The paper contains a short literature review on the subject of special type of thin film structures with resistiveswitching memory effect. In the literature, such structures are commonly labeled as "memristors". The word "memristor" originates from two words: "memory" and "resistor". For the first time, the memristor was theoretically described in 1971 by Leon Chua as the 4th fundamental passive electronics element with a non-linear current-voltage behavior. The reported area of potential usage of memristor is enormous. It is predicted that the memristor could find application, for example in the domain of nonvolatile random access memory, flash memory, neuromorphic systems and so forth. However, in spite of the fact that plenty of papers have been published in the subject literature to date, the memristor still behaves as a "mysterious" electronic element. It seems that, one of the important reasons that such structures are not yet in practical use, is unsufficient knowledge of physical phenomena determining occurrence of the switching effect. The present paper contains a literature review of available descriptions of theoretical basis of the memristor structures, used materials, structure configurations and discussion about future prospects and limitations.

Extensive use of computer networks is associated with the development of various effective methods that are suitable for hiding information in the contents transferred over the network. These methods are described as network steganography. Since web applications use HTTP protocol to transmit the requests to the server and send the answers to the final recipient, specifically HTTP protocol is ideal for hiding information. For example, there are several methods that can be used to transmit the additional content in the HTTP header. In this paper, we present authors’ evaluation method for network steganography using HTTP specific properties and evaluate the effectiveness of some techniques, providing experimental results.

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is a popular pigment known as titania white. However, it has many other properties that support various applications.

Underwater steel structures require periodic maintenance. In the case of vessels, anti-corrosion works are carried out in the shipyard, where very good conditions for applying organic protective coatings can be provided. Very good surface preparation can be obtained by the use of abrasive blasting. The well-prepared metal surface is free from impurities (particularly inorganic salts). Suitable conditions for the application and renovation of coatings are also ensured (creating appropriate climatic conditions, drying the air, setting the appropriate air temperature). However, there are underwater constructions that cannot be transferred above the water level and, therefore, their conservation against corrosion can take place only under the surface of the water, which significantly hinders the execution of renovation works. In this work, protective coatings for underwater application were tested. The application of coatings on selected steel surfaces over and under the water was carried out. Physico-mechanical and electrochemical tests were carried out in order to assess the quality of the obtained corrosion protection. The possible difficulties faced when applying coatings in marine conditions were discussed.

The article contains a survey of methods of the mobile development with the FMX Application platform, which allows to build multi-platform solutions for the efficient Human-Computer Interaction. The test projects illustrate some important conclusions regarding the design and testing of mobile applications for iOS and Android operating systems. They demonstrate navigation controls designed in the skeumorphic and flat manner with some comparisons based on interviews with users in several age ranges. Test apps provide also touch gestures, sensor integration and connections to remote internet data sources. Some additional considerations about the localization and internationalization of the mobile applications built with the FMX platform were also presented. The proposed implementation of the software engineering methods for the mobile application development provides new insights, valuable for software developers dealing with the new FMX platform on iOS and Android.

The paper presents two algorithms as a solution to the problem of identifying fraud intentions of a customer. Their purpose is to generate variables that contribute to fraud models’ predictive power improvement. In this article, a novel approach to the feature engineering, based on anomaly detection, is presented. As the choice of statistical model used in the research improves predictive capabilities of a solution to some extent, most of the attention should be paid to the choice of proper predictors. The main finding of the research is that model enrichment with additional predictors leads to the further improvement of predictive power and better interpretability of anti-fraud model. The paper is a contribution to the fraud prediction problem but the method presented may generate variable input to every tool equipped with variableselection algorithm. The cost is the increased complexity of the models obtained. The approach is illustrated on a dataset from one of the European banks.

Predicted climate change may have negative impact on many environmental components including vegetation by increase of evapotranspiration and reduction of available water resources. Moreover, a growing global population and extensive use of water for irrigation and industry result in increasing demand for water. Facing these threats, quantitative and qualitative protection of water resources requires development of tools for drought assessment and prediction to support effective decision making and mitigate the impacts of droughts. Therefore, the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management, National Research Institute has developed and implemented a set of tools for the operational drought hazard assessment. The developed tools cover drought indices estimation, assessment of sensitivity to it formation and drought hazard prediction. They are streamlined into an operational scheme combined with data assimilation routines and products generation procedures.

A drought hazard assessment scheme was designed to be implemented into the platform of a hydrological system supporting the operational work of hydrological forecast offices. The scheme was launched to run operationally for the selected catchments of the Odra River and the Wisla River basins. The crucial resulting products are presented on the website operated by IMWM-NRI: POSUCH@ (Operational System for Providing Drought Prediction and Characteristics) (http://posucha.imgw.pl/). The paper presents the scheme and preliminary results obtained for the drought event which began in August 2011.

The paper presents a review of current achievements in the Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) in relation to its possible applications in the study of phenomena occurring in fluidised bed reactors. Reactors of that kind are being increasingly used in chemical engineering, energetics (fluidised bed boilers) or industrial dryers. However, not all phenomena in the fluidised bed have been thoroughly understood. This results in the need to explore and develop new research methods. Various aspects of ECT operation and data processing are described with their applicability in scientific research. The idea for investigation of temperature distribution in the fluidised bed, using multimodal tomography, is also introduced. Metrological requirements of process tomography such as sensitivity, resolution, and speed of data acquiring are noted.

The problem considered in the paper is motivated by production planning in a foundry equipped with the furnace and casting line, which

provides a variety of castings in various grades of cast iron/steel for a large number of customers. The quantity of molten metal does not

exceed the capacity of the furnace, the load is a particular type of metal from which the products are made. The goal is to create the order

of the melted metal loads to prevent delays in delivery of goods to customers. This problem is generally considered as a lot-sizing and

scheduling problem. The paper describes a mathematical programming model that formally defines the optimization problem and its

relaxed version that is based on the conception of rolling-horizon planning

The paper discusses the impact of the geometry of foundry pallet components on the value of temperature gradient on the wall crosssection

during heat treatment. The gradient is one of the most important factors determining the distribution of thermal stresses in these

items. Analysis of quantitative simulation was carried out to detect possible effect of the type of connection between pallet walls and

thickness of these walls (ribs) on the interior temperature distribution during rapid cooling. The analysis was performed for five basic

designs of wall connections used in pallets. Basing on the results obtained, the conclusions were drawn on the best connection between the

ribs in foundry pallets.

A significant development of the foundry industry contributes to the creation of high reliability and operational strength castings so that they meet specific standards in accordance with customers’ needs. This technology, however, is inseparably connected with casting defects in finished products. Cast products are subject to various defects which are considered acceptable or not, which is conditioned by the alloy chemical composition and strength characteristics, that is, generally – qualities to be agreed between the foundry and the customer. It is the latter that led the authors to research on designing a tool enabling the most reliable possible assessment of the emerging casting defects, which after proper consultations can be repaired and the casting – sold. The paper presents an original tool named the Open Atlas of Defects (OAD), developed for the last few years to support the evaluation of cast iron defects using Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) casting defects analysis tools (DCC card – Demerit Control Chart, Pareto-Lorenz analysis and ABC analysis). The OAD tool structure was presented as an integral part of the original system module for acquisition and data mining (A&DM) in conjunction with the possibilities of using selected tools for defect analysis support on the example of cast iron casting.

Mathematical programming, constraint programming and computational intelligence techniques, presented in the literature in the field of operations research and production management, are generally inadequate for planning real-life production process. These methods are in fact dedicated to solving the standard problems such as shop floor scheduling or lot-sizing, or their simple combinations such as scheduling with batching. Whereas many real-world production planning problems require the simultaneous solution of several problems (in addition to task scheduling and lot-sizing, the problems such as cutting, workforce scheduling, packing and transport issues), including the problems that are difficult to structure. The article presents examples and classification of production planning and scheduling systems in the foundry industry described in the literature, and also outlines the possible development directions of models and algorithms used in such systems.

The problem considered in the paper is motivated by production planning in a foundry equipped with the furnace and casting line, which

provides a variety of castings in various grades of cast iron/steel for a large number of customers. The quantity of molten metal does not

exceed the capacity of the furnace, the load is a particular type of metal from which the products are made in the automatic casting lines.

The goal is to create the order of the melted metal loads to prevent delays in delivery of goods to customers. This problem is generally

considered as a lot-sizing and scheduling problem. The paper describes two computational intelligence algorithms for simultaneous

grouping and scheduling tasks and presents the results achieved by these algorithms for example test problems.

A measurement system for 256-channel in vitro recordings of brain tissue electrophysiological activity is presented in the paper. The system consists of the brain tissue life support system, Microelectrode Array (MEA), conditioning Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC’s) for signals conditioning, Digitizer and PC application for measurement data presentation and storage. The life support system keeps brain tissue samples in appropriately saturated artificial cerebrospinal fluid at a very stable temperature. The MEA consists of two hundred and fifty-six 40 μm diameter tip-shaped electrodes. The ASIC’s performs amplification and filtering of the 256-field and action potential signals. The Digitizer performs simultaneous data acquisition from 256 channels 14 kS/s sample rate and 12-bit resolution. The resulting byte stream is transmitted to the PC via USB (Universal Serial Bus). Preliminary tests confirm that the system is capable of keeping the extracted brain tissue active (hippocampal formation slices) and simultaneously to record action potentials, as well as local theta field potentials with very small amplitudes from multiple neurons

A certain non-linear differential equation containing a power of unknown function being the solution is considered with application to selected geotechnical problems. The equation can be derived to a linear differential equation by a proper substitution and properties of operations G and S.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) typically generate income from two main sources; student

fees and research income. In contrast, the predominant waste streams in HEIs tend

to include; (1) assignment/examination mark submission process, (2) photocopying process

and (3) the funding application process. Unintended internal process complexities and barriers

typically aggravate the challenges already inherent in the research grant application

process. Although Lean Six Sigma (LSS) has been adopted by a number of HEIs in Ireland,

very few have adopted an integrated LSS approach for waste reduction in the research grant

application process. To identify barriers and waste in the research grant application process

within an Irish HEI in an EU environment, the authors used an online survey deployed to

240 academics and researchers. The survey response rate was 13%. The participating HEI

in this pilot study generated an annual income (including student fees and research income)

exceeding e240 million for the academic year 2017/2018. Using an LSS lens, this paper identified

the primary waste in the research grant application process from an academic and

researcher perspective to be; editing and revising applications, liaising and communicating

with collaborators and waiting for information. Organised thematically, the main barriers

were strategic thinking, collaborator identification and co-ordination, eligibility, process,

time and support & mentoring. The results from this study can be used to inform the next

stage of the research where empirical studies will be carried out in other HEIs to develop a

practical roadmap for the implementation of LSS as an operational excellence improvement

methodology in the research grant application process.