The paper analyzed the natural gas sector in Ukraine for the period 2000 to 2018. This sector was affected by external factors, such as the crisis which began in late 2008/2009, as well as internal factors, including the situation in Ukraine after 2013 (the Annexation of Crimea). A comparative analysis was also conducted of the natural gas sector in European Union countries and Ukraine – compared the specificity of natural gas consumption in 2018. The analysis (I) examined the demand for natural gas in Ukraine between 2000 and 2018; (II) described changes in sources to cover Ukraine’s gas needs with a particular emphasis on its own production; (III) pointed to the fundamental changes that have occurred in the natural gas supply routes to the Ukrainian sector in recent years; (IV) stressed the growing role of own production in balancing Ukraine’s gas needs; (V) described the role of Ukraine as a transit country for Russian gas to be delivered to EU countries (in recent years, the volume of natural gas transmitted via the Ukrainian transmission system has been around 90 bcm annually); and (VI) looked at the structure of natural gas consumption in the Ukrainian gas sector and how it has changed in recent years. Unlike EU countries, the growing role of own production in balancing Ukraine’s natural gas needs was emphasized, which is consistent with the strategy of the Ukrainian government. Also, attention was drawn to the threats that may significantly reduce the role of Ukraine as an important transit country. The paper also puts forward the most important parameters concerning the underground natural gas storage facilities in Ukraine which is one of the largest in Europe.

The idea of a Multilateral Investment Court seems to be one of the most prominent initiatives of the “multilateralization” of international investment law during this century. The creation of a new international, permanent court concentrated on settling investor – state disputes is an extraordinary challenge. Possible problems relate not only to the negotiations concerning the organizational and procedural aspects necessary to ensure the efficient operation of this type of body. It is also necessary to take into account the dynamics of the functioning of international adjudication as such, as well as the controversies surrounding the international legal protection of foreign investments.

This study examines the impact of monetary policy on economic growth in Ukraine between 2006 and 2019. After the stationarity and co-integration tests, a vector- autoregressive model (VAM) was used to estimate the impact of monetary factors on economic growth in Ukraine. The research results show that GDP changes are largely explained by its own earlier dynamics, but in the long-run real GDP quite strongly depends on the money supply, exchange rate against euro, and basic interest rate. At the same time GDP is weakly dependent on the exchange rate against US dollar, CPI and PPI, the volume of loans to business and external debt. The authors explain their findings and compare them with several other empirical studies on the subject concerning some other countries.

Geographical Information Systems have become essential tools for land analysis and the subsequent decision making in many fields of human activity. In the field of mining, GIS applications have appeared in ore deposit modelling, environmental pollution, or planning of mining spaces. In this research, the powerful multicriteria tools of GIS platforms have been applied for the determination of an index that has been called “Exploitability Index”. This index allows analyzing a series of outcrops of industrial aggregates, to help in the selection of the most adequate one to be enhanced from a mining approach. The multicriteria analysis has been applied for its determination, and as a result of this research, a model is proposed. The main criteria that condition the decision have been established in this model, along with their subsequent hierarchization and their weighting. The proposed model is applied to a specific case: the analysis of a series of outcrops of industrial aggregates (ophites) in Cantabria, Spain. After defining the Exploitability Index for those ophitic outcrops, it has been observed that the only deposit that has been classified as very suitable for its exploitation is the only one that has been really exploited, supporting the proposed methodology.

The use of biomass in the energy industry is the consequence of ongoing efforts to replace Energy from fossil fuels with energy from renewable sources. However, due to the diversity of the biomass, its use as a solid fuel generates waste with diverse and unstable chemical composition. Waste from biomass combustion is a raw material with a very diverse composition, even in the case of using only one type of biomass. The content of individual elements in fly ash from the combustion of biomass ranges from zero to tens of percent. This makes it difficult to determine the optimal recovery methods. The ashes from the combustion of biomass are most commonly used in the production of building materials and agriculture. This article presents the elemental composition of the most commonly used biomass fuels. The results of the analysis of elemental composition of fly ashes from the combustion of forest and agricultural biomass in fluidized bed boilers used in the commercial power industry were presented. These ashes are characterized by a high content of calcium (12.3–19.4%), silicon (1.2–8.3%), potassium (0.05–1.46%), chlorine (1.1–6.1%), and iron (0.8–6.5%). The discussed ashes contained no sodium. Aluminum was found only in one of the five ashes. Manganese, chromium, copper, nickel, lead, zinc, sulfur, bismuth, titanium and zirconium were found in all of the examined ashes. The analysis of elemental composition may allow for a preliminary assessment of the recovery potential of a given ash.

This study included investigation of efficiency of the threshold used to classify symptoms as present, investigation of efficiency of the cut-off point used to identify potentially addicted to work individuals, investigation of magnitude of the problem of class overlap, and investigation of effects of dichotomization of polytomous items on the estimates of the latent trait level. The sample comprised 16,426 working Norwegians (Mage = 37.31; SD = 11.36) who filled out the Bergen Work Addiction Scale (BWAS). The results showed that the difficulty/third threshold parameters corresponding to the threshold used to classify symptoms as present were lower than 1.5 for the items corresponding to tolerance and conflict and higher than or equal to 1.5 for the items corresponding to salience, mood modification, relapse, withdrawal, and problems. The cut-off point used to identify individuals as potentially addicted to work identified 411 individuals (31.9% of all individuals classified by the polythetic approach as potentially addicted to work) whose estimates of the latent trait level were lower than 1.5 as potentially addicted to work. The problem of class overlap (being classified by the polythetic approach into different class despite almost the same level of the latent trait) affected 4,686 individuals (28.5% of the whole sample). The dichotomization of polytomous items had a substantial effect on the estimates of the latent trait level. The findings show that the polythetic approach is not efficient in identifying potentially addicted to work individuals and that the prevalence rates of work addiction based on the polythetic approach are not trustworthy.

In our paper we are going to demonstrate that hypotactic constructions develop from paratactic ones and not the other way round. On the basis of numerous Old English examples, we will try to demonstrate how hypotactic constructions come into being and what is the possible mechanism lying behind this process; one can speak of a hypotactic relation between two clauses when one of them is subordinate and the other is main, so in this sense the term subordinate clauses could actually be used interchangeably with the term hypotactic structures. We will concentrate upon the transition phase between parataxis and hypotaxis, which will allow us to see how hypotaxis was developing from parataxis in English.

In this paper, effects of non-Fourier thermal wave interactions in a thin film have been investigated. The non-Fourier, hyperbolic heat conduction equation is solved, using finite difference method with an implicit scheme. Calculations have been carried out for three geometrical configurations with various film thicknesses. The boundary condition of a symmetrical temperature step-change on both sides has been used. Time history for the temperature distribution for each investigated case is presented. Processes of thermal wave propagation, temperature peak build-up and reverse wave front creation have been described. It has been shown that (i) significant temperature overshoot can appear in the film subjected to symmetric thermal load (which can be potentially dangerous for reallife application), and (ii) effect of temperature amplification decreases with increased film thickness.