high-altitude mountaineer to scale Mount Everest. The article also examines the personal narratives by applying to the text analysis Edward Hall\u27s division into high-context and low-context cultures and Geert Hofstede\u27s cultural individualism-collectivism dimension

Figury samotnej żałoby

The intention of the author of this paper is to juxtapose the image ofmourning that accompanies the experience of death as represented in Blue, a film directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski, as a part of a The Three Colors Trilogy, and its personal linguistic expression in The Mourning Diary by Ronald Barthes. Both figures of mourning render to us an intimate world of mourning linked to a loss of somebody dear and express a peculiar state of exclusion as well as various yet real images of mourning “at work”. In both Blue and The Mourning Diary we are exposed to a different rhythm of lifeclosely linked to the melancholy of loss and a resultant vulnerability of the mourner towardsthe world

Alginate-Based Hydrogels in Regenerative Medicine

This chapter presents the following multipotential applications of alginate-based hydrogels in tissue healing and drug delivery. It contains state of the art and summary of the literature reports, which demonstrate that alginate-based hydrogels have a great potential in tissue healing. Sodium alginate (SA) is mainly used in medical devices for healing of wounds, scars, injuries of bones, regeneration of joint cartilage, and scaffold for cell growth and in drug delivery systems (DDSs). The latest literature describes the effects of laboratory tests and in vivo, which confirm the validity of its use as a biomaterial. Alginate biodegradable scaffolds can be a template that provides a suitable substrate for cellular growth while matching the physiochemical properties of the native extracellular matrix (ECM). Matching scaffold stiffness to the surrounding tissue and optimising its rate of degradation ensure that the infiltrating cells remain viable, maintain their desired phenotype and coordinate their response over the entirety of the wound healing process

Wstęp

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A Methodology of Orthopaedic Measurement Arm Workspace Determination.

This paper outlines general assumptions of work principle of displacement measuring arm that bases on accelerometers. Symbolic representation of arm’s kinematic structure is shown. Also, an analysis of construction correctness has been verified in terms of the effectiveness of using accelerometers to measure individual links displacements. A method of acquiring information on workspace is presented. The workspace has been determined in two variants: without considering last link orientation and for given orientation of that link. Paper also describes a determination method of increments values of angular displacements for individual links of the arm in terms of obtained proper results and rational computation time of workspace scanning algorithm. Finally, there is a presentation of method for determining a cuboid space for arm accuracy and repeatability measurement in XYZ coordinate system

ER stress and inflammation

Accumulating evidence indicates that ER-stress-activated pathways, e.g. the unfolded protein response (UPR), lead to activation of various inflammatory processes, such as the acute-phase response (APR) and those instigated by transcriptional factors like NF-κB and AP-1. ER stress-mediated inflammation has been found to be associated with several diseases, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, intestinal bowel disease and cancer. The role of ER stress-mediated inflammation is not straightforward as it can vary from disease-promoting/supporting to disease-controlling depending upon the cell type or disease in focus. This makes therapeutic targeting of ER stress-mediated inflammation very challenging and tough. In this chapter, we discuss the biology of ER stress-induced inflammation, its role in various diseases, and the possibility of targeting it for therapeutic purposes