The objective of the experiment was to evaluate the energy efficiency of the phytoremediation process, supported using energy crops. The scope of conducted work includes the preparation of a field experiment. During the evaluation, 2 factors were into consideration – total energy demand and total energy benefit. The case study, used as an origin of data, consists a 3-years field study, conducted with the use of 2 energy crops – Phalaris arundinacea L. and Brassica napus L. The area subjected to the experiment was polluted with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and herbicides, classified as phenoxy acids (2, 4 D). The experimental design consisted of 4 groups of fields, divided according to the used plant species and type of treatment. For each energy crop, 2 types of fertilization strategies were used. Therefore the 1st and 3rd sets of fields were not treated with any soil amendment while the 2nd and 4th sets were fertilized with compost. The obtained data allowed to observe that the cultivation of P. arundinacea L. and B. napus L. allowed a positive energy balance of the process to be achieved. However, it should be noted, that the B. napus L. growth in the first vegetation season was not sufficient to fully compensate a total energy demand. Such a goal, in the mentioned case, was possible after the 2nd vegetation season. The collected results show also that the best energetic potential combined with the most effective soil remediation were obtained on the fields with the cultivation of P. arundinacea L. fertilized with compost. The number of biofuels, collected from the 1 ha of such fields, can reach a value equal even to12.76 Mg of coal equivalent.

The widespread use of Fibre-Reinforced Polymers (FRP) reinforced concrete (RC) structural members is hindered by their low fire resistant characteristics, limiting their use to cases, where fire resistance is not a priority. Presented and discussed are experimental results pertaining to the flexural members subjected to heating and simultaneous loading. Solely non-metallic FRP bars: (i) Basalt FRP (BFRP), (ii) Hybrid FRP (HFRP) with carbon and basalt fibres and (ii) nano-Hybrid FRP (nHFRP) with modified epoxy resin, were used as internal reinforcement for beams. The destruction of the beams was caused in different ways, beams reinforced with BFRP bars were destroyed by reinforcement failure while those reinforced with hybrid FRP bars were destroyed by concrete crushing. The BFRP reinforced beams obtained a maximum temperature, measured directly on the bars, of 917 °C, compared to beams reinforced with hybrid FRP bars, where the temperature on the bars reached 400-550 °C at failure. Moreover, the highest registered ductility was obtained for BFRP reinforced beams as well, where the maximum deflections reached approximately 16 cm.

Traffic classification is an important tool for network management. It reveals the source of observed network traffic and has many potential applications e.g. in Quality of Service, network security and traffic visualization. In the last decade, traffic classification evolved quickly due to the raise of peer-to-peer traffic. Nowadays, researchers still find new methods in order to withstand the rapid changes of the Internet. In this paper, we review 13 publications on traffic classification and related topics that were published during 2009-2012. We show diversity in recent algorithms and we highlight possible directions for the future research on traffic classification: relevance of multi-level classification, importance of experimental validation, and the need for common traffic datasets.