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Exceptional natural value of karst rivers, as well as their potential as a source of drinking water supply, contributes to the importance of developing strict environmental protection. Although most of its watercourse is proclaimed national park, Krka River is impacted by technological and municipal wastewaters, which are released without proper purification only 2 km upstream of the park border. In order to assess water ecological status of the Krka River, vulnerability of karst ecosystem and potential threat to the Krka National Park, spatial and temporal variability of physico-chemical and microbiological water parameters, as well as concentrations of 25 total dissolved metals/metalloids were evaluated. All parameters indicated deteriorated water quality near the wastewater influences, which was for certain metals and bacterial counts even comparable to other world rivers of technological/rural catchment. Downstream location pointed to purification processes in karst river, although nutrients and conductivity were still in a range below good water quality and Al, Co, Fe, Li, Mn, Ni, Sr, Ti, and Zn levels remained comparable to their levels in the pollution impacted area, especially in autumn, indicating season-dependent processes. Presented data provided background status and identified pollution influences in the karst riverine system which indicated potential risk for protected area and a need for comprehensive water quality assessment.

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Interest in the biological activity of the flavonoids increases due to the potential health benefits of these polyphenolic components of foodstuff. Our research investigates biological properties of the flavonoids and their new synthetized derivatives, focuses on the relationship between their antioxidant activity and their chemical structures. Quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) attempts to correlate chemical structure with biological activity using statistical approaches. It is the process by which chemical structure of a molecule is quantitatively correlated with a well defined process, such as biological activity, that can be expressed quantitatively as the concentration of a substance required to give a certain biological response. When physicochemical properties or structures are expressed by numbers, the mathematical relation can be formed between the two. The mathematical expression can then be used to predict the biological response of other chemical compounds. QSARs represent predictive models derived from application of statistical tools correlating antioxidant activity (including desirable therapeutic effect and undesirable side effects) of chemicals with descriptors representative of molecular structure and properties. Obtaining a good QSAR model depends on many factors, such as the quality of biological data, the choice of descriptors and statistical methods. Any QSAR modeling should ultimately lead to statistically robust models capable of making accurate and reliable predictions of biological activities of new untested compounds.