Spectrum Slovakia – serie

Insufficient supply of oxygen, i.e. hypoxia, typically occurs in a broad range of solid tumours due to aberrant vasculature. It is a key component of tumour microenvironment that affects many biological processes at molecular, cellular and tissue levels. Adaptive responses to oxygen deficiency shape signal transduction, cell metabolism, proliferation, differentiation, survival, angiogenesis, immunosurveillance etc. and thereby contribute to tumour invasion and metastasis. Presence of tumour hypoxia is significantly associated with poor prognosis and therapy resistance. Therefore, it represents a clinically relevant phenomenon that can be exploited for improvement of existing diagnostic and treatment procedures as well as for development of new targeted strategies. This book summarizes the current state of knowledge on hypoxia-regulated pathways and their biological consequences and describes promising approaches to clinical application of this knowledge. It is the first concise and complex guide to understanding principal basic and medical aspects of tumour hypoxia.

This project sets up to explore the role exhibitions play in writing art histories of East-Central and South-East Europe after 1989. In the past twenty years we have been witnessing the increased role of exhibition as an important art historical instrument. Not only exhibitions are very much part of the art historical discourse but the role of a curator and the curating itself provide very specific models of art historical knowledge. Curated art exhibitions present a new kind of research and in many cases put under question traditional methods of art history. In spatial organization they can confirm dominant narratives or suggest a completely new readings.«East European» art history after 1989 has much to do with exhibition making and the academic art history comes to terms with the role of the exhibition in shaping its course. When talking about «re-writing» or revision of art history in the past twenty years one cannot avoid several landmark exhibitions not only as a contribution but shaping processes. For instance, constitutive for East European art history could be considered the following exhibitions: Europa, Europa (Bonn 1994), Der Riss im Raum (Berlin 1994/95), Aspekte/Positionen – 50 Jahre Kunst aus Mitteleuropa 1949-1999 (Vienna 1999), After the Wall: Art and Culture in post-communist Europe (Stockholm 1999/2000), 2000+ARTEAST Collection, Ljubljana (Innsbruck 2000/2001), Ausgeträumt ... (Vienna 2001/2002), In Search of Balkania (Graz 2002), In the Gorges of the Balkan. A Report (Kassel 2003), Blood and Honey: the Future’s in the Balkans (Vienna 2003), Kontakt ... aus der Sammlung der Erste Bank-Gruppe (Vienna 2006), Interrupted Histories (Ljubljana 2006), Cold War Modern. Design 1945-1970 (London 2008/2009), Gender Check. Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe (Vienna 2009/2010), Promises of the Past. A Discontinuous History of Art in Former Eastern Europe (Paris 2010), on the eastern front ... (Budapest, Warsaw 2010), Erased Walls (Poznan 2011), Museum of Parallel Narratives (Barcelona, 2011), Ostalgia (New York, 2011), Museum of Affects, The Present and Presence (MSUM Ljubljana, 2011), RearviewMirror: New Art From Central and Eastern Europe (Toronto, Alberta, 2011-12), Spirits of Internationalism (Eindhoven, Antwerp, 2012), etc. Surely, many different exhibitions could be put on the list. Moreover, East European art has been exhibited in the global context (Global Conceptualism, New York 1999, Global Feminisms, New York, 2007) or within different biennials around the world (not only Venice Biennial and Documenta but Istanbul, Tirana, Prague and of course Manifesta).Crucial for this book project is mapping changes and transformations of the exhibition discourse via different kinds of curated exhibitions: inside and outside of museum/gallery space, in alternative spaces, within biennials or collaborative projects. The exhibition as a medium, a site of experiment or a platform of a paradigm shift is going to be examined and critically reflected. Not only exhibition formats, structures, models, concepts, genres or topics but different curatorial approaches and curatorial experiences will be the valuable part of this project.

This monograph reflects this fact from an interdisciplinary point of view (among the authors are special pedagogues, social pedagogues, doctors, psychologists, philosophers, pedagogues, legislation specialists) and from an international perspective (the team of authors consists of experts from the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Germany). The monograph is founded upon several research projects, whose organic part was formed by partial research focused mainly on the success and failure of inclusive education in the Central European region; on individual dimensions of inclusive education and the quality of life of persons with disabilities. The outcomes of the research, which were parts of individual projects, have been published in several publications by various publishing houses in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland. The most significant is considered the publication published under the editorship of V. Lechta Fundamentals of Inclusive Education in 2010 (435 p.), which was published by the publishing house Portál in Praha and it is the result of the activity of the authors from four Central European countries. The submitted publication is the result of more than 6 years of research into the issue of inclusive education. Its focus is the synthesis of existing knowledge resulting into perspectives of dealing with inclusive education in the 21st century. The content of the first part is formed by a reflection of inclusive education through the lens of several scientific fields: educational sciences, psychology, ethics, law and applied educational disciplines (school politics, school management, non-formal education, leisure time education). The content of the second part is formed by a reflection of inclusion in the context of education of children with the most frequent types of disabilities, disorders or endangerment. We hope that the publication will evoke discussion among concerned specialists as well as the wider public.

The aim of this short book is to present the elements of a systematic theory of certain types of finitely additive probability measures on a set of positive integers. The conventional name of this measures is «density» with an adjective. Every set of positive integers is finite or infinite countable. It is, thus, impossible to consider a sigma additive probability measure defined on a certain class of the sets of positive integers, which could distinguish between the finite and infinite sets of positive integers. The greatness of the first is negligible. From the point of view of cardinality, the second has the same greatness. If we want to consider the measure of greatness, which could divide the sets of positive integers from a certain aspect of their structure, it is more convenient to consider the finitely additive measure. We shall study four most known types of these set functions. One of the important rules in the set of positive integers is played by the relation to divisibility, thus our main attention is devoted to the connection between density and this relation. We try to derive some known results from the basic definitions.

Cross-border movement of employees and services creates a very difficult environment for employers – entrepreneurs expanding to foreign markets, which also applies to foreign entrepreneurs expanding their business activities in the territory of the Slovak Republic. In this difficult process associated with international business and trade, the level and quality of labour-law relations in the «host» country of business in question is essential. This quality affects considerably the total production costs of the employer and, accordingly, also his competitiveness in European and global markets. The employer must accept the quality of working conditions of employees according to the national law of the state in which he pursuits business, a fortiori because the employees themselves contribute considerably to these supranational economic processes and they often affect the success of the entrepreneur that employs them.The Slovak Republic has been, since 2004, a Member State of the European Union. It is an open economy, relying, to a great extent, on foreign investments. Many foreign companies operate in the territory of the Slovak Republic and employ a not insignificant part of the economically active population. It must be said that acceptance of minimum labour-law standards in using dependent work is not the same in case of all foreign companies. Many companies do not find it difficult to respect elementary labour-law rules in employing their employees. However, there are also companies that come from a highly cultivated legal environment of their home countries and they employ employees in a way that would not be possible in their own home countries. A part of foreign companies comes to Slovakia from countries with a totally different legal system in comparison to civil law and they find it difficult to come to terms with elementary labour-law rules for protection of employees. Research has shown various types of impermissible interferences with personal privacy of employees, often degrading their human dignity, non-observance of minimum rest periods necessary for recovery of employees, but also application of corporal punishments.This book is addressed primarily to employers doing business in the territory of the Slovak Republic. It should, as a matter of precaution, protect them against significant mistakes in regard to using the labour potential of employees, which could cause them various sanctions. On the other hand, it specifies the scope of legal space within which they can move safely in employing their employees.

In 1992, the Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art (CIHA) held its 28th Congress in re-unified Berlin under the theme Künstlerischer Austausch – Artistic Exchange. The subject fed a strain of idealism and optimism relating the history of art to the life of our times. Change was palpable to all the participants. A wall that had seemed everlasting had fallen, a cold war that had lasted a lifetime was now history. The shifting borders and a revised sense of periodization inspired new views of the past as well as the present, of art as well as nationhood and society. One generation later, the contributions to Artistic Innovations and Cultural Zones show how art history has responded to our newly broadened vision of the artistic heritage of Europe. In this volume, the previously unquestioned practice of labelling artists with a period and a place is challenged at an empirical as well as a fundamental level. Artistic Innovations and Cultural Zones revisits the constellation of questions posed at CIHA 1992 at a moment when European history is again being rewritten. It offers new art-historical insights for our time on what it means to be a European.

Reading the book authored by Miroslava Ožvoldová and František Schauer, there are three main characteristics to remark: science, technology and pedagogy. First of all, the book is a scientific book because it presents concepts and models of Physics. These descriptions include mathematics, formulas, etc. That is, the book can be used a Physics book. These concepts are evaluated and analyzed through remote experiments based on the technology developed in ISES. And finally, the conceptual and methodological efforts are made to improve the science pedagogy, to facilitate the obtaining of learning outcomes by the students.

The book comprehensively summarizes current knowledge on albeit uncommon, but serious aortic diseases. Until now, diseases of the aorta were part of texts from the area of internal medicine, angiology, imaging methods, vascular surgery and cardiac surgery. The importance and need for a publication with a cross-specialty reach is demonstrated in day-to-day practice. Due to the improvements in diagnostic methods and subsequent earlier diagnosis, patients with some of these aortic diseases are no longer a rarity and it is expected that with the increase in survival rates, we will be encountering them more often. A chapter on aneurysm etiology presents an overview of all etiological groups, allowing the reader to become versed in the topic, while pointing out the less known aneurysm causes.

One of the main goals of this collective work is to emphasize the multiparadigmatic character of contemporary political science, an inseparable component of which are subjects such as political philosophy, political history, ethics or law. The presented individual chapters thus have an interdisciplinary character. The chapters focus on clarifying the narrow coherence, meaning and influence of the developed culture, the preferred values of society and selected political-philosophical ideas on subsequent political practices and the quality of the political process. The authors describe and analyze the essence of the political problems having a values dimension in contemporary Slovak and European society.

This book presents an overview of communicative language teaching and testing in Central and Eastern European countries. It focuses on the impact of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment (CEFR) and its model of language use. The author provides a user-friendly introduction to the process of linking local language examinations to the common reference levels of language proficiency in order to encourage local examination providers to assure quality in high-stakes testing. In response to different approaches in language examination development, the book includes some practical samples as well as practical advice on how to improve the effectiveness of the examinations developed and implemented in local contexts.

This book is centred around the examination of whether it is possible to find cognitive aspects or purposes in aesthetic judgements and in perceptions of beauty, and whether it is possible to meaningfully develop cognitive aesthetics as a unified science (the unification of philosophical and cognitive approaches) using an epistemic background of beauty and art. The book offers various aspects of understanding cognitive characteristics of aesthetic experience. The authors examine the distinction between ordinary and aesthetic experience. They regard a conceptual and semantic analysis of the concept of beauty and focuse on the differences in the evaluation of physical beauty between the sexes from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. The problem of the facial attractiveness and the aesthetic experience from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience is also object of their investigation. The contributors elaborate on beauty in music and emotionality, the problem of the beauty in mathematics and the mathematics of beauty, and consider the vision of how cognitive science affects art theory.

The book presents a detailed biography of Alexander Dubček, the icon of the “Czecho-Slovak Spring” in 1968. It aims to explain his decisions and intellectual development in the context of the turbulent development of the 20th century Central Europe. Dubčk’s importance went beyond Czechoslovak borders. His vision of the “socialism with the human face” secured him worldwide fame. At the end of the 1960s, he became a global symbol of the changes desired on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The short time of his leadership brought him and his country at the forefront of the global politics. The invasion of the Warsaw Pact into Czechoslovakia ended his political career and brought him 20 years of isolation. However, Dubčk’s popularity and infl uence in the European Left remained unchanged.

The landscape is a vital spatial and material frame for our natural and man-made environment and is considered by many stakeholders to be one of the most important aspects of a healthy, enjoyable life. This book deals with the current trends in the theory of the integration of landscape aspects in spatial planning and development processes.The authors discuss the need for integrated land use planning, landscape planning and impact assessment, and explore landscape consideration practice in European countries, with a special focus on Slovakia. Information about landscape decision-making approaches and cases illustrates current practice and lessons from experience, providing baseline material for landscape academic forum, members of the public and professionals in spatial development making: planners, designers, architects, engineers and others.This practice-oriented and up-to-date monograph is a sourcebook and reference guide to key trends, issues of and approaches to sustainable spatial development in European countries.

The problems of people with disabilities are determined by the dynamics of interactions between them and the social environment in which they live. Therefore, the bio-psycho-socio-spiritual model of health is linked to the civilian model, accentuating the active participation in the social life of a particular community. The convergence of these models is present in the transdisciplinary content of the publication, which examines the quality of life of pupils in inclusive education in the Central European region. The authors identified specific limits and possibilities of the educational environment and its impact on the quality of life of children with disabilities. They explained the evidence-based practice and enhanced the competency-based approach to the persons involved in education, their relatives and multidisciplinary school teams.

Left-wing politics in the 21st century faces an internal disruption. In the era of global capitalism, the majority of leftist thinkers refuse neoliberalism with its focus on liberalization, privatization and deregulation. But they diverse on the question of alternatives: there is a division between the anti-globalist and the alter-globalist Left. Cosmopolitanism or patriotism? Liberalism or communitarianism? Particularism or universalism? Global governance or a nation-state? Individualism or collective identites? The author criticizes both right-wing and left-wing liberalism and defends deglobalisation and the return to the communitarian and (inter)nationalist values of the classical socialist Left.

The book approaches education and the science of education (Ger. Pädagogik) from two perspectives: philosophical and historical. The philosophical perspectives (the fi rst part of the book) explore key philosophical influences underlying the notion of Pädagogik. Questions are raised about the status of philosophy of education, and of Pädagogik as a fi eld of study. The nature and scope of their contributions in academic workplaces are critically reviewed. Concerning the historical perspectives (the second part of the book), these explore key historical moments in the development of Pädagogik as a scientific and academic discipline in individual countries of Central, Southern and South-Eastern Europe, based on the original German tradition.

The aim of the monograph is to present the application and practical development of the concept of remediation. Two decades after its original proposal by J.D Bolter and R. Grusin, remediation remains one of the major tools of understanding new media. The authors of this book examine the subject from the perspective of Central and Eastern Europe. Examples are drawn from artistic and literary practices in Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Slovakia and Slovenia. Theoretical frameworks solidify and extend the concept of remediation to new phenomena and areas of critical discourse, from biomedia and genetic transcoding to the remediation of textual media in Catholic Liturgy. As a result, the notion of medium, the nature of mediation and the essence of storytelling are redefined.

The monograph presents psychological interpretations of the specific reactions of individuals within the perception of attractive human faces. It concentrates on exploring selected attributes of human face that increase its attractiveness. After introducing essential information on the specifics of facial perception and its brain correlates, the monograph presents findings on the effect of symmetry, averageness, proportions, sexually dimorphic features, personality characteristics, or the importance of specific parts of the face to its attractiveness. Based on the results of both foreign and own research, the authors formulate interpretations of why and how the identification and preference of examined characteristics have been developed and maintained by the evolution.

This book presents seven diplomats, seven Slovaks. Milan Rastislav Štefánik, Štefan Osuský, Vladimír S. Hurban, Vladimír M. Palic, Juraj Slávik, Ivan Krno and Ján Papánek. They were also authors, poets, soldiers, politicians, and international lawyers. They represent a selective and subjective sample of Czecho-Slovak diplomats in the fi rst half of the 20th century. The book is focused not only on them as men, but on their stories as well. Their chronicles provide insight into the era, relationships and situations which shaped their actions. These seven lives were linked by common characteristics such as strong national awareness, the fi ght for democracy and Czecho- Slovak statehood, as well as disgust with Nazi and Communist totalitarianism, and firm Lutheran roots. Modern Slovak history, whether viewed internally or in a Central-European or pan-European contexts, underwent dynamic transformation at the beginning of the 20th century.The entire world began to change and Slovaks were no exception. It is only natural for every nation or state to seek the roots of its national identity. As this identity is embodied by the people and personalities who created it, we perceive the past through their lives. It is a privilege that as a small European nation, Slovaks can say that their dignitaries have succeeded worldwide. It is a great honor that their work can be seen in the Treaty of Trianon, the Declaration of the United Nations, the UN Charter, and everywhere where the voice of freedom and democracy was rising.

This publication focuses on the characterization of the Slovak party system and its analysis from the perspective of cleavages and emerging government groups. The monograph also includes a description of the individual types of emerging government coalitions and their politological analysis on the basis of the RILE index (right-left positioning). The said index is used to specify the programmatic differences of the emerging coalition governments and the impact of the development of the party system in Slovakia on their nature in the period from 1990 to 2012. The work is focused on the development trends of the Slovak party system on the background of programmatic heterogeneity of the individual coalition groups and the overall development of the variable tensions in the party system. The categorization of the government groups is based on the positional and programmatic orientation of the parties, which was published in the framework of the international database CMP (Comparative Manifestos Project). The Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB) database processes, inter alia, the data relating to the political programs of the parties within the framework of their comprehensive ideological orientation. The Center for Social Research in Berlin thus contains relevant internationally acceptable comparisons of the party systems and their development. The aim of this publication is to characterize the format and type of the party system in Slovakia, its consolidation and the resulting operational problems between the election system and party system. The aim is also to extend the analysis of the Slovak party system to the specification of positional values and programmatic orientation of the parties in Slovakia based on the internationally accepted database and the RILE criteria. The publication also contains the tables with data on the proximity of variable tensions in the party system after each parliamentary elections and the relevant quantification on the RILE scale. The RILE scale will help us assess the programmatic heterogeneity of the government coalitions also in view of the political discourse on this issue. The work will also verify the hypothesis that the programmatic convergence of the parties in the left-right spectrum creates space for the emergence and establishment of extremist and antisystemic parties in the parliamentary establishment.

In Crossroads of Jewish Bratislava, the author identifi es several key junctures that determined the history of Jews in Bratislava between the 19th and 21st centuries, especially in terms of their culture and way of life. The fi rst part of the book (History) provides an overview of historical milestones, with a particular emphasis on the two totalitarian regimes (the Wartime Slovak State and Communist Czechoslovakia 1948–1989). The second part, entitled Dilemmas, examines the current situation of Jewish cemeteries, the consequences of the Holocaust, and the ongoing transformations of Jewish holidays. The author’s research leads to the conclusion that traditional manifestations of Jewish culture are being reshaped by factors of selectiveness, streamlining, and individualisation.