This article takes up the matter of contemporary threats to cities and urbanity, setting the problems cities face today against the background of the two categories of the resilient city and the city developing sustainably. The author describes and presents the evolution of the sustainable development concept as such, as well as the generational change in priorities that has taken place where the development of urbanised areas is concerned, given the way the concept has undergone a certain devaluation, in the light of its failure to achieve fulfi lment. The challenges cities face today require multi-faceted activity, in respect of increased inclusivity, robustness and resilience, and flexibility. This leaves today’s idea of the resilient city embracing old elements of the sustainable city, but also augmenting them in various ways.

The paper presents a novel implementation of a time-to-digital converter (TDC) in field-programmable gate array (FPGA) devices. The design employs FPGA digital signal processing (DSP) blocks and gives more than two-fold improvement in mean resolution in comparison with the common conversion method (carry chain-based time coding line). Two TDCs are presented and tested depending on DSP configuration. The converters were implemented in a Kintex-7 FPGA device manufactured by Xilinx in 28 nm CMOS process. The tests performed show possibilities to obtain mean resolution of 4.2 ps but measurement precision is limited to at most 15 ps mainly due to high conversion nonlinearities. The presented solution saves FPGA programmable logic blocks and has an advantage of a wider operation range when compared with a carry chain-based time coding line.

An efficient operation of a Ho:YLF laser pumped by a Tm-doped fibre laser is reported. The research in a continuous-wave (CW) operation was done for two crystals of the same 0.5 at.%Ho dopant concentration and with different lengths (3×3×30 mm³ and 3×3×50 mm³). For an output coupling transmission of 20% and a crystal length of 50 mm, the maximum CWoutput power of 38.9 W for 81.4 W of incident pump power, corresponding to the slope efficiency of 52.3% and optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of 47.8% (determined with respect to the incident pump power) was achieved. The highest opti- cal-to-optical conversion efficiency of 70.2% with respect to the absorbed pump power was obtained. The influence of a heat-sink cooling water temperature on theCWlaser performance was studied. For a Q-switched operation the pulse repe- tition frequency (PRF) was changed from 2 to 10 kHz. The maximum average output power of 34.1 W at the PRF of 10 kHz was obtained for a 50 mm holmium crystal length. For 2 kHz PRF and 71.9 W of incident pump power, pulse energies of 13.7 mJ with a 21 ns FWHM pulse width corresponding to 652 kW peak power were recorded.

W ciągu ostatniej dekady znacznie wzrosła ilość osób ze zdiagnozowanym „spektrum zaburzeń autystycznych”. Na podstawie szacunkowych danych można określić, iż w Polsce jest ponad. 30 tys. osób chorych na autyzm, w związku z powyższym liczba osób, których dotyczy ten problem wynosi ponad 100 tys. w Polsce. Rosnące zapotrzebowanie na obiekty i przestrzenie publiczne dostosowane dla potrzeb tej grupy osób wymaga usystematyzowania wiedzy zakresie projektowania architektonicznego uwzględniającego wymagania osób ze spectrum zabużeń autystycznych. W artykule przedstawiono podstawowe zasady kształtowania tzw. Pokoi wyciszeń” coraz częściej lokalizowanych w obiektach użyteczności publicznej.

The historian in the contemporary Poland has to fulfil not only the tasks on his workplace, commonly at a state university or in a research institute but he has also commitments which result from the traditional ethos of a man of science. In the public sphere he has to deal with historical politics created by the state and the political forces immediately, which cannot actually be influenced by the scientific circles in a relevant way. The political forces await from the historian the disclosure of such a “truth” which would interpret the existing reality as the possible space for creation of that what ought to be. The associational scientific movement as a traditionally autonomous body concerned with population of knowledge has in this situation the chance and the not utterly fulfilled task of defending of the historical truth, conditioned and determined with the contemporary theory of knowledge.

The avant-garde is synonymous with the concept of New Art, the breakthrough in art which took place in the visual arts during the first decades of the 20th century in Russia and then in the USSR. Its representatives, determined by the changes brought about by new technical inventions, especially in the sphere of urbanization, were convinced, like the Italian futurists, that they would be at the foreground of social change, new perceptions and shaping of culture. They believed in the new society which would rend apart the class structure of previous ages when its place would be taken by dynamism and creativity in the service of utilitarian and egalitarian solutions. They believed in their mission, the Promethean idea of a new better world, when man- kind would be liberated from all subjection. This social mood was developing in the whole of Europe, but was particularly strong in Russian society in the last twenty years before World War I. In fact, one could say it was a prelude to the war. From this sequence of events came the conviction held by represen- tatives of New Art about their prophetic message of freedom. The actual reality, the advance of totalitarianism, was a bitter epilogue for the whole formation, for almost all the great artists of the avant-garde. Nevertheless, though rejected and often dying before their time, their works remained, suffused with enthusiasm for the new gravitation – belief in the greatness of mankind – in the new, universal idea.

Finite mixture and Markov-switching models generalize and, therefore, nest specifications featuring only one component. While specifying priors in the general (mixture) model and its special (single-component) case, it may be desirable to ensure that the prior assumptions introduced into both structures are compatible in the sense that the prior distribution in the nested model amounts to the conditional prior in the mixture model under relevant parametric restriction. The study provides the rudiments of setting compatible priors in Bayesian univariate finite mixture and Markov-switching models. Once some primary results are delivered, we derive specific conditions for compatibility in the case of three types of continuous priors commonly engaged in Bayesian modeling: the normal, inverse gamma, and gamma distributions. Further, we study the consequences of introducing additional constraints into the mixture model’s prior on the conditions. Finally, the methodology is illustrated through a discussion of setting compatible priors for Markov-switching AR(2) models.

In the study we introduce an extension to a stochastic volatility in mean model (SV-M), allowing for discrete regime switches in the risk premium parameter. The logic behind the idea is that neglecting a possibly regimechanging nature of the relation between the current volatility (conditional standard deviation) and asset return within an ordinary SV-M specication may lead to spurious insignicance of the risk premium parameter (as being ‛averaged out’ over the regimes). Therefore, we allow the volatility-in-mean eect to switch over dierent regimes according to a discrete homogeneous two-state Markov chain. We treat the new specication within the Bayesian framework, which allows to fully account for the uncertainty of model parameters, latent conditional variances and hidden Markov chain state variables. Standard Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods, including the Gibbs sampler and the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm, are adapted to estimate the model and to obtain predictive densities of selected quantities. Presented methodology is applied to analyse series of the Warsaw Stock Exchange index (WIG) and its sectoral subindices. Although rare, once spotted the switching in-mean eect substantially enhances the model t to the data, as measured by the value of the marginal data density.

The study aims at a statistical verification of breaks in the risk-return relationship for shares of individual companies quoted at the Warsaw Stock Exchange. To this end a stochastic volatility model incorporating Markov switching in-mean effect (SV-MS-M) is employed. We argue that neglecting possible regime changes in the relation between expected return and volatility within an ordinary SV-M specification may lead to spurious insignificance of the risk premium parameter (as being ’averaged out’ over the regimes).Therefore, we allow the volatility-in-mean effect to switch over different regimes according to a discrete homogeneous two- or
three-state Markov chain. The model is handled within Bayesian framework, which allows to fully account for the uncertainty of
model parameters, latent conditional variances and state variables. MCMC methods, including the Gibbs sampler, Metropolis-Hastings algorithm and the forward-filtering-backward-sampling scheme are suitably adopted to obtain posterior densities of interest as well
as marginal data density. The latter allows for a formal model comparison in terms of the in-sample fit and, thereby, inference on the
’adequate’ number of the risk premium regime

The author of this essay deals with the specificity of sociology in Poland, reaching for the book of Antoni Sułek A Mirror on the High Road. Chapters from the History of Social Research in Poland (2019). Chapters of this book taken as a set constitute a review of the key issues that Polish sociologists strived to tackle in the 20th century. For approximately half of the book (6 chapters) Sułek focuses on issues of Polish sociology from the mid-1950s to the turn of the 1990s: the first is the change of theoretical and methodological paradigms in Polish sociology in the second half of the 20th century; the second is the successes of Polish sociology, but also its weaknesses—the author devoted much space to the theoretical limitations that prevented sociologists from predicting the formation of Solidarity in 1980. The third topic is the historical analysis of surveys conducted in the last decade of communism—their reliability as well as social and political functions. Finally, Sułek’s vision of socially-involved sociology appears. The strength of such sociology lies in its methodology, with which specific phenomena can be correctly defined, impartially analysed, and systematically investigated. And this in turn enables evidence-based debate and policy.

The Polish education system lags behind in terms of the number of computers in schools, access to the Internet, and teachers' computer skills. New programs are now being implemented to better prepare young people for the modern job market.

Breath analysis has attracted human beings for centuries. It was one of the simplest methods to detect various diseases by using human smell sense only. Advances in technology enable to use more reliable and standardized methods, based on different gas sensing systems. Breath analysis requires the detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) of the concentrations below individual ppm (parts per million). Therefore, advanced detection methods have been proposed. Some of these methods use expensive and bulky equipment (e.g. optical sensors, mass spectrometry –MS), and require time-consuming analysis. Less accurate, but much cheaper, are resistive gas sensors. These sensors use porous materials and adsorptiondesorption processes, determining their physical parameters.We consider the problems of applying resistive gas sensors to breath analysis. Recent advances were underlined, showing that these economical gas sensors can be efficiently employed to analyse breath samples. General problems of applying resistive gas sensors are considered and illustrated with examples, predominantly related to commercial sensors and their long-term performance. A setup for collection of breath samples is considered and presented to point out the crucial parts and problematic issues.

Unikatowy układ urbanistyczny miasta Barcelona położonego w Hiszpanii stwarza możliwości nieustannej adaptacji obecnej tkanki miejskiej w taki sposób aby sprostać oczekiwaniom mieszkańców. Ciągła ewolucja funkcjonalna przestrzeni zawartych pomiędzy modularnym układem kamienic mieszkalnych stwarza wyzwania dla projektantów. Na przykładzie jednego z powtarzających się skrzyżowań przeanalizowano przeznaczenie funkcjonalne oraz obecne jego zagospodarowanie włącznie z przestrzenią publiczną, ruchem samochodowym, pieszym oraz rowerowym. Pierwotny plan Ildefons’a Cerda’y jest systematycznie przekształcany w celu jeszcze lepszego zagospodarowania przestrzeni miejskich.

Celem artykułu jest opis i ocena roli debaty akademickiej w sytuacji poważnego konfl iktu społeczno – kulturowego. Przedmiotem analiz jest wybrany przypadek – reakcje środowiska akademickiego w Polsce na kryzys migracyjny oraz kontrowersje związane z przyjęciem uchodźców. Spór o uchodźców obejmuje zarówno kwestie religijne, etyczne, społeczno-kulturowe, psychologiczne, polityczne, jak i ekonomiczne. Jest więc odpowiednim polem analizy roli szkół wyższych i badaczy reprezentujących różne dyscypliny w kształtowaniu sfery publicznej. Debatą akademicką nazywamy tutaj wymianę opinii podczas zgromadzeń z udziałem osób reprezentujących uczelnie i ośrodki badawcze. Od jesieni 2015 roku toczy się w Polsce dyskusja na temat kryzysu migracyjnego i przyjęcia uchodźców. Wiele wskazuje na to, że ta kwestia będzie już stałym tematem dyskursu publicznego. Przedmiotem naszego zainteresowania były te wydarzenia, które miały charakter akademicki (konferencje, seminaria, dyskusje organizowane przez ośrodki akademickie) lub debaty z udziałem osób reprezentujących środowiska akademickie. Analizie poddaliśmy tylko treści tych debat, których tematem zasadniczym był kryzys migracyjny. Analiza polegała na poszukiwaniu następujących informacji: (1) Kto był organizatorem i uczestnikiem debat oraz według jakich reguł one przebiegały? (2) Jakie postulaty w odniesieniu do decydentów przekazują przedstawiciele środowiska akademickiego? (3) W jakim stopniu i zakresie ta debata wpływa na dyskurs polityczny i medialny?

The scope of the paper refers to long- and medium-run trends of labour supply in Poland. The main purpose is to determine current trends in the labour supply and its projections till the year 2050. In the theoretical part of the paper determinants of labour supply are considered. The projections are based on the population forecasts till 2050 made by the Central Statistical Office of Poland (CSO) and by the authors’ own simulations. Several variants of upper limit of working age and activity rates are taken into account. The population forecasts by the CSO indicate it will occur big decrease of working age population till 2050. The biggest decrease will refer to the group of working age 18–59/64 years and the lowest decrease in the age group 18–66 years. The analysis shows that the declines in labour supply in the years 2020–2050 will occur in all variants of working age population, the biggest decline in the variant assuming the age group 18–59/64 and the smallest decline – in the group 15–74 years. Retirement age is of big importance for the size of labour supply. This is why it is recommended to encourage older people to prolong their economic activity. It is also necessary to increase activity rates in the working age population.