Currently, a worldwide dynamic rise of interest in using soil as a construction material can be observed. This trend is evident in the rapid rise of the amount of standards that deal with soil techniques. In 2012 the number of standards was larger by one third than five years prior. To create a full standardization of the rammed earth technique it is necessary to take into account the diversity of used soil and stabilizing additives. The proportion of the components, the process of element production and the research methods must also be made uniform. The article describes the results of research on the compressive strength of rammed earth samples that differed from each other with regards to the type of loam used for the mixture and the amount of the stabilizer. The stabilizer used was Portland cement CEM I 42.5R. The research and the analysis of the results were based on foreign publications, the New Zealand standard NZS 4298:1998, the American Standard NMAC14.7.4 and archival Polish Standards from the 1960’s that dealt with earth material.

The presence of the chunky graphite is unwanted in the cast iron with the spheroidal graphite for this significantly lowers the properties of

the ductile iron. This shape of the graphite is formed as the result of the slow cooling rate of the castings with large thermal point and also

due to the presence of the elements which suppress the formation of the spheroidal graphite and support formation of the chunky graphite.

The spheroidal graphite present in the ductile iron assures the excellent mechanical properties, while the chunky graphite significantly

reduces those properties of the ductile iron. Therefore it is of importance to assume conditions under which prevented is the formation of

the chunky graphite. The casts were carried out under the conditions of the regular operation of the foundry and tested were various types

of modifiers and inoculators and also pre-inoculators containing the elements suppressing the formation of the chunky graphite (Al, Sb a

Ba). Applied were also the chromium breaker core to suppress the formation chunky graphite which was present in the structure in the

places after the feeders elimination. As whole, executed were eight casts with various types of the modifiers and inoculators.

DNA sequencing remains one of the most important problems in molecular and computational biology. One of the methods used for this purpose is sequencing by hybridization. In this approach usually DNA chips composed of a full library of oligonucleotides of a given length are used, but in principle it is possible to use another types of chips. Isothermic DNA chips, being one of them, when used for sequencing may reduce hybridization error rate. However, it was not clear if a number of errors following from subsequence repetitions is also reduced in this case. In this paper a method for estimating resolving power of isothermic DNA chips is described which allows for a comparison of such chips and the classical ones. The analysis of the resolving power shows that the probability of sequencing errors caused by subsequence repetitions is greater in the case of isothermic chips in comparison to their classical counterparts of a similar cardinality. This result suggests that isothermic chips should be chosen carefully since in some cases they may not give better results than the classical ones.

Neutralisation of the terrorist explosive devices is a risky task. Such tasks may be carried out by robots in order to protect human life. The article describes chosen design problems concerning the new neutralisation and assisting robot SMR-100 Expert. The robot was to be designed for the use in confined spaces, particularly inside the air-crafts, buses and rail cars. In order to achieve this ambitious plan, new advanced technological designing tools had to be applied. A number of interesting design issues were approached. The successful development of the prototype robot Expert in Poland resulted in the creation of the first intervention robot in the world able to perform all necessary anti-terrorist tasks inside the passenger planes.

In this paper the capacity of non-uniform sampling rate conversion techniques, involving different interpolation methods, aimed at wow defect reduction, is examined. Involved are: linear interpolation, four polynomial-based interpolation methods and the windowed sincbased method. The examined polynomial methods are: Lagrange interpolation, polynomial fitting with additional noise reduction, Hermitan and Spline. The performance of an artificially distorted audio signal, restored using non-uniform resampling, is evaluated on the basis of standard audio defect measurement criteria and compared for all of the aforementioned interpolation methods. The chosen defect descriptors are: total harmonic distortion, total harmonic distortion plus noise and signal to noise ratio.