Stylistic heritage and tendencies in contemporary Croatian cinema

This paper focuses on the diverse stylistic heritage and various tendencies in Croatian cinema of the 1990s and 2000s. Since many film scholars accentuate the discontinuity between contemporary Croatian cinema and that from the Yugoslav period, the paper points to continuities in the stylistic trends of both periods. The paper also analyzes two major stylistic configurations ‒ classical and modernist ‒ focusing on different variants of both aesthetic orientations. Variants of cinematic classicism (reduced and excessive classical style) are exemplified by the films of Krešo Golik and Fadil Hadžić, and by the films of Dalibor Matanić and Zrinko Ogresta from the contemporary period. On the other hand, variants of cinematic modernism (realist and psychological) are exemplified by thefilms of Vatroslav Mimica and Ante Peterlić from the 1960s, and in the contemporary period by thefilms of Zrinko Ogresta and Lukas Nola

Detailed state model of CaMKII activation and autophosphorylation

By combining biochemical experiments with computer modelling of biochemical reactions we elucidated some of the currently unresolved aspects of calcium-calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) activation and autophosphorylation that might be relevant for its physiological function and provided a model that incorporates in detail the mechanism of CaMKII activation and autophosphorylation at T286 that is based on experimentally determined binding constants and phosphorylation rates. To this end, we developed a detailed state model of CaMKII activation and autophosphorylation based on the currently available literature, and constrained it with data from CaMKII autophosphorylation essays. Our model takes exact phosphorylation patterns of CaMKII holoenzymes into account, and is valid at physiologically relevant conditions where the concentrations of calcium and calmodulin are not saturating. Our results strongly suggest that even when bound to less than fully calcium-bound calmodulin, CaMKII is in the active state, and indicate that the autophosphorylation of T286 by an active non-phosphorylated CaMKII subunit is significantly faster than by an autophosphorylated CaMKII subunit. These results imply that CaMKII can be efficiently activated at significantly lower calcium concentrations than previously thought, which may explain how CaMKII gets activated at calcium concentrations existing at synapses in vivo. We also investigated the significance of CaMKII holoenzyme structure on CaMKII autophosphorylation and obtained estimates of previously unknown binding constants

Interview with David Culver

Our series of interviews with leading karstologists now turns to cave biologist. David Culver, an emeritus professor of environmental science at the American University (Washington DC, USA), talks about his relationship to karst and what subterranean biology has given to the geoscientific disciplines and what it has taken from them. His science approach is well reflected in the statement: “In the last few decades, I have done valuable little completely independent research, and collaboration with people with different skill groups has been critical”