The incidence of winter wheat stem base diseases: Fusarium foot rot (Fusarium spp.), eyespot (Ramulispora herpotrichoides), sharp eyespot (Rhizoctonia spp.) and take-all (Gaeumannomyces graminis) in the years 1999–2003 was assessed in this study. Previous crops were barley and oilseed rape. Eyespot occurred on the greatest percentage of plants throughout the whole period of the study. In 2000–2003 a deficiency of rainfall was observed, especially at the time of increased water requirements of plants.

The Kirchhoff-law-Johnson-noise (KLJN) secure key exchange scheme offers unconditional security, however it can approach the perfect security limit only in the case when the practical system’s parameters approach the ideal behavior of its core circuitry. In the case of non-ideal features, non-zero information leak is present. The study of such leaks is important for a proper design of practical KLJN systems and their privacy amplifications in order to eliminate these problems.

The study presented in this paper concerned the possibility to apply a heat treatment process to ductile cast-iron thin-walled castings in order to remove excessive quantities of pearlite and eutectic cementite precipitates and thus meet the customer’s requirements. After determining the rates of heating a casting up to and cooling down from 900°C feasible in the used production heat treatment furnace (vh = 300°C/h and vc = 200°C/h, respectively), dilatometric tests were carried out to evaluate temperatures Tgr, TAc1start, TAc1end, TAr1start, and TAr1end. The newly acquired knowledge was the base on which conditions for a single-step ferritizing heat treatment securing disintegration of pearlite were developed as well as those of a two-step ferritization process guaranteeing complete disintegration of cementite and arriving at the required ferrite and pearlite content. A purely ferritic matrix and hardness of 119 HB was secured by the treatment scheme: 920°C for 2 hours / vc = 60°C/h / 720°C for 4 hours. A matrix containing 20–45% of pearlite and hardness of 180–182 HB was obtained by applying: 920°C for 2 hours or 4 hours / vc = 200°C/h to 650°C / ambient air.

The two bathydraconid species, Gymnodraco acuticeps and Cygnodraco mawsoni, caught in the Ross Sea (Antarctic summer 2002) were examined for internal parasites. All specimens (four G. acuticeps and one C. mawsoni) were infected. G. acuticeps harboured larval Cestoda (bilocular tetraphyllidean cercoids, diphyllobothriid plerocercoids) and Nematoda (Contracaecum spp.), acanthocephalan cystacanths and adult helminths (three species of Digenea and one species of Nematoda). Two specimens of C. mawsoni (including data from one additional specimen examined earlier) were infected by larval Cestoda (bilocular cercoid) and Nematoda (Contracaecum spp.) and adult helminths (three species of Digenea and one species of Nematoda). The present data are compared and discussed with the relevant literature data.

The Ag₈SnSe₆ argyrodite compound was synthesized by the direct melting of the elementary Ag, Sn and Se high purity grade stoichiometric mixture in a sealed silica ampoule. The prepared polycrystalline material was characterized by the X-ray diffraction (XRD), visible (VIS) and near-infrared (NIR) reflection and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. XRD showed that the Ag₈SnSe₆ crystallizes in orthorhombic structure, Pmn2₁ space group with lattice parameters: а = 7.89052(6) Å, b = 7.78976(6) Å, c = 11.02717(8) Å. Photoluminescence spectra of the Ag₈SnSe₆ polycrystalline wafer show two bands at 1675 nm and 1460 nm. Absorption edge position estimated from optical reflectance spectra is located in the 1413–1540 nm wavelength range.