Zygmunt G. Wąsowicz, PhD emeritus of the Chair of Acoustics and Multimedia, Wrocław University of Technology, passed away on the 8th of January 2014. His whole professional career was associated with the acoustics. Dr. Z. Wąsowicz was born in Nowy Sącz in 1931. In 1956 he graduated from the Faculty of Telecommunications at the Wrocław University of Technology and started to work there in the same year. In 1966 he obtained the PhD title, under supervision of Professor Z. Żyszkowski, for the dissertation concerning the subjective criteria of nonlinear distortions in loudspeakers. His main interests of activity were room acoustics as well as subjective assessment of sound quality. He worked out the subjective method of loudspeaker evaluation for Polish Loudspeaker Company “Tonsil” – this method was based on so-called “the live apparent sound”. He worked also on computer methods of acoustical field modeling in rooms. The works mentioned above were pioneer and modern in Poland. He participated as an acoustician, in various designers groups at for example auditory halls of Faculty of Electronics. Dr. Wąsowicz was the outstanding academical teacher whom students liked very much. He was also a member of Polish Acoustical Society and worked for the Main Board as well as the Wrocław Division of this society. In periods 1979–1983 and 1994–1996 he was the vice-dean of Faculty of Electronics. He received many awards, for example Golden Cross of Merit, Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, Medal of the National Education Commission and many awards from the Governors of Wrocław University of Technology and Institute of Telecommunications and Acoustics. In 1996 he was retired and beside of this he stayed in contact with Faculty of Electronics for many years. Wrocław acoustical community mourns the loss of Dr. Z. Wąsowicz.
All local government units in Poland have been analysed regarding their consolidated debt. The consolidated debt was compared with the budget debt which is subject to monitoring and statutory restrictions. The scale of extra-budgetary debt has been revealed as recorded in the balance sheet of a local government unit, a parent entity. In practice, the consolidated balance sheet and debt presented in it are not subject to debates and analyses. Local governments refrain from auditing and publicising of the consolidated balance sheet. The article describes the risks related to unlimited local government debt.
Recent years have witnessed the publication of a number of research papers and books seeking to assess threats of electoral victories of anti-establishment politicians and political parties, described as authoritarian populists. This essay focuses on three books directly addressing the origins and threats of authoritarian populism to democracy. It consists of six sections and the conclusion. The first section presents findings (Norris and Inglehart) based on surveys of values of voters of various age cohorts concluding that authoritarian populism is a temporary backlash provoked by the post-materialist perspective. The second section examines the contention, spelled out in Levitsky and Ziblatt, that increase in openness of American political system produced, unintentionally, a degradation of the American political system. The third section continues brief presentations focusing on to the causes and implications of “illiberal democracy,” and “undemocratic liberalism” (Mounk). The fourth section examines developments in the quality of democracy in the world showing that despite the decline in Democracy Indices, overall there was no slide towards non-democratic forms of government in 2006–2019. The next two sections deal with dimensions missing in reviewed books; the notion of nation-state, international environment, civic culture and, in particular, dangers of radical egalitarianism to democracy. The last section concludes with regrets that the authors ignored rich literature on fragility of democracy and failed to incorporate in their analyses deeper structural factors eroding democracy: by the same token, return to the pre-populist shock trajectory is unlikely to assure survival of liberal democracy.
This article presents values of porosity and compression strength of hard coals from the area of the Upper Silesian Coal Basin. The change of the stage of carbonification, which results from conversion of coal substance in the process of coalification, is a source of many changes in the structure of coal. These changes exert influence on values of physical parameters, including the values of porosity and strength. Porosity and compression strength change with the degree of carbonification, a result of the depth of deposition. This study determined the values of effective porosity of coals and their strength considering the age chronology of coal seams and the depth of their occurrence. It examined coals of the Cracow Sandstone Series, the Mudstone Series, the Upper Silesian Sandstone Series, and the Paralic Series from depths ranging from about 350 m to 1200 m. The authors have shown that effective porosity of the Upper Silesian coals changes for particular stratigraphic groups and assumes values from a few to a dozen or so per cent, while compression strength from several to several dozen megapascals. It has been observed, from a chronostratigraphic perspective, that there is a shifting of the upper and lower limits of intervals of porosity variations towards higher values for younger coals. With the increase in compression strength, value of porosity in particular stratigraphic groups generally decreases. However, no regular changes were observed in mean, uniaxial compressive strength with the increase in the age of subsequent stratigraphic groups. On the other hand, for bright coal and semi-bright coal, a visible decrease in compression strength with the depth of deposition of strata was observed.
Today’s discussions concerning metonymy abound in distinctions that may be far from obvious for those who would like to get acquainted with the major achievements and directions of research in this field. That is why the article aims to trace the path that metonymy has covered within Cognitive Linguistics from its initial characterisation in the publication by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) to the present day. The article attempts to provide a general historical perspective on the phenomenon trying to indicate and discuss both the major trends as well as the consecutive stages in the development of the cognitive thought on metonymy. The author identifies different directions of expansion of the phenomenon, enumerates different types of metonymy, and its most frequently discussed dimensions. The article is concluded with an attempt to summarize the key elements of progress that has been made in understanding metonymy since 1980.
Based on empirical research conducted in Hungary and Poland in 2016–2017, as well as on analysis of social media, blogs and newspaper articles, this article discusses Hungarian and Polish attitudes towards Muslims and Islam. Against a historical background, we analyse how the Hungarian and Polish governments responded to the large-scale influx of Muslim refugees during the 2015 ‘migration crisis’. The anti-immigrant narratives, fueled by both governments and the right-wing press, resulted in some-thing akin to Islamophobia without Muslims. Instead of portraying the people arriving at the southern border of Europe as refugees seeking safety, they described the migration process in terms such as ‘raid’, ‘conquest’ and ‘penetration’. These narratives often implied that Muslims will combat Europe not only with terrorism but with the uteruses of their women, who will bear enough children to outnum-ber native Poles and Hungarians. The paper ends with a discussion of positive attempts to improve attitudes towards refugees in Poland and Hungary.
Acoustical analysis of snoring provides a new approach for the diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS). A classification method is presented based on respiratory disorder events to predict the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) of OSAHS patients. The acoustical features of snoring were extracted from a full night’s recording of 6 OSAHS patients, and regular snoring sounds and snoring sounds related to respiratory disorder events were classified using a support vector machine (SVM) method. The mean recognition rate for simple snoring sounds and snoring sounds related to respiratory disorder events is more than 91.14% by using the grid search, a genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization methods. The predicted AHI from the present study has a high correlation with the AHI from polysomnography and the correlation coefficient is 0.976. These results demonstrate that the proposed method can classify the snoring sounds of OSAHS patients and can be used to provide guidance for diagnosis of OSAHS.
In this paper, a new Multi-Layer Perceptron Neural Network (MLP NN) classifier is proposed for classifying sonar targets and non-targets from the acoustic backscattered signals. Besides the capabilities of MLP NNs, it uses Back Propagation (BP) and Gradient Descent (GD) for training; therefore, MLP NNs face with not only impertinent classification accuracy but also getting stuck in local minima as well as lowconvergence speed. To lift defections, this study uses Adaptive Best Mass Gravitational Search Algorithm (ABGSA) to train MLP NN. This algorithm develops marginal disadvantage of the GSA using the bestcollected masses within iterations and expediting exploitation phase. To test the proposed classifier, this algorithm along with the GSA, GD, GA, PSO and compound method (PSOGSA) via three datasets in various dimensions will be assessed. Assessed metrics include convergence speed, fail probability in local minimum and classification accuracy. Finally, as a practical application assumed network classifies sonar dataset. This dataset consists of the backscattered echoes from six different objects: four targets and two non-targets. Results indicate that the new classifier proposes better output in terms of aforementioned criteria than whole proposed benchmarks.
The historic municipal park located in Zduńska Wola is covered in the central and northern part by conservator protection through an entry in the register of monuments and on the basis of an entry in the local spatial development plan. In terms of nature, the area has significant values due to old trees and the water system, which consists of two ponds fed by the Pichna River. As part of the preparatory work for the revalorization of the park, several studies and analyses were carried out, including assessment of the sanitary state of waters of Pichna River that supplies reservoirs. Degree of the river pollution made it impossible to restore the water system, the most important element of the park, while further supplying the ponds with river water. In order to ensure a satisfactory degree of purity and transparency of water in ponds, a decision was made to apply complex and modern technological solutions enabling the renovation of the water system. Project documentation was developed in 2015. After two years, they began to implement the project. Banks of both ponds were formed more gently, and the basins were deepened. Selection of vegetation around the reservoir and in the reservoir itself was based on the principle of biocenotic assumptions. The designed system is equipped with a circulation pump, skimmers, bottom drains, mechanical-mineral filter, swamp filter. This was to ensure adequate purification of water in ponds, based on natural processes, stimulated by the use of new, pro-ecological technologies.
Loads of N-NO3, N-NH4, PO4 and BOD5 carried in surface waters of the upper Dunajec catchment basin (at the section in Krościenko) in the years 1985–1998 are presented in this paper. Water quality of the Biały Dunajec (in Szaflary), Czarny Dunajec (in Ludźmierz) and Dunajec (in Krościenko) was characterised. Annual loads discharged from the area per km2 of the catchment were calculated from mean annual flows (SQ) and concentrations of studied components in river waters. Concentration of N-NO3 in waters of the Biały Dunajec was more than two times higher and that of phosphates – over seven times higher than the respective concentrations in the Czarny Dunajec and Dunajec. Different population density, numerous tourists and low level of water and sewage infra-structure were responsible for these differences.
Reflection on the process of defining and redefining the notion of Polishness after 1918, and thus, an attempt to answer the questions: ‘What is Polishness?’; ‘Is it possible to talk about its single, monolithic, well-defined form in relation to a specific point in history as well as at present?’ – were the main topics of an international conference organised by the Centre for Historical Research on 21st–22nd June 2018 and held at the glamourous Louise-Schroeder-Saal of the Rotes Rathaus (Red Town Hall) in Berlin. Held on the occasion of the centenary of Poland’s regained independence, the event was simultaneously a festive farewell to Professor Robert Traba, the founder and Director of the Berlin-based Centre for Historical Research, Polish Academy of Sciences. The attendees included researchers from Poland as well as scholars from Germany and France, representing various fields of science: history, literature, sociology, political science, law, Slavic studies, Polish studies, and art history. A total of twenty-seven papers and comments, in Polish and/or German, were submitted. The conference ended with a panel discussion (lasting over two hours) on ‘Individual identities in the face of collective ideas of Polishness’ (now available on the CHR website: http://www.cbh.pan.pl/de/fotobericht-und-film-zur-konferenz-derunvollendete-krieg).
Modern space measurement techniques like SLR, DORIS, VLBI and GNSS are used to study the tectonic plates. The determination of plate motion parameters (Φ, Λ, ω) from various geodetic measurements is outlined. This paper is the third part of our studies on estimating geodetic and geodynamic parameters; it regards an accuracy analysis of the determined Φ, Λ, ω parameters which describe motions of the tectonic plates using Very Long Base Interferometry (VLBI) technique. Prior to this, SLR and DORIS space measurement techniques were examined by authors. The study is based on the velocities of station positions, as included in a realization of the International Terrestrial Reference System– ITRF2008 forVLBI technique, published by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS). This model is made subject to an analysis in association with the APKIM2005 model. Six big plates, namely: Eurasian (EUAS), African (AFR), Australian (AUS), North American (NOAM), Pacific (PACF) and Antarctic (ANTC) were analysed. The results obtained in this analysis were compared with our previous estimations based on DORIS and SLR techniques and estimated according to the APKIM2005 model. Generally, all our three solutions based on SLR, DORIS and VLBI measurement techniques were found to be consistent.