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This article explores public responses to UK government communication of COVID-19, focusing on public solidarity as a crucial part of an effective pandemic response. Drawing on focus group research with members of the public, we identify three limitations in the way solidarity was communicated by government. What solidarity meant and entailed was not always (1) clear and understandable, (2) adequately justified to all, or (3) demonstrated by the actions of political leaders themselves. In conclusion, we consider the implications of our analysis for how the communication of solidarity could have been improved. Beyond any specific communicative shortcomings, communicating solidarity was always bound to be difficult. What solidarity meant and entailed in the context of the pandemic was never normatively self-evident, especially given the different values and interests at stake. Given this, we suggest that a more deliberative-democratic approach to solidarity would have been both normatively desirable and more likely to be effective in sustaining solidarity. But the need for this approach reveals an underlying systemic weakness in the political-communication environment: the lack of adequate opportunities for those called upon to show solidarity to reflect on, contest, and shape its meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a review of influential theoretical positions endeavouring to conceptualise the conditions and mechanisms through which civil society can become productively involved in the articulation of public opinion and contribute its voice to political decision-making. It focuses specifically on the contested relationship between civil and political society and the specifics of the discourses they produce in the political public sphere. Employing the so constructed theoretical framework, the article proceeds to take stock of the processes currently unfolding in the Bulgarian public sphere paying special attention to the modes of their mediatisation. In the focus of the analysis is the case of the civil society group Protest Network. It concludes that a social formation labelled the protest sphere emerges out of the experiences of civil society activists who struggle for publicity of their causes and demands. The protest sphere takes the place of the missing mechanisms supposed to transmit the concerns of civil society actors to formal political and legal institutions in an operational liberal democracy. Despite the fact that it is set in motion by members of civil society, the protest sphere is profoundly political and its role in a democratic society needs to be carefully examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cytokines form a kind of regulatory net which normal functioning is critical for development of inflammation and regeneration in eye, namely cornea. In connection with this, we studied effects of complex of natural cytokine obtained from pig and comprising activities of IL-1, IL-6, TNF, MIF, TGFbeta1, on post-burn regeneration in rabbit cornea. The cornea burn was induced by 10% NaOH and cytokine complex was locally administered (over month after the burn) to the regeneration site observed as wall-eye. Hystologic analysis and in vitro experiment with mice (F1 hybrids of CBAxC57BL) peritoneal macrophages and human peripheral blood neutrophils were performed to reveal cytokine biological roles. CC augmented post-burn cornea regeneration that is distinctly observed at all regeneration stages and manifested as: (i) action on macrophages at the early regeneration (inhibition of migration, activation of phagocytosis, ROS production, cytokine synthesis and secretion); and (ii) attraction of cornea stromal cells to the regeneration site and enhancement of their main functions (proliferation, fibronectin and collagen synthesis). As a consequence of CC local administration, post-burn regeneration site displayed high plasticity, low scaring and vascularization, being close to those of normal tissue, that finally enabled progression of successful keratoplastics. The data reported below show wide perspectives for administration of natural cytokine complex to treat cornea alterations of various genesis.