PROTECTION OF IRAQI CULTURAL HERITAGE WITHIN THE POLISH STABILISATION MISSION

The article was inspired by a publication which appeared in the British daily “The Guardian”, containing fragments of a report by Dr. John Curtis, a British Museum expert, dealing with the unsatisfactory condition of certain historical monuments in Babylon. Dr. Curtis placed the blame for the existing state of things on the American and Polish soldiers stationing at the Camp Alpha base, located in the Babylon archaeological site by Marine units after the fall of the Hussein regime. This sensational press information produced a worldwide “storm” in the mass media. The authors of the presented article refer to the charges formulated by the British researcher and describe the presence of Polish soldiers in the Babylon military base within the context of the protection of the world famous cultural heritage. They propose multiple arguments demonstrating the superficiality of some of the assessments in the report of the British expert, and cite facts indicating the document's falsehoods. Finally, they confront the more than ten-pages long and sparsely documented text by the British author with the ascertainments presented in an all-sidedly documented report about the current state of the Babylon archaeological site (a text of more than 530 pages long and 1 140 photographs), prepared in wartime conditions by Polish archaeologists-specialists concerned with the protection of cultural heritage. An additionally noteworthy fact is that the British author was familiar with the Polish document and even used it, but did not refer to its contents. The initially outlined problem comprises a point of departure for explaining the motives of Poland’s access to a mission of salvaging threatened Iraqi cultural property. The authors point out that the Republic of Poland and Iraq are signatories of international conventions on the protection of cultural property, a fact which urged the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs to file at the UNESCO forum a declaration about rendering assistance to Iraq. The article focuses on the protection of Iraqi cultural heritage, realised as part of a stabilisation mission conducted by Polish archaeologists acting within the structure of the Polish Military Contingent (PKW). Examples of contacts between the Polish Ministry of Culture and representatives of Iraqi cultural institutions and provisional authorities as well as scholarships and training financed for the Iraqis, bring the two side closer and lead to a revival of mutual cultural relations. By presenting the specificity of the central-southern stabilization zone, which remains under Polish supervision, the authors depict the enormous devastation of the archaeological sites and museum, committed by well organised and armed groups of robbers. This damage – the outcome of crime-inducing phenomena caused by the war – was not prevented either by the coalition armies or the insufficiently organised and equipped Iraqi Antiquities Service. Conspiciuous examples include the museums in Baghdad and Babylon, whose invaluable collections were looted. The presented results of an archaeological reconnaissance carried out in several provinces of the stabilisation zone by Polish archaeologists-specialists testify that damage to archaeological sites and ancient ruins was also incurred by the local population, whose members gather and use archaeological substance as valuable building materials. The authors also discuss the findings of on-the-spot inspections, which upon several occasions took place at the Babylon archeological site (the location of the Alpha military base), and were conducted both by Polish archaeologists and an independent team of international experts, including Americans, Poles and Iraqis. Their ascertainments showed that alongside military factors connected with stationing the troops, an essential impact on the state of the preservation of the Babylon monuments was exerted by plunder and natural conditions, such as precipitation and a periodically high state of subterranean water. The publication mentions various undertakings and procedures carried out by the command of the multinational division, intent on protecting the historical monuments and minimalising the losses, i. a. archaeological monitoring. Much attention is devoted to the transference of the Alpha base to the Iraqis. The article cites a special plan of a stage-by-stage handing over of Babylon, devised by Polish military commanders and archaeologists to ensure the safety of the ancient town’s monuments after the departure of the multinational subdivision. The authors stress that the Polish Military Contingent, acting as part of the Multinational Division Centre-South, is the only one among of the national contingents whose structure from the very beginning included archaeologists-specialists dealing with the protection of cultural heritage. A tangible result of their work is the realisation – in coordination with the Iraqi Antiquities and Heritage Services – of 23 projects dealing with repairing, reconstructing, and renovating Iraqi historical monuments as well as outfitting the Iraqi services for the protection of historical monuments, including a newly created archaeological police, at a total cost of 700 000 dollars from a fund at the disposal of the commander of the Multinational Division CS. In the closing part of the article its authors portray the unique educational and preventive solutions applied by the Polish Military Contingent for the purpose of eliminating among its soldiers all temptations and opportunities for taking out of Iraq any sort of historical monuments, evidence of the local cultural heritage. The publication ends with an attempted balance sheet of the accomplishments of the Polish mission in the light of media facts

Steel Wire Mesh as a Thermally Resistant SERS Substrate

In this paper, we present novel type of Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) platform, based on stainless steel wire mesh (SSWM) covered with thin silver layer. The stainless steel wire mesh, typically used in chemical engineering industry, is a cheap and versatile substrate for SERS platforms. SSWM consists of multiple steel wires with diameter of tens of micrometers, which gives periodical structure and high stiffness. Moreover, stainless steel provides great resistance towards organic and inorganic solvents and provides excellent heat dissipation. It is worth mentioning that continuous irradiation of the laser beam over the SERS substrate can be a source of significant increase in the local temperature of metallic nanostructures, which can lead to thermal degradation or fragmentation of the adsorbed analyte. Decomposition or fragmentation of the analysed sample usually causea a significant decrease in the intensity of recorded SERS bands, which either leads to false SERS responses or enables the analysis of spectral data. To our knowledge, we have developed for the first time the thermally resistant SERS platform. This type of SERS substrate, termed Ag/SSWM, exhibit high sensitivity (Enhancement Factor (EF) = 106) and reproducibility (Relative Standard Deviation (RSD) of 6.4%) towards detection of p-mercaptobenzoic acid (p-MBA). Besides, Ag/SSWM allows the specific detection and differentiation between Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial species: Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis in label-free and reproducible manner. The unique properties of designed substrate overcome the limitations associated with photo- and thermal degradation of sensitive bacterial samples. Thus, a distinctive SERS analysis of all kinds of chemical and biological samples at high sensitivity and selectivity can be performed on the developed SERS-active substrate

Detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) by SERS-based immunomagnetic optofluidic device

https://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/node/14388/83895-thumbnail.jpgThe isolation and characterization of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) has great potential for non-invasive biopsy. In this study, a surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) method was developed using magnetic nanoparticles and a solid SERS-active substrate integrated with an external field-assisted microfluidic device to efficiently isolate CTCs from blood samples. A new SERS substrate was used, developed by physically modifying the surface with a femtosecond laser, sputtering the active SERS layer and chemically modifying the surface with anti-EpCAM antibodies. Magnetic nanoparticles (Fe2O3) were coated with SERS active metal and then modified with para-mercaptobenzoic acid (p-MBA), which acts simultaneously as a Raman reporter and a linker with anti-EpCAM antibodies. The sensitive immune recognition of tumor cells is aided by the introduction of a controlled external magnetic field into the microfluidic chip. The integration of the SERS-active platform and p-MBA labeled immuno-Ag@Fe2O3 nanostructures with the microfluidic device ensures lower demand for samples and analytes, precise operation, increases the reproducibility of spectral responses and enables miniaturization and portability of the presented approach. We used four target tumor cell lines with relatively large (human prostate metastatic adenocarcinoma cells (LNCaP)), medium (adenocarcinomic human alveolar basal epithelial cells (A549)), weak (human prostate tumor line (PC3)) and no expression of EpCAM (tumor cells) cervical cancer (HeLa)) to estimate the detection limits on the basis of constructed calibration curves blood samples from lung cancer patients were used to validate the developed method.[1] M. Czaplicka, K. Niciński, A. Nowicka, T. Szymborski i A. Kamińska, Cancers, 2020, 12 (3315), 1-21. </ol

Detection of Circulating Tumor Cells Using Membrane-Based SERS Platform: A New Diagnostic Approach for ‘Liquid Biopsy’

The detection and monitoring of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in blood is an important strategy for early cancer evidence, analysis, monitoring of therapeutic response, and optimization of cancer therapy treatments. In this work, tailor-made membranes (MBSP) for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)-based analysis, which permitted the separation and enrichment of CTCs from blood samples, were developed. A thin layer of SERS-active metals deposited on polymer mat enhanced the Raman signals of CTCs and provided further insight into CTCs molecular and biochemical composition. The SERS spectra of all studied cells&mdash;prostate cancer (PC3), cervical carcinoma (HeLa), and leucocytes as an example of healthy (normal) cell&mdash;revealed significant differences in both the band positions and/or their relative intensities. The multivariate statistical technique based on principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to identify the most significant differences (marker bands) in SERS data among the analyzed cells and to perform quantitative analysis of SERS data. Based on a developed PCA algorithm, the studied cell types were classified with an accuracy of 95% in 2D PCA to 98% in 3D PCA. These results clearly indicate the diagnostic efficiency for the discrimination between cancer and normal cells. In our approach, we exploited the one-step technology that exceeds most of the multi-stage CTCs analysis methods used and enables simultaneous filtration, enrichment, and identification of the tumor cells from blood specimens