The rheological properties of self-compacting concrete are closely influenced by temperature and the time. Previous studies which aim was to research the effect of temperature on self-compacting concrete workability, showed that the behaviour of fresh SCC at varying temperatures differs from that of normal vibrated concrete. The paper presents the study of rheological properties of fresh self-compacting concrete mixtures made with portland, blast furnace and component cement. Two types of superplasticizers were used. It was proven that temperature has a clear effect on workability; it can be reduced by selecting the appropriate superplasticizer and cement.

The establishment of the Research Network Lukasiewicz (RNL) is aimed at strengthening the research potential and knowledge transfer from research institutes to enterprises. The article presents the results of the research potential analysis of 38 research institutes that are to form the RNL, based on data on scientific publications in 2013–2016. The number of publications of RNL institutes was similar to the number of publications of TNO and VTT institutes but smaller than that of Fraunhofer institutes. The publications of RNL institutes had lower values of indicators of international collaboration and collaboration with business as well as lower values of citation indices. Co-authors of RNL publications were mainly affiliated with national scientific units, whereas co-authorship with Fraunhofer, TNO and VTT institutes was marginal. The article also outlines the limitations and challenges of the adopted research method and future research orientations in this area.

The Corded Ware culture societies inhabiting the Carpathian zone used various outcrops of flints to processing axes: Volhynian, Turonian (the Świeciechów and the Gościeradów types), Jurassic A and G-type, cretaceous K-type as well as siliceous marl and radiolarite. From the analysed area 81 axes associated with the Corded Ware culture are known. Most of them come from funeral sites — from grave pits or burial mounds. The predominance of the Volhynian flint is observable in the whole area to the east of Wisłok River, basins of the San River, and in the upper basins of the Tisza and Dniester Rivers. Axes from niche graves on the Rzeszów Foothills, where the Świeciechów flint prevails, are specific in this scope or raw materials distribution. Dispersion of flints can be used indirectly as basis for reconstructing movements of human groups using these raw materials, as well as determining directions of their interactions. It can be noticed that communities of the Corded Ware culture from the Dniester Basin resembled in this respect their counterparts from the Roztocze and the Sokal Ridge, while those from the Rzeszów Foothills shows connections both with the“Volhynian zone” and the Lesser Polish Małopolska Upland.

Experiences of subregional cities in programming of urban renewal. The aim of the article is to analyze and evaluate the experience of selected subregional cities in revitalization programming. At the beginning, the strategic policy of the state towards subregional centers was defined. The guidelines from the National Spatial Development Concept, the National Urban Policy and the Strategy for Responsible Development were pointed out. Then, examine in detail the activities carried out so far in 4 cities, which as a result of the administrative reform in 1999 lost the status of the provincial city, i.e. in Ciechanów, Legnica, Piła and Przemyśl. Current documents have been characterized, in particular, the specificity of areas covered by revitalization has been described. Next, the leading directions of transformations of these areas were presented, resulting from the adopted revitalization policy. This allowed for the formulation of certain generalizations about the specificity of the process of renewal of degraded areas in subregional centers in Poland.

The author of the article is aimed at reconstructing the concept of academic freedom as a base of university existence, regarding both its didactic and research function. The author takes into account various definitions of academic freedom and analyzes areas and dimensions, especially its institutional (university) and individual (professor) level. He reconstructs also controversies which are exposed in discussions on academic freedom and arguments regarding its limitations. He considers the phenomenon of actuarial policy and various forms of academic competition. He puts question: does the concept of academic freedom can be still vivid in the time of growing commercialization of didactits and research functions of contemporary university as well as its growing dependance on economy and politics?

The article is a follow-up and an extension to previously published papers by HolzerŻelażewska & Holzer (1997) and Holzer-Żelażewska & Tymicki (2009). Fristly, we have added new cohorts to the cohort analysis based on the individual data from births registration for the years 2009–2015. Secondly, we have extended the scope of the study by taking into account the context of postponement and recuperation to analyses of cohort fertility of Polish women.

The approach applied to the fertility postponement and recuperation on the cohort data refers to the method which was originally proposed by Frejka (2011) and Lesthaeghe (2001) and further developed by Sobotka et al. (Sobotka et al., 2011). This method allows for calculation of fertility postponement and recuperation measures with respect to a benchmark cohort chosen as the one that first experiences an onset of the increase in the mean age of motherhood at first birth.

The results show the remarkable changes in the fertility patterns in Poland. The main driving forces behind the change in fertility patterns in Poland are related to the postponement of first births along with a relatively good recuperation. The magnitude of recuperation for Polish cohorts dropped significantly for second births and was almost non-existent for third and higher births. Therefore, the pattern of fertility in Poland observed till 2015 could be characterized by postponement and recuperation of first births along with a significant decrease in second births with perpetual postponement of third and higher births.

This article sheds light on the advent of online platforms and the way it is reshaping urban enviroment, breaking down traditional axes of both social interaction and commercial power, shifting the structure of traditional services. The platform revolution is radically transforming an array of many functional cities’ areas, like transportation, accommodations and personal services. Thus current concerns as strong urbanization, industrialization and world population growth, enable sharing economy firms to flourish as a reaction against the frictions of urban life exploiting such exacerbation, in order to fulfill demand for appropriate services. After a critical analysis of these issues, the article deepens innovative transportation services, moving on to illustrate the Italian rulemaking process as a chance to provide a solution to the ongoing problem of striking the right balance between competing priorities, such as market access and preservation of sustainable mobility. It suggests to reflect upon the best approach able to face the complexity of urban transport systems, in order to break in a new culture for urban mobility, comply to EU legislation too.

Depopulation is understood as a real population loss in an area represented by a negative population change. In the present-day Poland, the process is particularly distinct in the economically underperforming areas situated on the peripheries of large urban centres, but some of the most populous cities are also affected by it. The purpose of the presented research using Webb’s typology was to identify Polish poviats that were depopulating in all the years from 2002 to 2014 as a result of natural population decline and negative migration balance (two-factor depopulation). In the research, special attention was given to the rate of change in the number of population (total and by age group) and to a net natural and migration loss in the selected poviats. Selected characteristics of the 2014 population age structure in Poland were also evaluated. The basis for all findings presented in the paper is vital and migratory statistics for the years 2002 to 2014 and the data on poviats’ population age structure from 2002 and 2014 published by the Central Statistical Office.

The article introduces a novel Internet diagnosis utility - an open source IP packet snifferwhich captures TCP and UDP packets sent and received by a single Linux process only. Preliminary evaluation results are presented. The utility can be applied in the field of IP traffic classification.

This paper describes a forecasting exercise of close-to-open returns on major global stock indices, based on high-frequency price patterns that have become available in foreign markets overnight. Generally speaking, out-of-sample forecast performance depends on the forecast method as well as the information that the forecasts are based on. In this paper both aspects are considered. The fact that the close-to-open gap is a scalar response variable to a functional variable, namely an overnight foreign price pattern, brings the prediction exercise in the realm of functional data analysis. Both parametric and non-parametric functional data analysis are considered, and compared with a simple linear benchmark model. The information set is varied by dividing global markets into three clusters, Asia-Pacific, Europe and North-America, and including or excluding price patterns on a per-cluster basis. The overall best performing forecast is nonparametric using all available information, suggesting the presence of nonlinear relations between the overnight price patterns and the opening gaps.

The paper aims at comparing forecast ability of VAR/VEC models with a non-changing covariance matrix and two classes of Bayesian Vector Error Correction – Stochastic Volatility (VEC-SV) models, which combine the VEC representation of a VAR structure with stochastic volatility, represented by the Multiplicative Stochastic Factor (MSF) process, the SBEKK form or the MSF-SBEKK specification.

Based on macro-data coming from the Polish economy (time series of unemployment, inflation and interest rates) we evaluate predictive density functions employing of such measures as log predictive density score, continuous rank probability score, energy score, probability integral transform. Each of them takes account of different feature of the obtained predictive density functions.

In 1999 tanker Erica, flying Maltese flag, sank in French exclusive economic zone, spilling 20 000 tones of oil into the sea and polluting 400 km of French shore. In 2008 French court held the defendants liable for reckless negligence in criminal proceedings, with appellate and cassation courts ruling in 2010 and 2012 respectively. The author discusses those judgments.

The courts have considered the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage (1992), the International Convention on the Establishment of an International Fund for Compensation for Oil Pollution Damage (1971) and French Law No. 83‒583 of 5 July 1983. The rulings have met considerable criticism with respect to issues of French jurisdiction and channelling of liability. It was argued that criminal courts cannot give verdicts on civil liability for oil pollution damage.

The article also covers classification societies’ liability for certifying ship’s seaworthiness.

The Article concerns law on maritime carriage of goods, and more specifi-cally, incorporation of international standards into the new Polish maritime code. The Author discusses stages of development of those common standards, including the Hague-Visby rules (1924/1968), Hamburg Rules (1978) and Rotterdam Rules (2009). The focus however is on a unique feature of Polish domestic law, often referred to as hybrid approach, due to its characteristic amalgamation of formulas originating from different conventions.

The Author advocates for such hybrid approach and proposes an introduction of a dedicated chapter on carriage of goods into the new code. The proposal merges existing regulation, based on the Hague-Visby model, with new solutions derived from the Hamburg Rules and, more importantly, the Rotterdam Rules.

Particular emphasis is being put on a common but unregulated practice regarding volume contracts. The Author argues for incorporation of volume contract into the new code.

Finally, the article examines Rotterdam Rules’ provisions regarding jurisdiction and arbitration

The article presents the issues related to ecological security of the Baltic Sea. The issue was taken from the perspective of Poland as one of the Baltic States, and also as a Member State of the European Union. The authors discussed the mechanisms and legal instruments which are crucial for the ecological security of the Baltic Sea (i.e. Helsinki Convention of 1974, or Agenda 21 for the Baltic Sea Region “Baltic 21”). The importance of cross-border cooperation has also been emphasized as an essential element of the security policy in the Baltic Sea area. The article also indicated threats to the protection of Baltic waters, among others, eutrophication.

The development of human civilization ignites a demand for various natural resources. Nowadays, these resources include not only useful minerals, soil, water, air, flora, or fauna, but also natural forces and other environmental assets determining the quality of human life, such as geographic space, landscapes, and microclimates. Among so many categories of natural resources, minerals - which are for the most part non-renewable - often constitute a deciding influence on the level of human well-being. Within the study of the utilization of natural resources, a series of models have been developed which are aimed - mostly in a dynamic mode - at maximizing the level of social well-being determined by the consumption of specific resources. The paper discusses, while recalling selected, established economic theories, the problem of the use and protection of non-renewable mineral resources at the stage of their economic exploitation. The author examines, based on the theory of sustainable development, Hotelling's model and its later modifications of the difficulties in implementing a resource protection policy. The paper approximates a new approach to the concept of mineral resources use in light of the N-person Prisoner's Dilemma. The conclusions were illustrated by simplified cases, conducted with the assumption of an absence of perfect unlimited substitutes.

Image processing techniques (band rationing, color composite, Principal Component Analyses)

are widely used by many researchers to describe various mines and minerals. The primary aim of

this study is to use remote sensing data to identify iron deposits and gossans located in Kaman,

Kırşehir region in the central part of Anatolia, Turkey. Capability of image processing techniques is

proved to be highly useful to detect iron and gossan zones. Landsat ETM+ was used to create remote

sensing images with the purpose of enhancing iron and gossan detection by applying ArcMap image

processing techniques. The methods used for mapping iron and gossan area are 3/1 band rationing,

3/5 : 1/3 : 5/7 color composite, third PC and PC4 : PC3 : PC2 as RG B which obtained result from

Standard Principal Component Analysis and third PC which obtained result from Developed Selected

Principal Component Analyses (Crosta Technique), respectively. Iron-rich or gossan zones were mapped

through classification technique applied to obtained images. Iron and gossan content maps were

designed as final products. These data were confirmed by field observations. It was observed that iron

rich and gossan zones could be detected through remote sensing techniques to a great extent. This

study shows that remote sensing techniques offer significant advantages to detect iron rich and gossan

zones. It is necessary to confirm the iron deposites and gossan zones that have been detected for the

time being through field observations.

Autor definiuje pojęcie kultury przez odniesienie do szczególnej kategorii znaczeń normatywnych, czyli wartości. System wartości zorganizowany jest wokół trzech wartości najbardziej ogólnych i fundamentalnych: prawdy, dobra i piękna. Odpowiednio mówić można o trzech domenach kultury: kulturze poznawczej, kulturze moralnej i kulturze estetycznej. Desygnatami kultury poznawczej są przekonania, poglądy, opinie podzielane przez członków społeczeństwa. Desygnatami kultury moralnej są relacje łączące jednostki w przestrzeni międzyludzkiej. Desygnatami kultury estetycznej są szczególnego typu wytwory należące do sztuki artystycznej lub użytkowej. Podobieństwo wartości w każdym z tych trzech obszarów stanowi silny czynnik wytwarzający więzi społeczne i wspólnoty, a także tożsamości społeczne. Kultura jest fundamentem żywej i bogatej tkanki społecznej, społeczeństwa obywatelskiego.