They are linked to many issues in the economic, political, and social sciences. Their role in the changing world cannot be overestimated. Their significance, though unlikely to wane, will nonetheless be changing. What are “public goods” and what is their future?

Drought: the very word instills dread, conjuring

up images of dried-up wells, barren earth, and – perhaps worse still – empty taps and long lines to access wells. Is Poland likely to experience significant water shortages?

We examine how the Polish countryside is changing, in conversation with Prof. Monika Stanny and Prof. Andrzej Rosner from the PAS Institute of Rural and Agricultural Development, authors of the Report on Rural Development Monitoring.

We talk about the notion of race with Prof. Ewa Ziętkiewicz, MD from the PAS Institute of Human Genetics in Poznań, in light of the “regional continuity” vs. “recent common ancestor” theories.

Kabbalah and architecture, dealing with quite different domains, seem to have nothing in common. And yet they often intertwine, interact, and complement one another, sometimes leading to unexpected conclusions.

We talk to Prof. Andrzej Górski from the Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy about what is going wrong with antibiotics and whether they might one day be replaced with bacteriophages.

Language interprets the world, shows us what’s going on in people’s minds, and it can affect how they behave – says Dr. Monika Łaszkiewicz from Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (UMCS) in Lublin.

We talked to Prof. Elżbieta Frąckowiak, Vice President of the Polish Academy of Sciences, about relative sizes of “fishes” and “ponds” and the height of glass ceilings in the research world.

The Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences: Technical Sciences (Bull.Pol. Ac.: Tech.) is published bimonthly by the Division IV Engineering Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, since the beginning of the existence of the PAS in 1952. The journal is peer‐reviewed and is published both in printed and electronic form. It is established for the publication of original high quality papers from multidisciplinary Engineering sciences with the following topics preferred: Artificial and Computational Intelligence, Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology, Civil Engineering, Control, Informatics and Robotics, Electronics, Telecommunication and Optoelectronics, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Thermodynamics, Material Science and Nanotechnology, Power Systems and Power Electronics.

Journal Metrics: JCR Impact Factor 2018: 1.361, 5 Year Impact Factor: 1.323, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 2017: 0.319, Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 2017: 1.005, CiteScore 2017: 1.27, The Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education 2017: 25 points.

Abbreviations/Acronym: Journal citation: Bull. Pol. Ac.: Tech., ISO: Bull. Pol. Acad. Sci.-Tech. Sci., JCR Abbrev: B POL ACAD SCI-TECH Acronym in the Editorial System: BPASTS.

Every day they stroke the sand to hear the stories of the Chodelka River Valley. And the stories are plentiful.

I have no doubt that women will soon enter science in a big way, just as they have entered other fields.

Designer drugs cause irreversible changes in the brain and put those who take them at an increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. They can also affect one’s genetic material, says Prof. Krystyna Gołembiowska from the PAS Institute of Pharmacology.

Water reaches a river in the form of surface runoff (precipitation that has not seeped into the ground) or underground outflow (groundwater). Both of these factors affect the erosion and river deposition processes that shape the river valley. Understanding them is crucial for effective river management.

Replacing silicon with diamond may significantly reduce energy losses in electronic devices, according to Dr. Michał Pomorski from the CEA-LIST Diamond Sensors Laboratory in France.

Horns, teeth, claws, beaks… Given this mighty arsenal it’s a wonder there isn’t more physical conflict in the animal world, such as among birds.

As science advances, there is an ever-widening crisis of public confidence in scientists. They are becoming increasingly specialized, whereas lowly laymen are understanding less and less and growing increasingly afraid.

It’s difficult to imagine a more curious continent: Antarctica, once very austere and inhospitable, is now becoming greener as a result of climate change.

Prof. Edward Nęcka, a cognitive psychologist from the Jagiellonian University and Vice-President of the Polish Academy of Sciences, talks about cognitive misers, memory traps, and confusion in a myriad of new technologies.

The Long March-2F rocket was launched on 15 September 2016 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in China, carrying the Tiangong-2 space laboratory. The laboratory is fitted with the detector of the POLAR experiment, which was prepared jointly with Polish scientists.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of exogenous fiscal policies on the Indonesian main macroeconomic indicators and the implications on different institutions and sectors in the economy using the static Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) analysis. Three simulations are conducted in order to analyze the expansion of exogenous public spending. The results revealed that the increase of government expenditure on goods under the adjusted government deficit and balance of payment generates the highest improvement on Indonesian GDP but resulting an increase in government deficit. In contrast, under financing scheme of either lowering subsidy rates across activities or increasing the ad valorem tax rates would result in lower improvement on Indonesian GDP. This is because it directly escalates the cost of production and thus increases the prices of final goods purchased by the households which result in a fall in their real consumption and in turn eventually could lead to a decrease in national income.

A Bayesian stochastic volatility model with a leverage effect, normal errors and jump component with the double exponential distribution of a jump value is proposed. The ready to use Gibbs sampler is presented, which enables one to conduct statistical inference. In the empirical study, the SVLEDEJ model is applied to model logarithmic growth rates of one month forward gas prices. The results reveal an important role of both jump and stochastic volatility components.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the welfare consequences of the processes of liberalisation of trade between asymmetric states in terms of the various size sand effectiveness of their economies and the type of international exchange. These characteristics ultimately define the distribution of benefits from the liberalisation of international trade. When it is inter-industry or vertical intra-industry and barriers in trade are smaller than the difference in the effectiveness of the economies, the trade liberalisation undoubtedly contributes to improved social welfare, regardless of the level of effectiveness and the size of the economy. In the situation, however, of horizontal intra-industry trade, changes in the welfares of asymmetric countries, caused by their progressing trade liberalisation, depend on the sizes and effectiveness of their economies. The welfare of society in either a very big and ineffective or in a small and very ineffective country could even decrease in such a situation. This is the case when the increase in consumers’ surplus is not sufficient to compensate for the decreasing profits of firms.

The Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences: Technical Sciences (Bull.Pol. Ac.: Tech.) is published bimonthly by the Division IV Engineering Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, since the beginning of the existence of the PAS in 1952. The journal is peer‐reviewed and is published both in printed and electronic form. It is established for the publication of original high quality papers from multidisciplinary Engineering sciences with the following topics preferred: Artificial and Computational Intelligence, Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology, Civil Engineering, Control, Informatics and Robotics, Electronics, Telecommunication and Optoelectronics, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Thermodynamics, Material Science and Nanotechnology, Power Systems and Power Electronics.

Journal Metrics: JCR Impact Factor 2018: 1.361, 5 Year Impact Factor: 1.323, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 2017: 0.319, Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 2017: 1.005, CiteScore 2017: 1.27, The Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education 2017: 25 points.

Abbreviations/Acronym: Journal citation: Bull. Pol. Ac.: Tech., ISO: Bull. Pol. Acad. Sci.-Tech. Sci., JCR Abbrev: B POL ACAD SCI-TECH Acronym in the Editorial System: BPASTS.