Mesoporous Bioglasses Enriched with Bioactive Agents for Bone Repair, with a Special Highlight of María Vallet-Regí’s Contribution

Throughout her impressive scientific career, Prof. María Vallet-Regí opened various research lines aimed at designing new bioceramics, including mesoporous bioactive glasses for bone tissue engineering applications. These bioactive glasses can be considered a spin-off of silica mesoporous materials because they are designed with a similar technical approach. Mesoporous glasses in addition to SiO2 contain significant amounts of other oxides, particularly CaO and P2O5 and therefore, they exhibit quite different properties and clinical applications than mesoporous silica compounds. Both materials exhibit ordered mesoporous structures with a very narrow pore size distribution that are achieved by using surfactants during their synthesis. The characteristics of mesoporous glasses made them suitable to be enriched with various osteogenic agents, namely inorganic ions and biopeptides as well as mesenchymal cells. In the present review, we summarize the evolution of mesoporous bioactive glasses research for bone repair, with a special highlight on the impact of Prof. María Vallet-Regí´s contribution to the field.

Tyran i rządy tyrańskie w ujęciu Bartolusa de Saxoferrato

The famous 14th-century jurist Bartolus de Saxoferrato addressed the issues of tyranny at various points in his prolific scientific career, both in his commentary to the Corpus iuris civilis and in the public law treatises De regimine civitatis and De Guelfis et Gebellinis, where the theme of resistance against a tyrant was developed, whereas the legal theory of tyranny was comprehensively presented by him in the treatise De tyranno. The subject of the article is the analysis of the concepts of tyrant and tyrannical rule in Bartolus’ works.

A.S. Masalimov as the founder and leader of a new direction in ESR spectroscopy and quantum chemistry of free radicals

The article highlights the creative path of A.S. Masalimov, an outstanding Kazakhstan chemist who celebrates his 70th anniversary in 2022. The main stages of his career and significant events of his scientific career are presented here. The contribution of professor A.S. Masalimov in the foundation and development of the school of ESR spectroscopy and quantum chemistry at the Karaganda Buketov University is shown.

The First Ethnomusical Publications by Volodymyr Hoshovskyi

Relevance of the study. In 2022, the world community will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the outstanding Ukrainian ethnomusicologist Volodymyr Hoshovskyi. This date inspires a research of Hoshovskyi’s scientific career and his achievements. The main purpose of the study is to focus on less known period of scientific biography of V. Hoshovskyi and discuss his first ethnomusicological publications in 1958–1961, written in Transcarpathia in the early period of his scientific career. Scientific novelty of the research. V. Hoshovskyi’s early publications are considered in a new perspective. For the first time, the links between his four first published works have been revealed. Some of the publications have not yet been deeply analyzed in Ukrainian ethnomusicology. The main results and conclusions of the study. The study proved that not only a few, as was thought previously, but all early publications of V. Hoshovskyi discuss the issues of musical dialectology. The study «On the issue of musical dialects of Transcarpathia» (1958) became the first study on this problem. Taking into account the geographical landscape and stylistic heterogeneity of the folk music of the region, the scientist sketched out the main groups of musical dialects. The article «Some peculiarities of the historical development of Ukrainian folk song in Transcarpathia» (1959) touched upon the aspects of history influencing the formation of musical dialects and revealed such aspects as 1) the East Slavic origin of Transcarpathian music; 2) the processes of assimilation during the thousand years of Hungarian expansion, 3) contacts between inhabitants of the multinational Austria and Hungary. The issue of the influence of Czech and Slovak folklore on folk songs of Transcarpathia V. Hoshovskyi considered separately in the publication «Czech and Slovak songs in Ukrainian folklore of the Transcarpathian region of the Ukrainian SSR» (Prague, 1961; 1962, in Czech), thereby completing a historical review of multinational influences on folk music of Transcarpathia. The key role for the further Hoshovskyi scientific work had the article «Musical archaisms and their dialectal features in Transcarpathia» (1960), dedicated to the development of the methodology of musical and dialectical research. The innovative approach of V. Hoshovskyi consisted in a combination of achievements in related sciences: linguo-geography and ethnomusicology and was associated with a great rise in linguodialectic research in Transcarpathia. Thus, the early publications of V. Hoshovskyi identified the object of research, the reasons for the formation of musical dialects and outlined the methodology for their study. These studies reflected the stage of the formation of V. Hoshovskyi as a scientist, and in a broader sense – the first steps of Ukrainian ethnomusicology towards the development of musical dialectology.

A Life of Biophysics

Biophysics is a way of approaching biological problems through numbers, physical laws, models, and quantitative logic. In a long scientific career, I have seen the formation and fruition of the ion channel concept through biophysical study. Marvelous discoveries were made as our instruments evolved from vacuum tubes to transistors; computers evolved from the size of an entire building to a few chips inside our instruments; and genome sequencing, gene expression, and atom-level structural biology became accessible to all laboratories. Science is rewarding and exhilarating. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Biophysics, Volume 51 is May 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Bert Vallee—A 20th Century Adventure(r) in Zincology

Bert Lester Vallee (1919–2019) has been among the most important biochemists of the 20th century, a pioneer in metalloproteins and discoverer of numerous zinc proteins and enzymes, such as carboxypeptidase, alcohol dehydrogenases and metallothioneins. His scientific achievements are condensed in over 600 publications, and articles relying on and citing his research are suited to fill entire bookshelves. Although Bert Vallee, as a scientist, has left a significant legacy on science, his more personal side and encounters have mostly escaped public observation. We deem this oversight rather unfortunate, as his personality, and indeed personal circumstances, have been truly turbulent and must have influenced his scientific career, from his birth as Bertold Blumenthal in the small village of Hemer in post-World War I Germany via Switzerland to New York and then Boston. Together with public records, the less obvious attributes and actions recommend a more holistic biography. On the occasion of Bert Vallee’s 100th birthday in 2019, we have attempted to provide such an inclusive and rounded résumé. We also propose that a similar rounded approach will add additional layers to the biographies of contemporary scientists, considering social, economic, political, and historical environments and their mutual interactions, which tend to shape the scientist embedded in them.

Антропогеографический метод Йована Цвиича в зеркале российской науки

Статья посвящена анализу научного наследия выдающегося сербского ученого конца XIX – первой четверти XX века Йована Цвиича (1865–1927) и обзору развития концептуально близких его профессиональным интересам идей в России. Популярный при становлении научных взглядов исследователя антропогеографический метод был осмыслен Цвиичем в силу его широкой эрудиции и опыта полевых исследований по-своему. Будучи географом по образованию, Цвиич смог в своей деятельности по изучению природы и хозяйственного уклада населения Балканского полуострова мастерски скомбинировать точку зрения географа с историческим подходом. В этом видел заслугу Цвиича российский этнолог С.А. Токарев. По его мнению, разработанный Цвиичем антропогеографический метод во многом отличается от одноименного метода Фридриха Ратцеля (1844–1904), и в выгодную сторону. Научные доктрины Йована Цвиича не только предопределили традиции сербской этнографии XX века, но и получили мировую известность. Не прошли они бесследно и для российской науки. Некоторые из работ Цвиича – «Заметки по этнографии македонских славян» и «Аннексия Боснии-Герцеговины и сербский вопрос» в начале прошлого века были переведены на русский язык и изданы в Санкт-Петербурге. Антропогеографический вектор исследований нашел своих сторонников и в России, а также в дальнейшем в значительной степени способствовал появлению у нас в стране «этнического картографирования» и этноэкологии (антропоэкологии). Разработанная Й. Цвиичем культурно-географическая классификация областей Балканского полуострова, так называемых «зон цивилизации» во многом схожа с концепцией «хозяйственно-культурных типов и историко-культурных областей», предложенной в 1970-х годах отечественными учеными М.Г. Левиным и Н.Н. Чебоксаровым. Научное направление, объектом изучения которого являются связи и взаимодействия человека с окружающей средой, развивается и совершенствуется, как в мировой науке в целом, так и в российской науке, в частности. The purpose of the article is to investigate the scientific heritage of Jovan Cvijić (1865–1927), a prominent Serbian scholar of the late 19th and first quarter of the 20th century, and explore how the ideas related to his agenda developed in Russia. Cvijić’s profound erudition and field research experience helped him to give his own interpretation to the anthropogeographical principle, popular when he was starting his scientific career. A geographer by training, Cvijić masterfully combined geographic perspective with a historical approach in his activities aimed at studying the nature and economic setup of the Balkans. S. A. Tokarev, a Russian ethnologist, believed that Cvijić deserved much credit for doing so. According to Tokarev, the anthropogeographical method developed by Cvijić was considerably different from the homonymous method of Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904) and compared favorably to it. Jovan Cvijić’s teachings had both ordained the traditions of Serbian ethnography of the 20th century and become well-known globally. Their impact on Russian academia was noticeable, too. Some of Cvijić’s works, namely “Nekolika posmatranja o etnografiji makedonskih Slovena” and “L’anexion de la Bosnie et la question Serbe”, were translated into Russian in the early 1900s and published in St. Petersburg. In Russia, too, there emerged a number of scholars pursuing the anthropogeographical vector of studies. Later it contributed greatly to the nascence of “ethnic mapping” and ethnoecology (anthropoecology) in this country. Cultural-geographical classification of various areas of the Balkan Peninsula, the so-called “civilization zones” developed by J. Cvijić, is in many aspects similar to the concept of “economic-cultural types and historic-cultural areas” proposed in the 1970s by Soviet scholars M.G. Levin and N.N. Cheboksarov. The discipline studying humans’ connection to and interaction with the environment is developing and progressing both globally and in Russian academia.

Dr Claude Massin (25/08/1948—04/09/2021), in Memoriam

This contribution provides an overview of the scientific career of the late Dr Claude Massin (1948–2021), listing his scientific activities (academic career, participation to and organization of expeditions and scientific conferences, publications) as well as the taxa he described as new to science and the eponyms that were dedicated to him. The scientific career of Claude Massin is briefly sketched against the background of the personal family-life.

Political Implications of Philosophical Parrhesia in Michel Foucault’s Late Lectures: Genealogy of Critique and Reality of Philosophy

The concept of parrhesia (free, true and courageous speech) is central to Michel Foucault’s last lecture courses. In this “late” period of his scientific career, the French philosopher started a thorough analysis of the ancient and early Christian sources with the aim to construct a detailed genealogy of the two phenomena that played a crucial role in the Western history — the genealogy of subjectivity and the genealogy of the “critical tradition” in philosophy. In order to analyze the latter, during the lecture course “The Government of Self and Others” (1982—1983), Foucault turned to the texts of Plato, which he considered foundational for the philosophical practices of veridiction in the West. The Platonic paradigm presents philosophy with a number of fundamental tasks, the main of which is the task of constantly testing the reality and seriousness — testing the words (logos) through the deeds and practices (ergon). Foucault postulates that in the modern philosophy this test invariably results in a certain attitude towards politics and power, which assumes rejection of the direct participation in political affairs, constant criticism of our mistakes and misconceptions, the search for and revelation of ways, in which we, as subjects, are able to change ourselves. In this article, the authors attempt to shed light on the genealogical significance of Foucault’s concept of parrhesia and its relationship to the modern philosophy; present the classification of parrhesia (on the basis of Foucault’s lectures) that allows to identify political and philosophical dimensions of this phenomenon and their different modalities, as well as review in a holistic way the Platonic philosophical parrhesia and consider the problem of its complex relationship with politics, which becomes especially acute when the “reality of philosophy” is being tested.