The paper presents the results of the valorization of sand and gravel aggregate deposits in Poland. The study aims to identify the most valuable deposits of potentially strategic importance that require protection. Undeveloped gravel deposits (gravel content above 70%) with resources exceeding 10 million tons and sand and gravel deposits (gravel content 25–70%) with resources above 20 million tons were selected for analysis. The valorization of deposits was carried out using two multi-criteria methodologies. The first of them was proposed by Nieć and Radwanek-Bąk (2013, 2014), while the second one was developed as part of the MINATU RA 2020 project (Galos et al. 2016). They include criteria regarding a degree of geological knowledge, raw material quality and quantity, mining attractiveness, and the accessibility of deposits for future exploitation resulting from environmental and land-use conditions. Out of 4,110 undeveloped deposits that constitute the national resource base for producing sand and gravel aggregates, only 8 gravel deposits and 64 sand and gravel deposits exceeded the threshold set for the volume of resources. As a result of the valorization, it was determined that most of the analyzed deposits, which can be considered as deposits of potentially strategic importance at the regional level, have limited availability due to environmental and land-use conditions. Only one gravel deposit and 7 sand and gravel deposits have simultaneously high resource quantity and quality and favorable geological and mining, environmental, and land-use conditions. The article also presents some recommendations regarding the need to adapt the valorization criteria to the specificity of deposits recognized for sand and gravel aggregate production.

Gasification technology is often seen as a synonym for the clean and efficient processing of solid fuels into combustible gas containing mainly carbon monoxide and hydrogen, the two basic components of synthesis gas. First and foremost, the facts that gas may be cleaned and that a mixture with any composition may be prepared in a relatively easy and inexpensive manner influence the possibility of using gas produced in the energy and chemical industries. In the energy industry, gas may be used directly to generate heat and electricity in the systems of a steam power plant or in combined cycle systems. It is also possible to effectively separate CO2 from the system. However, in chemistry, synthesis gas may be used to produce hydrogen, methanol, synthetic gasolines, and other chemical products. The raw material for gasification is full-quality pulverized coal, but a possibility of processing low-quality sludges, combustible fractions separated from municipal waste as well as industrial waste also exists. Despite such a wide application of technology and undoubted advantages thereof, making investment decisions is still subject to high uncertainty. The paper presents the main technological applications of gasification and analyzes the economic effectiveness thereof. In this context, significant challanges for the industrial implementation of this technology are discussed

In this text, a critical reflection is presented on assessment practices in early childhood education, which are discussed in the context of the creation by those practices of the students’ sense of agency which, according to J. Bruner, is treated as a category of school culture. The discussion is based on the results of the recent research conducted in Poland on students’ agency and an analysis of the data collected as part of the author’s own research.

The picture obtained by using the triangulation of methods and sources confirms that assessment in early childhood education strips children of the opportunity to build a sense of agency, even in terms of independent control of a task situation. The surveyed students, admittedly, are capable of a relatively independent reflection on the context of school assessment, but the world of their educational experience is limited to the incapacitating culture of the school grade. It is a culture that becomes one of the sources of children’s self-restraint in the perception of themselves as agents, perpetuating their external steerability and passivity. To change this situation, external regulations will not suffice, but only the organizing of the learning environment based on the relationship between the teacher and the student, which is free from the daily pressures of assessment and the worship of formal correctness.

This paper deals with the legal aspects of saving life at sea by the Maritime Search and Rescue Service (SAR Service). Depending on the situation, it is possible to provide assistance to a ship in distress at sea and to people on board, either from the sea by another ship, or from the land side, i.e. from the coast by specially prepared services. The effective functioning of the SAR organizational system determines the effectiveness of the SAR action in terms of the number of people saved from danger at sea. In order to provide assistance, SAR services around the world performs distress monitoring, communication, coordination, as well as search and rescue tasks, including the pro-vision of medical advice, initial medical assistance or medical evacuation, through the use of public and private resources, including associated aircraft. The tasks of the SAR services include organizing disembarkation of rescued people.

The paper examines the use of precision and approximation devices in a subset of English and Polish temporal expressions. Specifi cally, the corpus-based study reported here employs the Cognitive Linguistics analytic construct of “construal” to look into the variable degrees of precision and propositionality as it is coded linguistically in naturally-occurring data. We fi nd that approximation marking in the temporal magnitude representations under scrutiny is more pronounced than precision marking, and there are further conspicuous use asymmetries across languages (Polish vs. English), construal types (cumulative vs. fractional) and granularity levels (seconds/minute vs. minutes/hour).

This article examines the reception of the féeries, French theatre productions known for their fantasy plots, lavish scenery and spectacular visuals, in the feuilletons by Zofia Węgierska, published in 1853–1869 by the magazine Biblioteka Warszawska. In her reviews of the plays and operas staged in the capital of the French Empire she tried to pinpoint those elements of the productions that were common to the Polish and the French early Romantic aesthetics. She highly appreciated the romantic fairytale magic, the clever juxtaposition of contrastive scenes and moods, historicism, metaphysics, and dazzling stage effects as long as they helped to impress upon the audience the didactic and moral message of a play. The unvarying reference points of her criticism are the plays of Alexandre Dumas père, the Polish Romantic drama, the reception of the Vien-nese romantic fairytale plays in Poland (until 1850) and the journalism of Théophile Gautier.

It is generally accepted that ice cores archive amount-weighted water stable isotope signals. In order to achieve an improved understanding of the nature of water stable isotope signals stored in ice cores annual δ18O and δ2H averages (i.e. amount-weighted) were calculated for two Antarctic meteorological stations, Vernadsky and Hal-ley Bay, using monthly precipitation amount and monthly net accumulation as weights, respectively. These were then compared with the annual mean δ18O δ2H and records of the nearest available ice cores. In addition, at the stations, both arithmetic means (i.e. time-weighted) and amount-weighted (precipitation amount and net accumulation used as weights) annual air temperature averages were calculated and then compared to amount weighted annual mean δ18O and δ2H using correlation- and regression analyses. The main hypothesis was that amount weighted annual mean water isotope and temperature records from the stations would be able to replicate the annual water isotope signal stored in ice cores to a higher degree. Results showed that (i) amount weighting is incapable of ameliorating the signal replication between the stations and the ice cores, while arithmetic means gave the stronger linear relationships; (ii) post depositional processes may have a more determining effect on the isotopic composition of the firn than expected; and (iii) mean annual air temperature provided the closest match to ice core derived annual water isotope records. This latter conveys a similar message to that of recent findings, in as much as ambient temperature, via equilibrium isotope fractionation, is imprinted into the uppermost snow layer by vapor exchange even between precipitation events. Together, these observations imply that ice core stable water isotope records can be a more continuous archive of near-surface temperature changes than hitherto believed.