This paper investigates the thermal and mechanical properties of a composite made from a combination of 2063-epoxy resin and three different braided carbon-fiber fabric reinforcements. These fibres consist of HTS carbon, HTS carbon braided with nickel coated carbon and HTS carbon braided with nickel coated copper, respectively. The composites were manufactured through resin transfer molding (RTM) route. The thermal diffusivity of carbon fibers composites was measured at different temperature by using a flash method. The transverse and planar thermal conductivities were determined by measuring the specific heat, density and thermal diffusivities, respectively. The current research highlights the influence of adding nickel coated carbon and nickel-plated copper wires on the braided composites. The evaluation shows that the HTS carbon braided manufactured with nickel-plated copper wires presents higher in-plane thermal conductivity (in direction parallel of the fibres) when comparing to HTS carbon and HTS carbon braided manufactured with nickel coated carbon. The thermal conductivity benefits of those composite were achieved at the expenses of lower mechanical properties of braided composites investigated.

Professor Piotr Pierański, an outstanding Polish physicists, excellent researcher and brilliant lecturer, passed away on the 23rd February 2018. The article quotes some recollections of his numerous friends and coworkers wordwide.

The subject of this article is the fragmentary silver plate of a gilded silver sheet braid ornament decorated with palmette motifs, which was deposited in the storage of the Gorgippia Archaeological Museum (Krasnodar Krai, Russia) in 2015, together with several other finds. The finds had been discovered at a site named Andreyevskaya Shhel, located a few kilometres south-east of the town, at the north-western hill area of the Caucasus. Among the artefacts deposited in the storage in 2015, there were other finds related to the 9–10th centuries (e.g. silver plate of a sabretache, gilded bronze belt mounts, bronze strap end, sabre, bow case or sabretache mount, fingering, etc). The braid ornament, with many analogies in the Carpathian Basin, could have reached the North Caucasian region by means of long-distance trade. This hypothesis is sustained by the considerable dirham-finds in the Carpathian Basin, which indicate the integration of this region – and of early Hungarian commerce as a whole – into the Eastern, Muslim trade network.