This essay presents the legal concept of a "second register" in the Polish Republic, called the Register of International Shipping. The author analyses the phenomenon of "second registers" as forms of supporting national fleets and draws attention to the fact that this is a reaction of traditional maritime states to the development of open registers in flag-of-convenience states. The author attempts to classify various maritime registers in shipping practice. He places particular emphasis on the register policy of the EU. This is an expression of support for their own fleets by member states. The author refers to international principles relating to the registration of ships contained in the 1986 UNCTAD Convention relating to conditions of registering vessels. In detail the essay discusses Polish regulations concerning the affiliation of ship and register, contained in the new maritime Code of 18 September 2001. He sets out clearly the "openness" of the Polish shipping register and the potential ease with which a vessel may assume the Polish flag. Part of this study is made up of extracts from the author's own project for legislation concerning a Register of International Shipping. In the light of this project, a Polish "second register" would become a supplementary register of a special kind, closely linked with the basic, national shipping register. The basic purpose of the register would be to increase the international competitiveness of Polish ship-owners, by creating for them a range of tax advantages and other preferential treatment. The owners of vessels in the register of International Shipping would only pay tonnage tax on their use, and a range of Polish work regulations would not apply to the crews of those ships.

Steel Mesh-Reinforced Cementitious Composites (SMRCC) (traditionally known as ferrocement) have been in existence for few decades, but have some limitations set on element thickness and number of reinforcing mesh layers and the resulting deflection ductility. Therefore, the author has made an attempt to explore whether deflection ductility will improve in mesh-reinforced cementitious composites (25 mm thick) if discontinuous fibres are added to slab elements. For this purpose, thin slab elements of dimensions 700 mm (length) × 200 mm (width) × 25 mm (thickness) were cast and subjected to four point bending tests. Based on the flexural tests conducted on SMRCC (Control Slab Elements, cast with Steel Mesh Volume of reinforcement, MVr = 0.78, 0.94, and 1.23%) and Hybrid Mesh-and-Fibre-Reinforced Cement Based Composite (HMFRCBC) (Test Slab Elements, combining MVr = 0.78, 0.94 and 1.23% and Polyolefin Fibre Volume fraction, PO-FVf = 0.5‒2.5% of volume of specimens, with 0.5% interval), load-deflection and the deflection ductility index were analyzed. From the flexural load-deflection curves it has been observed that HMFRCBC slabs demonstrate higher flexural load-carrying capacity and deflection ductility when compared to SMRCC slabs. This study shows that higher the polyolefin fibre volume fraction (PO-FVf) from 0.5 to 2.5% (with a 0.5% interval) in HMFRCBC slabs, the higher the flexural deflection ductility. The Deflection Ductility Index (DDI) of HMFRCBC (with 5 layers of mesh and PO-FVf = 2.5%) is 4.5 times that of SMRCC. This study recommends that HMFRCBC can be used as an innovative construction material due to its higher flexural ductility characteristics.