The article features a systemic approach to digitalization in mining, covering the production process, supervision and management. Business continuity management of a critical infrastructure was characterized with respect to an industrial facility, i.e. a mine. The “SILESIA” Integrated Security System was described. This solution, offered by CNP EMAG, is an example of a systemic approach successfully implemented in industry. The article includes information about the development of technological hardware solutions as well as software which is able to assess the solutions developed in the SecLab Information Security Technology Development Laboratory in the EMAG Institute.
In a rapidly changing environment due to globalization, we are constantly looking for appropriate paths and strategies for cities and regions while taking into account the territorialisation of growth factors. As a result, we can observe an increase in development concepts that seek to define the conditions for urban resilience that could result in sustainable development despite an unstable environment. The author places his reflections in the context of Upper Silesia’s conurbation development challenges. He examines the current path of the region’s development and analyses the role that the application of “smart city” and “creative city” concepts could play in this process. Rather than comparing the efficacy of the two approaches, he suggests a reflection on the proportions of different bundles inside the development process. He also highlights the limits of a smart city approach and shows to what extent those limits can be exceeded through the application of a creative city strategy. Due to the economic and social diversity of the Upper Silesian metropolitan area, there is a significant opportunity for the development of the creative economy that could determine the competitive advantage of this area in the coming decades.
For centuries, identity has been an important existential issue, because it organizes human relation with the world. Identity is not only one man's being in a biological sense, but the principle of social and cultural order. The identity is the self-awareness, the result of the social actor's involvement in a variety of network connections which are forming a human being together with the biological dimension. Thus, the identity, on the one hand, is a kind of Erikson's tradition, namely the sense of being human, on the other hand interactionist tradition, modification of identity through a process of interaction. Contemporary world, the world of confronting cultures, raises the need for analysis of identity within many cultures, which has been shaped by continuous contact with different values, norms, patterns of behaviour. Upper Silesia has been our empirical reference point for the discussion on social (regional) identity. Identity of Upper Silesia is the result of a long and complicated history and present day. This identity is created by Polish, German, Czech and Jewish a cultural elements.
The article discusses one of the categories of marketing chrematonyms — the names of cafés, which constitute a colourful element of the naming landscape of Upper Silesia. The analysis has several research aims: 1) discovering the naming techniques and types, 2) the presentation of structural models, 3) identifying the changes of meaning and the (con)textual functionality of linguistic units which serve as a commercial medium of evaluation. The names of cafés are presented from the perspective of cultural linguistics, sociolinguistics and pragmalinguistics, as well as the theory of semantic fields. This combined methodological approach enables the author to draw conclusions about marketing chrematonyms in the sphere of culture and language, whereas the structural-semantic analysis of the onymic description of Upper Silesian cafés reveals tendencies that confirm the fact that naming models are created in a serial way. The material presented indicates that commercial chrematonyms belong to semantically and structurally diversified naming categories. The structures show the repetitiveness of naming, the tendency for language internalization and the use of native material, including local dialects.
Proper values of physical and mechanical properties and their homogeneity are one of major requirements deciding about technological suitability of the rocks quarried to manufacturing aggregates. These properties depend on the natural features of a rock, its mineral composition, texture and structure. The characteristic of aggregates and the technical requirements they must meet are normalized in adequate standards that describe the procedures of conducting particular determinations and the methods of interpreting their results. In the basaltoids (usually called basalts) of selected deposits of Lower Silesia that represent different intrusive forms, five textural varieties have been distinguished: aphanitic, aphanitic-porphyritic, porphyritic-aphanitic, porphyritic-nodular and nodular-porphyritic. The petrography and essential physical and mechanical properties of these varieties have been described in Tables 1 and 2, respectively. The highest technical parameters have the aphanitic and aphanitic-porphyritic rock varieties. They result mainly from the textures of these rocks and their insignificant weathering, and to a lesser degree from their mineral composition. The resistance to wear (micro-Deval) and the resistance to fragmentation (Los Angeles) of the aggregates that represent the grain fraction 10-14 mm of the five varieties of basaltoids and the rock composites were determined according to the standards PN-EN 12620: 2008 and PN-EN 13043: 2004. Of the aggregates produced from the five major varieties, only those made of the nodular-porphyritic basaltoids have the properties of lower categories, whereas the remaining four are the materials of very high quality. Additionally, it has been shown that by combining various basaltoid types it is possible to produce composite aggregates with the variable qualities belonging to the categories LA and MDE (Tab. 3). The effect of rock petrography on the differentiation of the parameters of aggregates depending on the grain fraction of the products (Fig. 1, Tab. 4) is the lowest in the case of the aggregates produced from the homogenous and not weathered rock. In contrast, the range of variability of the parameters is higher if the starting material to produce aggregates is composed of several textural varieties and shows signs of weathering as well. The possibility of delineation of the areas occupied in the deposit by basaltoids with specific textural varieties creates the conditions of determining the rock zones, from which the aggregates of the predicted quality may be produced. This quality may be controlled and partly changed to the user needs by producing aggregates from the specially prepared rock mixtures (i.e. the charge to crushers) with specified proportions of the basaltoid varieties.
The plebiscite in Upper Silesia from the year 1921 was one of the most important moments in the history of the region. The establishment of the independent Polish state after 1918 resulted in creating a frontier which divided the region before the plebiscite itself. Therefore, various kinds of travel documents emerged and played an important role. Basing on decision of the Allies, starting from 1st of July 1920, all persons who wanted to enter the plebiscite area were obliged to have a special passport or identity card, issued by the French consulate in Breslau (Wrocław). Also the inhabitants of Upper Silesia, travelling in the area of plebiscite territory, were obliged to possess special travel cards. The author in her article analyses different types of documents as well as mechanisms of dealing with problems of people, who after the final division of Upper Silesia decided to move from one side of the border to the other.
The question of the state affiliation of Upper Silesia which arose after WWI has been treated and perceived by today’s historians, if at all, as a typical German-Polish border conflict. Really however, it was both a European and an international problem of utmost significance. In it, French hegemonic and safety efforts, accumulated in and collided with Britain‘s classic policy of continental equilibrium. Both, Poland with its territorial claim on Upper Silesia and Germany in its struggle to preserve its territorial integrity, thus were not only players of political, diplomatic and military struggles for the second most important European industrial region, but rather objects of the interests of European great powers. This applied even more to the population which was actually to vote in the referendum on Upper Silesia affiliation. However, in its effort to weaken Germany and simultaneously gain control over the Ruhr, France favoured its ally Poland, to a much greater extent than Britain could in respect of Germany.
Villa architecture after 1914 comprises a diverse and extensive group of buildings. The lack of a system of valuating them leads to their analyses being a time-consuming and complex process. Their justification can refer primarily to architectural and urban planning tendencies, including: the impact on the space of previously built estates, the assessment of the quality of their architecture in the landscape context and the continuity of design traditions, contemporary interventions associated with renovation work. The protection of villas from the interwar period, appears to be particularly important. Their cultural value and the quality of the landscape, that they co-create with their accompanying gardens is highly significant to the identity of the city.
The history of Opole Zoological Garden reaches the beginning of the 20th century, when in the Bolko Island, shaped by the Odra river and its canals, the menagerie was founded. Present-day ZOO in Opole is a complex of modern paddocks and structures of an area of around 19 ha, integrated into the old growth of the Bolko Island. In the paper the history and stages of development of Zoological Garden in Opole are presented, the aesthetic and functional values indicated; these ones which make the garden attractive and individual.
For many centuries, Upper Silesia was the scene of intensive language contact between a continuum of West Slavic dialects (or the Polish and Czech languages) and German colonists, mainly in the 13th century. The process of colonisation under German town law led to the establishment of hundreds of new towns and villages, some with German names. The oldest historical sources for Upper Silesia are Liber fundationis episcopatus Vratislaviensis (Book of endowments of the Bishopric of Wrocław), dating back to c 1305, as well as registers of such endowments from c 1325. German medieval place names in Upper Silesia are a minority, and no such town names can be found in many areas. This article is an analysis of the percentage of German place names in relation to all place names [in Upper Silesia]. It defines the areas with the largest number of such names and contains a linguistic analysis of the names. Interestingly, the area with the largest number of German place names is the Duchy of Teschen, with the castellany of Oświęcim (which was once part of the Duchy of Teschen), the neighbouring part of the Duchy of Racibórz and the western part of the Duchy of Opole. In the Duchy of Bytom (the Siewierz part of which no longer belongs to Upper Silesia), German place names were not very common. For the areas covered by the Diocese of Kraków, the names of parish priests are known as well. The presence of the German name of parish priests in towns and villages with German place names half a century from their establishment indicates that German people may have lived there, especially because it is certain in some cases that they did.
The stance of mysticism on language is located in the field of tensions between the fundamental inability to express the essence of God through the medium of language and the imperative, or the need, to talk about it. In the space betwixt and between, there extends mystic silence as a paradoxical, but effective way of communication and insight. Depending on individual mystics, whose selection from the Middle Ages to the Baroque is presented in the text, silence receives also various additional aspects.
The article attempts to show Szczepan Twardoch’s novel Drach as a literary version of the counter- history, which constitute an alternative vision of the past. The theory of counter-history was taken from Michel Foucault’s writings Society Must Be Defended. By this conception Foucault tried to restore the history of those excluded from the offi cial historical discourse.