ANALOGY OF EXHIBITS OF KĖDAINIAI REGIONAL MUSEUM WITH OBJECTS IN LATVIA AND BELARUS : COMPARISON OF WOODEN PLATES

Plates in household of wealthy Europeans appeared only in the Early Modern Era, and among mostly people plates became a necessary tool only from the second half of the 19th century. New culture of eating using personal dishes was taken even earlier by manors and cities, meanwhile peasants considered it as unnecessary costs, that cannot supplant a personal dipper and slice of bread by a common table. In some European regions peasants used wooden dishes, that later were substituted by ceramic ones

Clinical importance of laboratory biomarkers in liver fibrosis

Hepatic cirrhosis is a major health problem across the world, causing high morbidity and mortality. This disease has many etiologies, yet the result of chronic hepatic injury is hepatic fibrosis causing cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma, as the liver’s architecture is progressively destroyed. While liver biopsy is currently the gold standard for fibrosis staging, it has significant disadvantages, leading to a growing interest in non-invasive markers. Direct biomarkers – hyaluronic acid, laminin, collagen type III N-peptide, type IV collagen and cholylglycine – are new and rarely applied in routine clinical practice. This is the case primarily because there is no general consensus regarding the clinical application and effectiveness of the individual biomarkers. The usage of these markers in routine clinical practice could be advantageous for patients with liver fibrosis, requiring a simple blood test instead of a biopsy. The former option would be especially attractive for patients who are contraindicated for the latter. This review summarizes recent findings on direct biomarkers of liver fibrosis and highlights their possible applications and potential benefit for liver fibrosis diagnostics and/or staging

Determination of the Distribution of the Relaxation Times from Dielectric Spectra

The dielectric susceptibility measurements are usually interpreted in terms of the relaxation times of various dynamical processes. Using the simple examples of the simulated spectra it is shown how the distribution of these relaxation times can be obtained by means of the integral equations solved with the Tikhonov regularization technique, and the criteria for the choice of the regularization parameter is discussed

Peculiar Bi-ion dynamics in Na1/2Bi1/2TiO3 from terahertz and microwave dielectric spectroscopy

Dynamics of the main dielectric anomaly in Na1/2Bi1/2TiO3 (NBT) was studied by time-domain THz and microwave spectroscopy, using also previously published data and their new overall fits. Above the dielectric maximum temperature Tm ~ 600 K, the response consists of coupled sub-THz oscillator and a relaxation mode, assigned to strongly anharmonic Bi-ion vibrations and hopping, whose slowing down explains the paraelectric-like permittivity increase to Tm. Below Tm, the main relaxation continues slowing down and additional relaxation, assigned to quasi-Debye losses, appears in the 10^11 Hz range. The oscillator hardens on cooling and takes over the whole oscillator strength. The permittivity decrease below Tm is caused by the reduced strength of the relaxations due to dominance of the rhombohedral phase within the coexistence region with the tetragonal phase. The anharmonic dynamics of Bi is supported by previous structural studies. NBT represents a hybrid between standard and relaxor ferroelectric behaviour

Neteisminė mediacija Lietuvos administraciniame procese: koncepcija ir plėtros kryptys.

This article analyses the concept of the out of court mediation in Lithuanian administrative procedure, which has its own specifics, hence, in this range this method often cannot be applied in its classical form. The following features are attributable to the of the out of court mediation in administrative procedure: the parties have a limited freedom to influence the content of the agreement reached in mediation process, i. e. every arrangement reached during the mediation procedure must correspond to the criteria of legitimacy; the reached arrangements are directed to the public interest, not to the interests or needs of individuals; the participating parties are bound by the subordinate/jurisdiction intercourse; the pluralism of the dispute parties, meaning that the problems solved in the process of mediation relate to interests of undefined quantity of subjects, and all such subjects are usually involved in the mediation process as the concerned parties. The author of this article argues that the main development trends of the out of court mediation in Lithuanian administrative procedure are administrative disputes mediation and the out of court mediation as an administrative function of Lithuanian public subjects. The major problem of the administrative disputes mediation in Lithuania is incomplete regulation. Pursuant to the laws, only a few Lithuanian public authorities, such as the Chief Administrative Disputes Commission and the Seimas’ Ombudsmen, have the right to apply out of court mediation in order to settle administrative disputes. Nevertheless, the laws of Lithuania do not provide for the rules of the out of court mediation and the rights and obligations of the public authorities, which apply mediation procedure. Therefore, there is a risk of unlawful actions of public authorities, who have a right to act as mediators in the out of court mediation procedure. It should be also noted that the practice of public authorities, which shall apply out of court mediation in consumers disputes as it administrative function, is not the same. For instance, the Central bank of Lithuania settles disputes between consumers and financial market participants via out of court mediation. As statistics of the aforementioned disputes settlement mechanism shows, this mechanism is often used in order to settle disputes between consumers and financial market participants. However, for example, National Commission for Energy Control and Prices, which has a right to settle disputes between parties of energy sector via out of court mediation, has not received a single request to settle disputes via this alternative method. Therefore, the author of this article proposes to set the mandatory out of court mediation in the consumers’ disputes resolution.Straipsnyje analizuojama neteisminės mediacijos koncepcija Lietuvos administraciniame procese bei neteisminę mediaciją administraciniame procese sudarantys bendrieji ir specialieji požymiai, atsirandantys kaip klasikinės mediacijos ir administracinio proceso principų sintezės rezultatas. Nagrinėjamos pagrindinės neteisminės mediacijos įtvirtinimo Lietuvos administraciniame procese kryptys bei teisinės prielaidos. Remiantis atliktu tyrimu, yra teikiami siūlymai ir rekomendacijos dėl efektyvesnio neteisminės mediacijos taikymo Lietuvos administraciniame procese

The Clinical Relevance of Circulating Tumor Cells in Early Breast Cancer

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are considered to be evading cancer cells that have been shed or actively invaded from the primary tumor into the blood circulation or lymphatic system and which may finally extravasate to found metastases. CTCs as “liquid biopsy” hold great promise to be a powerful non-invasive real-time measurable biomarker for predicting clinical outcomes and cancer treatment response. Several studies evaluated the role of CTC presence and count in the neoadjuvant and adjuvant setting of early breast cancer (EBC) and revealed their significant prognostic value. In this chapter, we highlight the clinical relevance of CTCs in early breast cancer (EBC) and state the urgency for further research in this field to definitely translate this marker from bench to bedside