Małgorzata Godlewska from the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities defines intuition, explains how it works and what stimuli help us tap into its potential.

Antarctica is home to numerous relatively young volcanoes from the Cenozoic era. According to one hypothesis, their activity was one of the factors driving the continent’s glaciation.

Mapping storm activity across the globe at time scales ranging from minutes to years is an important element of measuring and forecasting climate change. The WERA system is being used to verify models of the influence of various types of solar activity on the lower layers of the ionosphere. We hope that one day it can also be used on Mars.

The experimental pharmacologist Prof. Stanisław Jerzy Czuczwar, Vice President of the Polish Academy of Sciences, tells us about how he got into medical research, about the search for new epilepsy treatments, and how pharmaceuticals are in a way akin to cell phone towers.

Prof. Roman Cieślak from the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities talks about the emotional challenges of pursuing a career in science.

Shale gas mining is mainly viewed as an industrial and economic issue. But we can also look at it from the scientific perspective. Why should we?

Prof. Ewa Rondio from the National Center for Nuclear Research (NCBJ) explains the nature of neutrinos, the measurements taken by the Super-Kamiokande detector, and the involvement of Polish scientists in the project.

Why is it that people can end up interpreting what is being said to them in such different ways? A lot depends on whether they happen to be in a good or bad mood.

There is no way that having the United Kingdom, such an important element in the Old Continent’s system of science, leave the EU will fail to have serious consequences affecting the other EU states.

We talk to Prof. Jan Marcin Węsławski from the PAS Institute of Oceanology in Sopot about how scientists work with members of the public and the benefits it brings.

Whatever can be conceived, sooner or later can be done.

A small team working in the depths of a primeval forest studies the past and present challenges faced by nature, striving to ensure a better future.

The Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences: Technical Sciences (Bull.Pol. Ac.: Tech.) is published bimonthly by the Division IV Engineering Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, since the beginning of the existence of the PAS in 1952. The journal is peer‐reviewed and is published both in printed and electronic form. It is established for the publication of original high quality papers from multidisciplinary Engineering sciences with the following topics preferred: Artificial and Computational Intelligence, Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology, Civil Engineering, Control, Informatics and Robotics, Electronics, Telecommunication and Optoelectronics, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Thermodynamics, Material Science and Nanotechnology, Power Systems and Power Electronics.

Journal Metrics: JCR Impact Factor 2018: 1.361, 5 Year Impact Factor: 1.323, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 2017: 0.319, Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 2017: 1.005, CiteScore 2017: 1.27, The Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education 2017: 25 points.

Abbreviations/Acronym: Journal citation: Bull. Pol. Ac.: Tech., ISO: Bull. Pol. Acad. Sci.-Tech. Sci., JCR Abbrev: B POL ACAD SCI-TECH Acronym in the Editorial System: BPASTS.

The conviction that hate speech is somehow acceptable in online communication may have disastrous consequences, threatening to turn us into a hostile society devoid of empathy or even basic manners.

To retain our cultural identity in the modern world and sensibly think about the future, we need to thoroughly study the past,” says Prof. Marek Figlerowicz from the PAS Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, who leads the project “The Dynasty and Society of Piast-Era Poland in the Light of Integrated Historical, Anthropological, and Genomic Research.”

Dr. Magdelana Markowska from the University of Warsaw’s Faculty of Biology explains where emotions come from and why negative emotions are not the only ones that are problematic for the body.

Empathy is one of the traits that make us human. In exploring the origins of empathy disorders, however, we can learn a lot by studying animals.

We talk to Roman Topór-Mądry, MD, chairman of the PAS Committee on Public health, and Tomasz Zdrojewski, MD, from the Jagiellonian University’s Public Health Institute, coauthors of the first Report on Diabetes in Poland, about counting the number of diabetics and data-gathering techniques.

For every highest spiritual matter, there is a corresponding key on the keyboard of the body.

Zofia Nałkowska,

“Count Emil”

We talk to Dr. Mikołaj Kunicki, an Oxford historian specializing in twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe, about the past and present of Polish nationalism.

We propose a method of constructing multisector-multiregion input-output tables, based on the standard multisector tables and the tools of spatial econometrics. Voivodship-level (NUTS-2) and subregion-level data (NUTS-3) on sectoral value added is used to fit a spatial model, based on a modification of the Durbin model. The structural coefficients are calibrated, based on I-O multipliers, while the spatial weight matrices are estimated as parsimoniously parametrised functions of physical distance and limited supply in certain regions. We incorporate additional restrictions to derive proportions in which every cross-sectoral flow should be interpolated into cross-regional flow matrix. All calculations are based on publicly available data. The method is illustrated with an example of regional economic impact assessment for a generic construction company located in Eastern Poland.

The aim of this paper was to estimate the gender wage gap in Poland and in the 16 NUTS2 Polish regions in 2010, and to verify the predictions of the spatial monopsony model for Poland with a newly created, harmonized database for wages of individuals in Poland. According to the model, the unexplained part of the gender wage gap, identified with wage discrimination, tend to be lower in regions with more competition between employers.

The results of the analyses performed in this paper show that in more urbanized regions the average wages are higher than in the rural ones. In each of the 16 NUTS2 Polish regions, women earn less than men. Raw differences in wages between men and women are largest in the most urbanized regions but a significant part of the differences in those regions can be explained by differences in workers’ characteristics, especially by different sectoral structure of employment. The part of the gender wage gap which remains unexplained, and in the literature is commonly attached to discrimination, is the highest in rural regions of Eastern Poland in line with the predictions of the spatial monopsony model.

The model considered in the paper is defined as VAR with the prior distribution for parameters generated by the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. The degree of economic restrictions in the DSGE-VAR model is controlled by the weighting parameter. In the paper there is investigated the impact of the weighting parameter prior specifications for the posterior shape of impulse response functions (IRFs). In case of conditional models the paths of IRFs highly depend on the value of the weighting parameter that is set arbitrary. When considering full estimation with different prior types, means and gradual change in the dispersion the posterior time paths of IRFs are similar in models with high values of the marginal data density.