LFA Payments as an Instrument for Preventing the Depopulation of Rural Areas in Poland. Farms situated in the less favoured areas (LFA) are faced with difficulties of a landform, poor quality soil, small areas of agricultural land, a low production scale, low labour productivity, depopulation, a change in the demographic structure, defeminisation, lack of successors and a negative balance of migration. These social difficulties significantly affect the operation of agricultural holdings. Aid in the form of payments seems to be justified as the temporary prevention from the escalation of these problems. The main objective of the LFA activity under the Rural Areas Development Programme 2007-2013 was to provide equal opportunities for the development of farms located in the areas with environmental conditions unfavourable for farming. These payments are the compensation for an income loss due to environmental difficulties and they are expected to counteract the depopulation of rural areas. The research sought to determine the influence of the LFA payments on a reduction of depopulation in rural areas in Poland in the years 2007-2013. The research showed that the subsidies limited the population outflow from rural areas, i.e. they increased the probability of maintaining farms.

The Low Temperature Joining Technique (LTJT) using silver compounds enables to significantly increase the thermal conductivity between joined elements, which is much higher than for soldered joints. However, it also makes difficult to measure the thermal conductivity of the joint. The Laser Flash Analysis (LFA) is a non-intrusive method of measuring the temperature rise of one surface of a specimen after excitation with a laser pulse of its other surface. The main limitation of the LFA method is its standard computer software, which assumes the dimensions of a bonded component to be similar to those of the substrate, because it uses the standard Parker’s formula dedicated for one-dimensional heat flow. In the paper a special design of measured specimen was proposed, consisting of two copper plates of different size joined with the sintered silver layer. It was shown that heat properties of these specimens can also be measured after modifying the LFA method. The authors adapted these specimens by masking the false heat signal sourced from the uncovered plate area. Another adaptation was introducing a correcting factor of the heat travel distance, which was calculated with heat-flow simulations and placed into the Parker’s formula. The heat-flow simulated data were compared with the real LFA measurement results, which enabled estimation of the joint properties, e.g. its porosity.