Potentials and Limits of Prague's Future in the Context of Long-Term Development

Evaluates the potential development of Prague, Czech Republic, through a comparison with four other Central European capitals. The primary anticipated changes in Central Europe's urban system are inferred from morphological analyses of recent social theorists & from comparative sociological analysis. The predictions include the growing role of capital cities as cultural, economic, & social centers for a unified Europe. Prague's future within this frame of reference is gauged, & the city is assessed as strong in the areas of cultural, geographic, economic, & human resource development. Municipal, political, & infrastructural advancement are projected as less strong, while environmental & demographic progress are deemed limited

Ernest Gellner - A Great European: In Memoriam Professor Ernest Gellner

The 20th-century sociologist Ernest Gellner is eulogized. Gellner's intellectual background is traced through his studies in philosophy & economics, & the influence of the work of Karl Popper on his career is considered. It is proposed that Popper's critical rationalism & anthropological functionalism were an important foundation for Gellner & his intellectual thought. Gellner believed that science was the most reliable system to understand the human race; his fundamental philosophy was a strong devotion to empiricism that would allow for boundless progress

Gellner's Philosophy of History - Interpretations and Problems

The major part of Ernest Gellner's work ranks among the few contemporary attempts at a global theory of the development of mankind, or, in his words, 'the structure of human history.' Gellner's theory is based on two main assumptions: first, the succession of three radically & generically different types of societies: (1) hunter-gatherer society, (2) agrarian society, 3) industrial society; & second, the assumption that in all these societies it is necessary to distinguish three categories of human activity: (A) the economy; (B) power, & (C) knowledge. In his last books he added a fourth component: culture & organization. The possible variations of mutual relationships between the economy, power, & knowledge in each of the developmental phases is what forms the first part of Gellner's thoughts on the philosophy of history. The second, & perhaps more important, part consists of his thoughts on the forms & causes behind the transition from agrarian to industrial society. The emergence of industrial society cannot be easily explained. Therefore Gellner prefers to speak only of the circumstances surrounding this development. They can be summarized in the following way: a restrained state, not interfering too much in the life of the people; Protestantism & its ethic & lifestyle; a developing, if modest & not too robust, technology. The mixture of these three circumstances created a situation out of which an industrial, contractual, pluralist, & open society emerged in Europe. In this article, the author challenges the interpretation of Gellner's theory as being a kind of non-Marxist historical materialism, & describes it rather as structural functionalism applied to history. At the same time, the author points to several problems that can be found in Gellner's sociological theory of history, & devotes the latter part of the paper to outlining four specific problem areas

Czech-German relations: a sociological view

Discusses aspects of Czech-German relations, highlighting new realities, eg, changes in the Federal Republic of Germany's approach concerning its smaller neighbors as a result of significant structural transformations in German society. Three scenarios of future societal developments in both countries are considered. It is argued that the future will be primarily influenced, in the Czech Republic, by its ability to join the European Union, &, in Germany, by its ability to successfully integrate the former German Democratic Republic into the economic & social system of the Federal Republic. The probability of the individual scenarios materializing is assessed

How the Sociology of Housing Emerged

The article attempts to examine the main topics in the sociological study of housing from the end of the Second World War to the 1980s & distinguishes the following five: (1) housing systems & housing policy, (2) the relationship between social stratification & housing differentiation, (3) the relationship between the family & housing, (4) the relationship between housing & neighbourhoods, & (5) housing & architecture as components of culture. During this period the sociological study of housing was strongly influenced by the changes occurring in the housing situation. The post-war housing shortage in Europe & the state's heavy involvement in tackling this problem, along with the rapid rise in the importance of social housing, led to an emphasis on the study of housing systems, housing policy, the methodology of quantitatively measuring housing needs, & the role of the state in the housing sphere, with a heavy stress on the economic dimension of housing issues. A shift to qualitative research on housing, i.e. studying the relationship between the family & housing & the housing needs of the elderly & new families, occurred as the housing shortage declined. Culturally oriented housing research followed, as a response to the search for new identities & for genius loci. As housing has become commodified in Europe & social housing has almost disappeared over the past twenty-five years, there has been revival of the study of the social consequences of narrowly defined economic concepts of housing policy

Zamyšlení nad soudobou českou sociologií

The following comments compare the present orientations of Czech sociology with recent developments in European sociology. The analysis of sociology in Europe shows that the attention of European sociologists has shifted to social theory & social philosophy, sociology of culture, media, gender & feminism, political sociology, nationalism, ethnicity, & racism. Czech sociology, in the opinion of the author, still does not pay sufficient attention to such pressing issues of Czech society as national identity, nationalism, value transformations, the role of traditions, & European integration processes

FireProt ASR: Automated design of ancestral proteins

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Strategies and software tools for engineering protein tunnels and dynamical gates

Improvements in the catalytic activity, substrate specificity or enantioselectivity of enzymes are traditionally achieved by modification of enzymes’ active sites. We have recently proposed that the enzyme engineering endeavors should target both the active sites and the access tunnels/channels [1,2]. Using the model enzymes haloalkane dehalogenases, we have demonstrated that engineering of access tunnels provides enzymes with significantly improved catalytic properties [3] and stability [4]. User-friendly software tools Caver [5], Caver Analyst [6], CaverDock [7] and Caver Web [8], have been developed for the computational design of protein tunnels/channels; FireProt [9] and HotSpot Wizard [10] for automated design of stabilizing mutations and smart libraries. Using these tools we were able to introduce a new tunnel to a protein structure and tweak its conformational dynamics. This engineering strategy has led to improved catalytic efficiency [2], enhanced promiscuity or even a functional switch (unpublished). Our concepts and software tools are widely applicable to various enzymes with known structures and buried active sites. 1. Damborsky, J., et al., 2009: Computational Tools for Designing and Engineering Biocatalysts. Current Opinion in Chemical Biology 13: 26-34. 2. Prokop, Z., et al., 2012: Engineering of Protein Tunnels: Keyhole-lock-key Model for Catalysis by the Enzymes with Buried Active Sites. Protein Engineering Handbook, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, pp. 421-464. 3. Brezovsky, J., et al., 2016: Engineering a de Novo Transport Tunnel. ACS Catalysis 6: 7597-7610. 4. Koudelakova, T., et al., 2013: Engineering Enzyme Stability and Resistance to an Organic Cosolvent by Modification of Residues in the Access Tunnel. Angewandte Chemie 52: 1959-1963. 5. Chovancova, E., et al., 2012: CAVER 3.0: A Tool for Analysis of Transport Pathways in Dynamic Protein Structures. PLOS Computational Biology 8: e1002708. 6. Jurcik, A., et al., 2018: CAVER Analyst 2.0: Analysis and Visualization of Channels and Tunnels in Protein Structures and Molecular Dynamics Trajectories. Bioinformatics 34: 3586-3588. 7. Vavra, O., et al., 2019: CaverDock 1.0: A New Tool for Analysis of Ligand Binding and Unbinding Based on Molecular Docking. Bioinformatics (under review). 8. Stourac, J., et al. 2019: Caver Web 1.0: Identification of Tunnels and Channels in Proteins and Analysis of Ligand Transport. Nucleic Acids Research (under review). 9. Musil, M., et al., 2017: FireProt: Web Server for Automated Design of Thermostable Proteins. Nucleic Acids Research 45: W393-W399. 10. Sumbalova, L. et al., 2018: HotSpot Wizard 3.0: Automated Design of Site-Specific Mutations and Smart Libraries in Protein Engineering. Nucleic Acids Research 46: W356-W362