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The classic division of the tasks of doctors and nurses to “cure” and “care” is no longer valid. Nevertheless, medical ethics, more oriented towards treatment, has a long-term tradition and is more theoretically elaborated. The reason can be seen in the traditional dominance in the medical field, but a bigger factor is obviously the difficulty to grasp the theoretical concept of the word “care”. In the game there are at least two players who can equally fail. Not only their attitudes but also their real activities are accented. An important part of the care is the relationship; a phenomenon that also cannot be described by simple definitions. To approach the understanding of the concept of care, a possibility is through the theoretical resolution of different paths of the moral development of man, elaborated by Carol Gilligan. It is possible to use the existential analysis of the “stay” of a human by Martin Heidegger, especially his concept of “coexistence” and his definition of worry or care about another person. It is possible to apply the definition of care according to Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto and its consequences in the moral sphere. Deborah Fingfeld-Connett elaborated her own concept of nursing care, which is not based on abstract definitions or concepts, but it is a “meta-synthesis” of available qualitative studies that deal with the issue of care conceptualization in nursing. Nursing care depends not only on what the nurse does, but also on her personality. Therefore it is not possible to avoid the ethics of virtues, inspired either by the classic in this area – Aristotle, or by contemporary authors, such as the Australian philosopher Stan van Hooft. The elaboration of ethics of care should help nurses to be more successful in their demanding profession. Also, adequate understanding of what I am doing leads to personal growth and to greater life satisfaction. Executives and managers will find an incentive for equipment and the organization of health facilities so that good care will be feasible.

The advantage of journal hydrodynamic bearings is high radial load capacity and operation at high speeds. The disadvantage is the excitation of vibrations, called an oil whirl, after crossing a certain threshold of the rotational speed. The mentioned vibrations can be suppressed using the system of the active vibration control with piezoactuators which move the bearing bushing. The motion of the bearing bushing is controlled by a feedback controller, which responds to the change in position of the bearing journal which is sensed by a pair of capacitive sensors. Two stacked linear piezoactuators are used to actuate the position of the bearing journal. This new bearing enables not only to damp vibrations but also serves to maintain the desired bearing journal position with an accuracy of micrometers. The paper will focus on the effect of active vibration control on the performance characteristics of the journal bearing.

Aerodynamic bearings with elastically supported tilting pads have operational properties comparable with widely-used foil journal bearings. They combine the excellent stability of tilting pad bearings, as a result of very small cross-coupling stiffness terms, with the positive properties of foil bearings, namely their ability to adapt to changing operating conditions and presence of additional damping due to friction between elastic members and bearing casings. Air cycle machines (ACMs) are used in the environmental control systems of aircrafts to manage the pressurization of the cabin. An ACM with the abovementioned type of bearings and an operational speed of 60,000 rpm was designed and successfully tested, even under conditions of strong external excitation. Some problems with rotor stability in certain operation regimes were encountered. Rotor relative vibrations measured at both bearing locations increased substantially when excitation frequency was close to the lowest rotor eigenvalues. In spite of that and the 1000 start/stop cycles passed by the end of the test, any traces of wear on the bearing sliding surfaces were negligible. When the bearing distance had to be shortened in order to insert the machine into the defined space, the rotor quickly became unstable at relatively low speeds. Although rotor stability reserve was reduced only slightly, the rotor had to be redesigned in order to achieve stability. Operation characteristics of aerodynamic bearings with elastically supported tilting pads are presented together with rotor dynamic analysis and validated with measured results.

The coordination properties of alizarin green series dyes with uranyl ions were studied in the presence of cationoid surfactants (cetylpyridinium bromide, carbethoxypentadecyltrimethylammonium bromide). Ternary complexes of the composition UO2L2S2, UO2L2S4, UO2L2S6, and UO2L3S9, where L is dye and S is surfactant, are formed in weakly acid solutions. The formation constants of the complexes were established and a procedure was worked out for the direct photometric determination of uranium.

The acid-base equilibria of some phenoxazine dyes in aqueous-ethanolic solutions were studied spectrophotometrically. The compounds examined were prepared in reagent grade purity, their main spectral characteristics in UV and VIS reagion were found and their dissociation constants were determined in 41% (m/m) ethanol. For the analytically most interesting derivative, gallocyanine methyl ester (IV), the pK values were measured also in solutions with different proportions of ethanol. The colour changes accompanying the protolytic reactions and the factors governing the phenomena are discussed.