These remarks are to be considered as a voice in the discussion not only on the historical role of the Catholic Church in culture but also on mistakes committed by its Magisterium of the Catholic Church such as absolutism, globalism, and intolerance. Certainly it can be called otherwise. The key issue is however at how we call it but if we consider it as major mistakes and if yes if we seek for such an explanation that will actually is an excuse. This is the case in the example of often recalled in these remarks “The history of the Catholic Church” by Marian Banaszak. I do represent another view than this author. Also not just than Banaszak himself but other authors as well who blame for the failures of Catholicism (including the decline of its decisive social role) all those but not the ones who make the key decisions within the Church.

The problem of outlying observations is very well-known in the surveying data processing. Outliers might have several sources, different magnitudes, and shares within the whole observation set. It means that it is not possible to propose one universal method to deal with such observations. There are two general approaches in such a context: data cleaning or robust estimation. For example, the robust M-estimation has found many practical applications. However, there are other options, such as R-estimation or the absolute M _split estimation. The latter method was created to be less sensitive to outliers than the squared M _split estimation (the basic variant of Msplit estimation). From the theoretical point of view, the absolute M _split estimation cannot be classified as a robust method; however, it was proved that it could be used in such a context under certain conditions. The paper presents the primary comparison between that method and a conventional robust M-estimation. The results show that the absolute M _split estimation predominates over the classical methods, especially when the percentage of outliers is high. Thus, that method might be used to process LiDAR data, including mismeasured points. Processing synthetic data from terrestrial laser scanning or airborne laser scanning confirms that the absolute M _{split / estimation can deal with outliers sufficiently.}

M _split estimation is a novel method developed to process observation sets that include two (or more) observation aggregations. The main objective of the method is to estimate the location parameters of each aggregation without any preliminary assumption concerning the division of the observation set into respective subsets. Up to now, two different variants of M _split estimation have been derived. The first and basic variant is the squared M _split estimation, which can be derived from the assumption about the normal distribution of observations. The second variant is the absolute M _split estimation, which generally refers to the least absolute deviation method. The main objective of the paper is to compare both variants of M _split estimation by showing similarities and differences between the methods. The main dissimilarity stems from the different influence functions, making the absolute M _split estimation less sensitive to gross errors of moderate magnitude. The empirical analyses presented confirm that conclusion and show that the accuracy of the methods is similar, in general. The absolute M _split estimation is more accurate than the squared M _split estimation for less accurate observations. In contrast, the squared M _split estimation is more accurate when the number of observations in aggregations differs much. Concerning all advantages and disadvantages of M _split estimation variants, we recommend using the absolute M _split estimation in most geodetic applications.

The article focuses on the problem of possible relations of a work of art to the Absolute Being. The essence of the discussed issue can be put as a question: Is it possible, without mentioning God explicitly, to declare that a piece of art, as a carrier of beauty, indicates His presence? Relating to a number of Roman Ingarden’s significant statements that refer to metaphysical experience and the status of metaphysical qualities, and drawing upon Ingarden’s existential and ontological claims, the article presents metaphysical quality as a manifestation of existential dependence. This interpretation invokes the context of the primary being, and by extension, of the Absolute Being. If a work of art (or to be more precise, its concretization) is a carrier of aesthetic beauty through which a qualitative and metaphysical atmosphere emerges (and discloses its metaphysical quality) and if (as it is postulated in the interpretation suggested) it refers to the Absolute, then the thesis that beauty leads to God has been vindicated.

The concept of the existence of the absolute being can be characterized by four criteria which correspond to four existential aspects of the ultimate reality. In volume one of the Controversy over the Existence of the World Roman Ingarden argues that the absolute being is to be characterized as self-sustained, primary, self‑activated and independent. When some general remarks are put aside, the article focuses on arguments that have been adduced by the author in support of three claims. (1) Ingarden accepts the existence of the absolute being and flanks it by additional seven kinds of relative beings. The author finds the abundance supernumerary in the material world. (2) No material (or physical) object possesses properties (or existential moments) that belong to the absolute being. (3) There are fundamental reasons which exclude the possibility that the physical world (the manifold of all material objects) can be identified with the absolute being (absolute existence).

Józef Andrzej Gierowski’s academic profile is presented in the light of his interest in the problems of universal history in relation to events, but above all to phenomena which allow for a better knowledge and understanding of the mentality of the people of the time, their activities and their consequences. Gierowski’s studies on the history of Europe were closely linked to the history of the Polish‑Lithuanian Commonwealth (especially the period of the Saxon Wettin dynasty on the Polish throne), highlighting its international position and associations, and the resulting foreign policy of its rulers. Among the questions raised, there was no shortage of issues relating to the culture and ideology of the Baroque and the Enlightenment and, of primary interest to the researcher, the problem‑laden, not fully deciphered transition period between the two currents.
The second ‘part’ of the article emphasises Józef Andrzej Gierowski’s understanding of Europe as a certain whole, encompassing not only political history, social or economic affairs, but also cultural patterns and phenomena to which he was particularly sensitive.

Stefan Żeromski’s historical novel Popioły [Ashes] (1904) is usually interpreted as a narrative about the Napoleonic wars, particularly about Napoleon’s campaign in Spain. The paper argues that the fast-moving war plot conceals the philosophical question to which Żeromski tried to provide an answer: did the Austrian empire represent a superior way of organizing human society, or was the liberty of the Polish “Sarmatian” republic a more appropriate answer to the question of how to live? The issue is indirectly contested by virtually all characters. It comes to a head in the relationship between two seemingly secondary characters, the Austrian tax collector Hibl and the Polish landowner Nardzewski. The former resembles William Faulkner’s Flem Snopes; the latter, the noble families of the Sartorises defeated in the Civil War. Like in Faulkner’s novels, there is an unmistakable suggestion of gloria victis in Żeromski’s opus. Unlike Faulkner, Żeromski brings to bear the issue of white-on-white colonialism in Europe, and the paper’s author suggests that the eighteenth-century seizure of parts of Poland by Europe’s three continental empires was an instance of European colonialism that delayed the development of non-Germanic Central Europe and eventually brought about twentieth-century European wars.

The positivity and absolute stability of a class of nonlinear continuous-time and discretetime systems are addressed. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the positivity of this class of nonlinear systems are established. Sufficient conditions for the absolute stability of this class of nonlinear systems are also given.

The absolute positions of shearers on advancing coal faces are requisite for providing references for adaptive mining combined with geological models. Common coalmine localization techniques (e.g. UWB, INS, etc.) are not fully applicable to adaptive mining due to their drifting error or the messy environment. The gyro robotic total station (RTS) is versatile and precise in measuring coordinates in coal mines, while its conventional usage is of low automation and poor timeliness, impeding its application on mining faces. This article proposed an automated gyro RTS system for real-time absolute positioning on fully mechanised coal faces. The measuring process was changed to fit mining requirements, and a new state-transferring model was used to automate it. Programs were developed and installed in available instruments, forming a prototype. Field experiments were carried out on a simulative working face, verifying the system’s accuracy and applicability. Results show that the relative positioning error is better than 2.6143×10-4, which meets the demand of advancing faces. The error of the gyro is estimated at 55.5187”, justifying its nominal indicators. To sum up, the automated gyro RTS system proposed in this paper can offer real-time and accurate absolute positions of equipment on working faces, supporting adaptive mining combined with the geological model.

On the centenary of the birth of St. John Paul II, this article reflects on his legacy for moral theology by examining the enduring relevance of his 1993 Encyclical Veritatis Splendor. Against what some authors call the new morality, this papal document holds up the classical notion of morality as a realm in which we encounter the absolute, to the point that one may even be called upon to lay down one’s life in martyrdom. As a figure of classical morality, the essay presents Antigone, who risked her life to honor her dead brother’s body. A different woman serves as a figure of the new morality: Mrs. Bergmeier, who is praised by some of the proponents of this approach for having committed “sacrificial” adultery in order to be reunited with her family. Examining the differences between these two accounts, the paper recalls the classical distinction between choice and intention. It is argued that the new morality has forgotten about the moment of choice, subsuming it entirely under the intention. In its teaching on the moral object and intrinsically evil acts, Veritatis Splendor defends the basic moral experience that we have a choice and that our choices matter.

The goal of paper is the development and demonstration of efficiency of algorithm for form finding of a slack cable notwithstanding of the initial position chosen. This algorithm is based on product of two sets of coefficients, which restrict the rate of looking for cable geometry changes at each iteration. The first set restricts the maximum allowable change of absolute values of positions, angles and axial forces. The second set takes into account whether the process is the converging one (the signs of maximal change of parameters remain the same), so that it increases the allowable changes; or it is a diverging one, so that these changes are discarded. The proposed procedure is applied to two different methods of simple slack cable calculation under a number of concentrated forces. The first one is a typical finite element method, with the cable considered as consisting of number of straight elements, with unknown positions of their ends, and it is essentially an absolute coordinate method. The second method is a typical Irvine’s like analytical solution, which presents only two unknowns at the initial point of the cable; due to the peculiarity of implementation it is named here a shooting method. Convergence process is investigated for both solutions for arbitrary chosen, even very illogical initial positions for the ACM, and for angle and force at the left end for SM as well. Even if both methods provide the same correct convergent results, it is found that the ACM requires a much lower number of iterations.

In this article, the imperial idea and civilising missions in the Habsburg Monarchy, mainly of the nineteenth century, are refracted through the prism of the legacy of enlightened absolutism. The article tries to dispel mythologies about its demise around 1800, and about those who could subscribe to its programme throughout the nineteenth century. It questions templates of national history writing which too unanimously connect the Enlightenment to the origins of the various national revivals of the early nineteenth century, and discusses concrete examples of enlightened absolutism’s civilising impulses, among them law, Roman imperial patriotism, and the Catholic religion.

A graph G is equitably k-colorable if its vertices can be partitioned into k independent sets in such a way that the number of vertices in any two sets differ by at most one. The smallest integer k for which such a coloring exists is known as the equitable chromatic number of G and it is denoted by x=( G). In this paper the problem of determining the value of equitable chromatic number for multicoronas of cubic graphs G◦ ^lH is studied. The problem of ordinary coloring of multicoronas of cubic graphs is solvable in polynomial time. The complexity of equitable coloring problem is an open question for these graphs. We provide some polynomially solvable cases of cubical multicoronas and give simple linear time algorithms for equitable coloring of such graphs which use at most x=( G◦ ^lH) + 1 colors in the remaining cases.

The ethics of ‘theistic absolute morality’ (TAM), as any other ethical theory, must offer a definition of good, describe the connection between good and duty, and provide an effective guidance to human conduct. In the ethics of TAM we find, in my rendering of its claims, an irremediably unsuccessful definition of good, permanently loose connection between moral value and moral duty, and irreparably limited practical efficacy. It is not surprising that it has to be so, as it is a common condition of all ethical systems. The TAM ethics suffers, however, additionally from a unique conceptual trouble, but that is a story I have told elsewhere.

Establishing the proper values of controller parameters is the most important thing to design in active queue management (AQM) for achieving excellent performance in handling network congestion. For example, the first well known AQM, the random early detection (RED) method, has a lack of proper parameter values to perform under most the network conditions. This paper applies a Nelder-Mead simplex method based on the integral of time-weighted absolute error (ITAE) for a proportional integral (PI) controller using active queue management (AQM). A TCP flow and PI AQM system were analyzed with a control theory approach. A numerical optimization algorithm based on the ITAE index was run with Matlab/Simulink tools to find the controller parameters with PI tuned by Hollot (PI) as initial parameter input. Compared with PI and PI tuned by Ustebay (PIU) via experimental simulation in Network Simulator Version 2 (NS2) in five scenario network conditions, our proposed method was more robust. It provided stable performance to handle congestion in a dynamic network.

Bogusław Wolniewicz’s book Things and facts, although it is essentially devoted to the interpretation of the Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, also has a substantive layer in which Wolniewicz raises very important problems in the fields of methodology, semiotics and metaphysics, such as: (a) the problem of clarity of philosophical texts and its relation to simplicity and brevity, as well as to thoroughness and suggestiveness; (b) the problem of semantic correlation types; (c) the problem of analysis, interpretation and definition; (d) the problems of modality, negative facts, absolute monism and coherentionism; (e) the problem of abstraction and moral-praxeological antinomy. The author of the paper reconstructs Wolniewicz’s views on these matters.