Żaby, żebracy i Bóg: pojęcie cudu w opowiadaniu Stanisława Szukalskiego „Niemy śpiewak”

The essay attempts to offer an analysis and interpretation of a short story, The Mute Singer, by Stanisław Szukalski (1893–1987), Polish sculptor, painter and theoretician of art. The short story is supposed to be part of the autobiographical memories of the author (the narrator, Staś, a small boy, might be the author’s alter ego), yet the events it presents verge on the magical. The title character gives concerts for frogs and for the beggars who come to Gidle at the time of the parish fair, then dies, apparently out of exhaustion. The concerts are presented as moments of mystical communion and contrasted with folk religiosity. The essay focuses on Szukalski’s treatment of miracle, which seems to be a major theme of the story.The essay attempts to offer an analysis and interpretation of a short story, The Mute Singer, by Stanisław Szukalski (1893–1987), Polish sculptor, painter and theoretician of art. The short story is supposed to be part of the autobiographical memories of the author (the narrator, Staś, a small boy, might be the author’s alter ego), yet the events it presents verge on the magical. The title character gives concerts for frogs and for the beggars who come to Gidle at the time of the parish fair, then dies, apparently out of exhaustion. The concerts are presented as moments of mystical communion and contrasted with folk religiosity. The essay focuses on Szukalski’s treatment of miracle, which seems to be a major theme of the story

Behold!!! The Protong — Potop i Małpoludy, czyli teodycea Stanisława Szukalskiego

The essay is devoted to the original theory of Zermatism developed by Stanisław Szukalski between 1940 and 1987, and presented to the public in fragments in the album Behold!!! The Protong (1980). Though intended as a work of science, the theory may be interpreted as a work of art, whose leading theme is theodicy: an attempt to defend God’s goodness (and, additionally, man’s nobility) in the face of evil. In Szukalski’s theory, suffering either is a side-effect of Interplanetary Laws, against which God (the Sun) is powerless, or results from hostile actions of ugly Manapes, whose malice against beautiful mankind reflects their sorrowful alienation. Suffering, therefore, does not imply either God’s indifference or human wickedness. Szukalski’s insistence that his work should be taken as scientific rather than artistic might indicate the artist’s desire for his vision to be true.The essay is devoted to the original theory of Zermatism developed by Stanisław Szukalski between 1940 and 1987, and presented to the public in fragments in the album Behold!!! The Protong (1980). Though intended as a work of science, the theory may be interpreted as a work of art, whose leading theme is theodicy: an attempt to defend God’s goodness (and, additionally, man’s nobility) in the face of evil. In Szukalski’s theory, suffering either is a side-effect of Interplanetary Laws, against which God (the Sun) is powerless, or results from hostile actions of ugly Manapes, whose malice against beautiful mankind reflects their sorrowful alienation. Suffering, therefore, does not imply either God’s indifference or human wickedness. Szukalski’s insistence that his work should be taken as scientific rather than artistic might indicate the artist’s desire for his vision to be true

Movie editing influences spectators’ time perception

Filmmakers use different techniques (e.g., camera movements, editing) to shape viewers' experience. In particular, editing can be used to handle the temporal unfolding of events represented in a movie. Nevertheless, little is known about how different editing types impact viewers’ time perception. In an exploratory on-line study (90 participants) and a pre-registered conceptual replication study (60 participants), we asked participants to judge (Study 1) or reproduce (Study 2) the duration of 45 excerpts of the movie “Le Ballon Rouge” containing either continuous editing, action discontinuity editing or no editing. Each excerpt was formatted in three durations (2000, 2500 or 3000 ms). In both studies, we reported that scenes containing continuous editing were perceived as longer than the other two scene types. Moreover, scenes containing action discontinuity editing were perceived as longer than scenes with no editing. This study contributes to the emerging field of psycho-cinematics which could ultimately develop the dialog between arts and science

Cognitive disorders and fitness of the elderly in residential homes in Bydgoszcz

Introduction. Process of ageing and the growing number of people in retirement age is one of the main problems of the modern world. Together with advancing age both fitness and mental capacity deteriorate. Research proves that there is dependence between cognitive functions and fitness of the elderly. Aim. The aim of the study was to compare fitness with cognitive functions among residents of residential home in Bydgoszcz. Material and methods. 59 people (35 women and 24 men) at the age of 60 to 98 participated in the study. Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) was used to assess cognitive functions. Fitness was assessed by means of Tinetti Test. The subjects were divided according to a) age: group 60-75 and 75+ and b) gender. Results. Negative correlation was observed between age and Tinetti Test results. In the study there was positive and moderate correlation between MMSE scale and Tinetti Test results. In Tinetti Test results regarding differences due to gender were close to statistical significance. Conclusions. There is a dependence between age and weakening of fitness in the elderly in residential homes in Bydgoszcz. Risk of falls increases with age. There is a dependence between cognitive functions disorders and fitness of the elderly from residential homes in Bydgoszcz

We Do Not Like It: A Likert-Type Scale Survey on the Attitudes of a Young Population towards the Transhumanistic Theory of Education

Transhumanists assume that future education may be purely based on technological stimulation. The question is: Do potential clients of education “like” such vision? In order to check this, we asked over one thousand two hundred young Poles to evaluate their identification with the transhumanistic theory of education. The results are quite surprising: its show that they disagree with the assumptions of this theory, while they rather agree with the postulates of more traditional (and no technology-based) concepts of education

Real-world clinical experience with Idebenone in the treatment of Leber hereditary optic neuropathy

Background: Leber hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON) leads to bilateral central vision loss. In a clinical trial setting, idebenone has been shown to be safe and to provide a trend toward improved visual acuity, but long-term evidence of effectiveness in real-world clinical practice is sparse. Methods: Open-label, multicenter, retrospective, noncontrolled analysis of long-term visual acuity and safety in 111 LHON patients treated with idebenone (900 mg/day) in an expanded access program. Eligible patients had a confirmed mitochondrial DNA mutation and had experienced the onset of symptoms (most recent eye) within 1 year before enrollment. Data on visual acuity and adverse events were collected as per normal clinical practice. Efficacy was assessed as the proportion of patients with either a clinically relevant recovery (CRR) or a clinically relevant stabilization (CRS) of visual acuity. In the case of CRR, time to and magnitude of recovery over the course of time were also assessed. Results: At time of analysis, 87 patients had provided longitudinal efficacy data. Average treatment duration was 25.6 months. CRR was observed in 46.0% of patients. Analysis of treatment effect by duration showed that the proportion of patients with recovery and the magnitude of recovery increased with treatment duration. Average gain in best-corrected visual acuity for responders was 0.72 logarithm of the minimal angle of resolution (logMAR), equivalent to more than 7 lines on the Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS) chart. Furthermore, 50% of patients who had a visual acuity below 1.0 logMAR in at least one eye at initiation of treatment successfully maintained their vision below this threshold by last observation. Idebenone was well tolerated, with most adverse events classified as minor. Conclusions: These data demonstrate the benefit of idebenone treatment in recovering lost vision and maintaining good residual vision in a real-world setting. Together, these findings indicate that idebenone treatment should be initiated early and be maintained more than 24 months to maximize efficacy. Safety results were consistent with the known safety profile of idebenone

The PROFOUND Database for evaluating vegetation models and simulating climate impacts on European forests

Process-based vegetation models are widely used to predict local and global ecosystem dynamics and climate change impacts. Due to their complexity, they require careful parameterization and evaluation to ensure that projections are accurate and reliable. The PROFOUND Database (PROFOUND DB) provides a wide range of empirical data on European forests to calibrate and evaluate vegetation models that simulate climate impacts at the forest stand scale. A particular advantage of this database is its wide coverage of multiple data sources at different hierarchical and temporal scales, together with environmental driving data as well as the latest climate scenarios. Specifically, the PROFOUND DB provides general site descriptions, soil, climate, CO2, nitrogen deposition, tree and forest stand level, and remote sensing data for nine contrasting forest stands distributed across Europe. Moreover, for a subset of five sites, time series of carbon fluxes, atmospheric heat conduction and soil water are also available. The climate and nitrogen deposition data contain several datasets for the historic period and a wide range of future climate change scenarios following the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0, RCP8.5). We also provide pre-industrial climate simulations that allow for model runs aimed at disentangling the contribution of climate change to observed forest productivity changes. The PROFOUND DB is available freely as a "SQLite" relational database or "ASCII" flat file version (at https://doi.org/10.5880/PIK.2020.006/; Reyer et al., 2020). The data policies of the individual contributing datasets are provided in the metadata of each data file. The PROFOUND DB can also be accessed via the ProfoundData R package (https://CRAN.R- project.org/package=ProfoundData; Silveyra Gonzalez et al., 2020), which provides basic functions to explore, plot and extract the data for model set-up, calibration and evaluation.Peer reviewe