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The results of tests on the psychometric properties of the PNAP questionnaire showed at least satisfactory validity and reliability, and it can be employed to assess the needs of palliative care patients in Central European countries.

After the last glaciation, around 4000 BC, silver fir ( Abies alba Mill.) spread to the area that is now the Czech Republic. This spread was not restricted to high mountains, but also took place across both highland and lowland landscapes. Historical forestry records from around AD 1500 mention a massive expansion of Abies alba, favoured by forest pasturing, litter raking and selective tree cutting. According to the current interpretation of these historical records, this expansion in Czech forests was extensive and lasted until AD 1800. On the other hand, pollen data coming mostly from the Alps consider silver fir as a species that is extremely sensitive to human impact. In this paper, we compare historical forestry reports with pollen and charcoal data from the Czech Republic. Both pollen and charcoal records show that Abies alba reached its maximum during the Bronze (2200—800/750 BC) and Iron Ages (800/750 BC—AD 0). While charcoal records indicate that silver fir wood was important also during the High Medieval, pollen data show that the High Medieval and Modern times were periods of a general decline in Abies. Our data suggest that the expansion of silver fir documented by historical records was not general but rather fragmented, probably according to actual form and the intensity of human impact, as well as environmental conditions. These historical records have contributed much evidence regarding the wider ecological tolerance of Abies.

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Background It is recommended that patients with progressive neurological disease (PND) receive general and specialized palliative care. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of neuropalliative care on quality of life (QoL) and satisfaction with provided care in both patients with PND in advanced stages of disease and their family caregivers. Methods The sample consisted of 151 patients with PND and 140 family caregivers. The PNDQoL questionnaire was used for data collection. Patients and family caregivers completed the questionnaires both before and 3 months after the intervention. Results Before intervention, there were no statistically significant differences in the individual domains of QoL in patients and family caregivers in either the intervention or the control group. After intervention, differences were identified in the sample of patients in the domains of symptoms burden (p < 0.001), emotional (p < 0 .001), social functioning (p = 0.046), spiritual area (nonreligious) (p = 0.050), and in QoL. In the sample of family caregivers, there were differences in the domains of symptoms burden (p < 0.001), emotional functioning (p = 0.016), spiritual area (nonreligious) (p = 0.042), and in the assessment of health (p = 0.002), and QoL (p = 0.002). Patients and family caregivers from the intervention group evaluated their satisfaction with the quality of care provided significantly more positively in all five analyzed domains. Conclusion The provision of neuropalliative care to patients with advanced stages of PND helped to maintain and slightly improve their QoL, and symptoms burden, and resulted in a more positive assessment of satisfaction with the quality of care provided.

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The Black Death (1347–1352 ce) is the most renowned pandemic in human history, believed by many to have killed half of Europe’s population. However, despite advances in ancient DNA research that conclusively identified the pandemic’s causative agent (bacterium Yersinia pestis), our knowledge of the Black Death remains limited, based primarily on qualitative remarks in medieval written sources available for some areas of Western Europe. Here, we remedy this situation by applying a pioneering new approach, ‘big data palaeoecology’, which, starting from palynological data, evaluates the scale of the Black Death’s mortality on a regional scale across Europe. We collected pollen data on landscape change from 261 radiocarbon-dated coring sites (lakes and wetlands) located across 19 modern-day European countries. We used two independent methods of analysis to evaluate whether the changes we see in the landscape at the time of the Black Death agree with the hypothesis that a large portion of the population, upwards of half, died within a few years in the 21 historical regions we studied. While we can confirm that the Black Death had a devastating impact in some regions, we found that it had negligible or no impact in others. These inter-regional differences in the Black Death’s mortality across Europe demonstrate the significance of cultural, ecological, economic, societal and climatic factors that mediated the dissemination and impact of the disease. The complex interplay of these factors, along with the historical ecology of plague, should be a focus of future research on historical pandemics.

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