Presentations

Russian scientist Tchijevskij investigated almost 100 years ago (suggested for Nobel prize) relationships between solar activity, cycling with the period around 11 years, and the status of mankind. He found „social excitation“, as revolutions and wars, at the time of solar maxima and peaceful activities like flourishing of arts at minima.The present paper explores whether such a parallelism applies also to the 500 years´ (semimillenial) cycling of solar activity. The present author obtained, using the cosinor analysis, significant positive anwer. It is hypothesized that one of the responsible factors could be solar impact on geomagnetic field.

The 100th anniversary of the Student´s statistical t-distribution is commemorated.                                                                                                                                                                              

The monthly registered Wolf numbers (i.e the numbers of sunspots), solar flares index and Ap index of the geomagnetic activity values display negative regression dependence („negatively correlate“) upon the monthly observed numbers of new cases of cerebral infarction.This phenomenon is present with delays from -6 months (infarction before the cosmogeophysical measurement) up to + 17 months (infarction after the cosmogeophysical measurement),with the most pronounced relationship for delay of +5 months.

Distinct increase in the incidence of this disease, observed in Central and Eastern Europe recently, was registered also in Slovak children. Nevertheless, an original finding is the significant presence of 10-11-years cycling, corresponding probably with that in the solar activity, and of 7-years cycling, known for geomagnetic activity These periodicities are superposed on an increasing linear trend, affirmed in some Western „main stream“ journals (e.g.Diabetologia) as the only pattern in this issue.

Yearly numbers of new cases of this disease, collected over one half century,were processed by uncostomed biometrical tools – testing of randomness of the time sequence using Poisson and „contagious“ distributions, cosinor regression and crosscorrelation.The older experience of these authors – cycling of the daily numbers of cases during synodic lunar cycle – has been extended to the years´ scales: cycling contemporal with the Moon nutation period was found as significant. It is another evidence for a putative effect of gravity on bacterial virulence of Salmonella. In the mean time, experiments in NASA laboratories,USA found a dangerous increase of Salmonella virulence in microgravity conditions. Practical consequencies for the medical securing of space flight crews are indicated.

The 24-hour profile of hourly registered extrasystoles mean counts per one subjest in apparently healthy elderly males was studied with the aid of Halberg cosinor regression.

Rotor syndrome is a rare familial conjugated hyperbilirubinaemia with notmal liver histology and unknown cause. The hypothesis was tested that it can be an allele variant of Dubin-Johnson syndrome, caused by mutation in ABCC2 gene. The ABCC2 gene and protein were investigated in two patients with this syndrome. No sequence variations were found in 32 exons, adjacent intronic regions and the promoter region of ABCC2. Accordingly, Rotor syndrome is not an allelic variant of ABCC2 deficiency.

Protein antigens are no able to induce an immune response without being previously processed by antigen presenting cells (APCs). Following their processing that comprises their splitting to smaller fragments – peptides, APs subsequently present them to T cells; moreover, they activate them and polarise to a specific biological functions. Depending of antigen origin, there are two presentation pathways, exogenous and endogenous. Antigens originated from outside of APC, e.g. bacterial toxins, enzymes, etc., are presented by exogenous pathway and presented molecules are class II HLA molecules. T cell, that recognise presented peptides belong to helper subset of T cells. Antigens originated in the cytosol, such as antigens that appear in the cytoplasm of virus infected cells, are presented by endogenous pathway and presented molecules belong to class I HL-A molecules. T cells, that recognise presented peptides, represent cytotoxic T cells.

Phagocytosis is a process of bacteria engulfment and their killing. The phagocytic cells of mammals belong to two complementary systems, the myeloid and mononuclear-phagocytic systems. The myeloid system consists of cells that phagocyte rapidly, however they are not able of sustained effort. Tthey are represented by neutrophils and eosinophils. In contrast, cells of the mononuclear-phagocytic system act more slowly but are capable of repeated phagocytosis. Mmonocytes and macrophages are principal cell responsible for. Process of phagocytosis can be divided into several steps: chemotactic movement of phagocytes towards invading bacteria, opsonisation and recognition of bacteria by specific receptors, their engulfment and phagolysosome formation, bacteria killing and resolution. Bacteria can be killed by oxygen or nitrogen dependent mechanisms and by various antibacterial substances.

Cunningham Textbook of Anatomy (12th Edition, iss. 1981) provides the complete description of the separated skull bones, together with the description of the skull spaces and joints. This decription is suitable for the more detailed study of the skull then that offered by other recommended textbooks, enable students to be better prepared for the tests of Anatomy subject.

Suitable mainly for Dentistry branch students, but of course for the students of the General Medicine branch.