Bydgoszcz wpatrzona w przyszłość. Obchody jubileuszu 600-lecia miasta w 1946 roku

The 600th anniversary of chartering the city of Bydgoszcz by Casimir the Great, celebrated in 1946, became a pretext to organize jubilee festivities. In August 1945, at the meeting of the Municipal National Council, the decision was made that the event will be organized by the Committee for the celebration of the 600th anniversary of the city. Its activity was joined by representatives of the local authorities, business self-government, public institutions and social organizations. As a result of effective efforts, the patronage over the jubilee was taken by President of Poland B. Bierut and Prime Minister E. Osóbka-Morawski along with the majority of ministers from his Cabinet. In order to make activities more efficient, the Presidium of the Committee was appointed, led by Chairman J. Twardzicki and several divisions responsible for removal of war debris and cleaning of the city, preparation of solemn commemorations, cultural and sporting events, and the Pomeranian Exhibition of Industry, Crafts and Trade. Official celebrations had continued between April 19 and September 1, 1946, filled with an extensive calendar of events. The Committee focused primarily on issues related to the present and past of the city, placing emphasis on providing to Bydgoszcz the greatest prospects for development. The event achieved organizational success. Many cultural institutions operating these days in Bydgoszcz were originated in that period. The jubilee also left its mark on the spatial an architectural image of the city

Zmiany w nazewnictwie bydgoskich ulic i placów w okresie działalności samorządu miejskiego w latach 1945-1950

The topic described in the article focuses on changes in the names of streets and squares in Bydgoszcz, which took place in 1945-1950, in the period of activity of municipal self-government (Municipal National Council and Municipal Board). It was a period of dynamic social and political changes in Poland, finished with gaining full power by the communists. Streets and squares create a space of social character; their names become carriers of certain values and contents. Therefore, they become a subject of interest among representatives of many fields of science. Polish sociology formulated a concept treating names in the city as its ideological attire, which undergoes continuous changes. In democratic systems they are pluralistic and progressive in character, in opposite to situations when one political force takes over power and full control over public space. In the described period, political conditions left their clear mark on names in the city, leading to their strong ideologization and destruction of traditional names of streets and squares located in downtown areas, frequently of historical importance. These processes had taken place in the majority of cities in Poland, thus the article makes an attempt at indicating their specificity in Bydgoszcz, entities initiating changes and breakthroughs in the history of the city

Pomnik Walki i Męczeństwa Ziemi Bydgoskiej. Między pamięcią a propagandą

In the 1960’s, the authorities of Bydgoszcz city decided in a elear way to commemorate the city residents murdered by the German occupants in September 1939. To this end, the Voivodeship Civic Committee for Protection of Fighting and Martyrdom Monuments organised through the agency of the Polish Visual Artists’ Association the competition for a monument and surrounding development design. The competition was judged in December 1963 and the winner was Wacław Kowalik’s design depicting a figurę of the goddess Nike placed on a high column, with martyrdom bas-reliefs in its bottom part. Finally, this design was not implemented, and another, closed competition was announced in the autumn of 1966. Eight artists recognised in Poland and abroad were asked to make a design for a monument being “a symbol of martyrdom, fighting and victory of the Bydgoszcz community over the Nazi occupant”. The winners were Włodzimierz Padlewski with a design of a museum building and Franciszek Masiak with an idea of a multi-figure sculpture. This sculpture appeared in the Bydgoszcz Old Town Market Sąuare, unveiled on September 5, 1969 with accompanying official State ceremonies. The communist authorities used the monument for propaganda against the Federal Republic of Germany

Multiple conformational states in retrospective virtual screening : homology models vs. crystal structures : beta-2 adrenergic receptor case study

Background: Distinguishing active from inactive compounds is one of the crucial problems of molecular docking, especially in the context of virtual screening experiments. The randomization of poses and the natural flexibility of the protein make this discrimination even harder. Some of the recent approaches to post-docking analysis use an ensemble of receptor models to mimic this naturally occurring conformational diversity. However, the optimal number of receptor conformations is yet to be determined. In this study, we compare the results of a retrospective screening of beta-2 adrenergic receptor ligands performed on both the ensemble of receptor conformations extracted from ten available crystal structures and an equal number of homology models. Additional analysis was also performed for homology models with up to 20 receptor conformations considered. Results: The docking results were encoded into the Structural Interaction Fingerprints and were automatically analyzed by support vector machine. The use of homology models in such virtual screening application was proved to be superior in comparison to crystal structures. Additionally, increasing the number of receptor conformational states led to enhanced effectiveness of active vs. inactive compounds discrimination. Conclusions: For virtual screening purposes, the use of homology models was found to be most beneficial, even in the presence of crystallographic data regarding the conformational space of the receptor. The results also showed that increasing the number of receptors considered improves the effectiveness of identifying active compounds by machine learning method

Mol-CycleGAN: a generative model for molecular optimization

Designing a molecule with desired properties is one of the biggest challenges in drug development, as it requires optimization of chemical compound structures with respect to many complex properties. To improve the compound design process, we introduce Mol-CycleGAN—a CycleGAN-based model that generates optimized compounds with high structural similarity to the original ones. Namely, given a molecule our model generates a structurally similar one with an optimized value of the considered property. We evaluate the performance of the model on selected optimization objectives related to structural properties (presence of halogen groups, number of aromatic rings) and to a physicochemical property (penalized logP). In the task of optimization of penalized logP of drug-like molecules our model significantly outperforms previous results

Fingerprint-Based Machine Learning Approach to Identify Potent and Selective 5-HT2BR Ligands

The identification of subtype-selective GPCR (G-protein coupled receptor) ligands is a challenging task. In this study, we developed a computational protocol to find compounds with 5-HT2BR versus 5-HT1BR selectivity. Our approach employs the hierarchical combination of machine learning methods, docking, and multiple scoring methods. First, we applied machine learning tools to filter a large database of druglike compounds by the new Neighbouring Substructures Fingerprint (NSFP). This two-dimensional fingerprint contains information on the connectivity of the substructural features of a compound. Preselected subsets of the database were then subjected to docking calculations. The main indicators of compounds’ selectivity were their different interactions with the secondary binding pockets of both target proteins, while binding modes within the orthosteric binding pocket were preserved. The combined methodology of ligand-based and structure-based methods was validated prospectively, resulting in the identification of hits with nanomolar affinity and ten-fold to ten thousand-fold selectivitiesÁ.A.K. and G.M.K. were supported by the National Brain Research Program (2017-1.2.1-NKP-2017-00002). K.R. is grateful for the ETIUDA scholarship of the National Science Center, Poland. J.B. and M.I.L. are grateful for the support from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Comptetitividad (SAF2017-85225-C3-1-R)S

The girl with finches : a unique post-medieval burial in Tunel Wielki Cave, southern Poland

Cave burials are generally absent from historical periods in Europe. Consequently, the discovery of a post-medieval inhumation of a child buried with at least one bird head placed in the mouth in Tunel Wielki Cave (southern Poland) is an exceptional find. The aim of this paper is to discuss this unique burial based on multiproxy analyses conducted on the human and avian remains, including genetic and isotopic analyses as well as CT scans, radiocarbon dating, and anthropological and paleontological assessment. The results reveal the burial was that of a 10-12 year old girl of likely Fennoscandian or Baltic genetic ancestry, who died in the post-medieval period and was buried in the cave with the placement of one, and possibly two, bird heads in the mouth of the deceased. We propose that the girl is associated with Finno-Karelian troops of a Swedish garrison stationed at the adjacent Ojcow Castle during King Carl Gustav's invasion of Poland in 1655-1657.Peer reviewe

GPCRdb:an information system for G protein-coupled receptors

Recent developments in G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) structural biology and pharmacology have greatly enhanced our knowledge of receptor structure-function relations, and have helped improve the scientific foundation for drug design studies. The GPCR database, GPCRdb, serves a dual role in disseminating and enabling new scientific developments by providing reference data, analysis tools and interactive diagrams. This paper highlights new features in the fifth major GPCRdb release: (i) GPCR crystal structure browsing, superposition and display of ligand interactions; (ii) direct deposition by users of point mutations and their effects on ligand binding; (iii) refined snake and helix box residue diagram looks; and (iii) phylogenetic trees with receptor classification colour schemes. Under the hood, the entire GPCRdb front- and back-ends have been re-coded within one infrastructure, ensuring a smooth browsing experience and development. GPCRdb is available at http://www.gpcrdb.org/ and it's open source code at https://bitbucket.org/gpcr/protwis