In the 21th century we can observe a return to Marx, particularly in the circles of New Left. A critical approach to the legacy of Karl Marx implies a readiness to revise or even reject the false or no longer valid propositions of Marx in order to be able to confront his legacy with the current state of contemporary science. Some of his views have already been definitely rejected (particularly the theory of revolution and of the dictatorship of proletariat). But a part of his contribution remains valid: (1) the philosophy of praxis, i.e. a theory oriented toward a social change, and (2) the sociological theory that interprets politics in terms of class interests.

Two formal types of models of living processes, especially evolutionary ones, may be distinguished: the well-known mathematical type and the less-known logical one. The latter applies the terms “class” or “set”; both the terms are understood either in a collective sense (in mereology) or in a distributive sense (in set theory). These formal terms may be used among others to such organic multiplicities as populations or species of organisms, and to organic constituents (molecules, cells, organs) of living organism. Collective concepts refer to objects existing in nature, whereas distributive concepts refer to the linguistic and research constructions of models of natural objects, developed to cognitively grasp natural regularities.

When the distribution of water quality samples is roughly balanced, the Bayesian criterion model of water-inrush source generally can obtain relatively accurate results of water-inrush source identification. However, it is often difficult to achieve desired classification results when training samples are imbalanced. Sample imbalance is common in the source identification of mine water-inrush. Therefore, we propose a three-dimensional (3D) spatial resampling method based on rare water quality samples, which achieves the balance of water quality samples. Based on the virtual water sample points distributed by the 3D grid, the method uses the 3D Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) method to interpolate the groundwater ion concentration of the virtual water samples to achieve oversampling of rare water samples. Case study in Gubei Coal Mine shows that the method improves overall discriminant accuracy of the Bayesian criterion model by 5.26%, from 85.26% to 90.69%. In particular, the discriminative precision of the rare class is improved from 0% to 83.33%, which indicates that the method can improve the discriminant accuracy of the rare class to large extent. In addition, this method increases the Kappa coefficient of the model by 19.92%, from 52.26% to 72.19%, increasing the degree of consistency from “general” to “significant”. Our research is of significance to enriching and improving the theory of prevention and treatment of mine water damage.

The energy obtained from biomass in the global balance of energy carriers is the largest source among all RES. It should be borne in mind that the share of biomass as an energy carrier in the total balance is as much as 14%. The basic sources of renewable energy used in Poland are the wind power industry and biomass. Organic chemical compounds are the source of chemical energy for biomass. The biomass can be used in a solid form (wood, straw) or after being converted to liquid (alcohol, bio-oil) or gas (biogas) form.

Pellets, meaning, the type of fuel of natural origin created from biomass compressed under high pressure without the participation of any chemical adhesive substances are recognized as the most common and available grades of biomass. Wood pellets manufactured from sawdust, shaving, or woodchips are the most popular type of pellets on the market. Fuel created in the form of granules is very dense and can be manufactured with low humidity content, which translates into an exceptionally high burn efficiency.

The authors of this article burned agro pellets from Miscanthus giganteus without additives and with solid catalyst and conducted a series of tests that determine the impact of boiler settings (blast power, time of feeding, chimney draft) on the process of burning fuel in real conditions. A solid catalyst was used to improve combustion conditions in one of the fuels. The catalyst burns carbon monoxide and reduces nitrogen oxides. The results in the form of observation of selected parameters are summarized in the table.

Wood pellets, commonly referred to as biomass fuel, are increasingly used in heating and district heating in the European Union countries, including Poland. Their use in class 5 and/or Ecodesign boilers enables an individual consumer to use energy from renewable sources, reduce the environmental burden by reducing the emission of harmful compounds, and provides a sense of comfort by automating the boiler system. The article presents the current situation in the global wood pellet market, describes the basic quality standards applicable to this fuel during production, and indicates the difficulties in the implementation of programs co-financing the replacement of obsolete coal-fired boilers with automatic class 5 biomass-fired boilers. The research presented in this article is focused on the presence of contaminants in the DIN Plus, EN Plus, and A1 pellets, as well as in non-certified pellets. The analysis has shown that the use of wood pellets containing prohibited substances negatively affects boiler operation and contributes to the formation of slag and the emission of harmful compounds, making the discussed fuel non-ecological.

This article looks at the semantic space of abstract and concrete concepts from the perspective of distributed models of conceptual representations. It focuses on abstract metaphorical classes and the mechanisms through which these concepts are processed. When the metaphor X is a Y is understood, X is included in the abstract metaphorical class of Y. This metaphorical class is abstract because the most of semantic features of Y are filtered out through a suppressiveoriented mode of processing. It is suggested that abstract metaphorical classes of living things are usually defined by a single or a very small set of semantic features. Therefore, such metaphorical classes are highly abstract. On the other hand, abstract metaphorical classes of nonliving things are defined by a relatively larger cluster of semantic features. Therefore, abstract metaphorical classes of nonliving things have a relatively higher degree of concreteness compared to those of living things. In other words, abstract metaphorical classes of living things and nonliving things are rather different in terms of nature and the structure of semantic space.

The present paper aims at presenting a short study of the prefixed forms of the Polish verb pić (‘to drink’) (napić, wypić, popić, przepić, opić, zapić, etc.) and their French equivalents found in two parallel corpora: Glosbe and Reverso Context. In the first part, selected theoretical approaches concerning the verbal prefixation in Polish are discussed, with particular attention to the hypothesis of “perfective hypercategory” by Włodarczyk and Włodarczyk (2001b). The second part focuses on the results of the contrastive Polish-French analysis. The research is carried out in the general framework of the Aktionsarten theory and tries to discover by which linguistic means (grammatical and/or lexical) the French language expresses different semantic values conveyed by the Polish prefixes. The results of the analysis are appropriately formalized according to the principles of the object-oriented approach by Banyś (2002a, b), i.e. described by the syntactic-semantic schemes (which, after several changes of specifi cation, can be applied in the machine translation programs). The purpose of the investigation is, therefore, twofold: theoretical, since it is the matter of discovering certain relations between two languages expressing differently a given linguistic phenomenon, and practice, which consists in formulating interlinguistic correspondence rules for the purpose of the Polish-French translation.

Recent research has reported that an increasing number of migrants in Norway are concentrated in the low-skilled sectors of the labour market, irrespective of their educational background, thus facilitating the formation of migrant niches in the long term. Despite the growing body of literature that raises the problem of downward professional mobility and deskilling among migrant populations, little scholarly attention has been paid to migrants’ struggles and vulnerabilities as a result of underemployment. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews, this article explores the common experience of habitus mismatch and suffering among Poles who have worked below their level of competence or professional experience since migrating to Norway. By an-alysing subjective experiences of downward professional and social mobility and the conflict between valued and stigmatised identities, the article examines the various habitus mismatches that contribute to suffering in downwardly mobile Polish migrants.

Bulgarian migration to the UK has gradually increased since the country’s EU accession and the re-moval of barriers to free movement of labour across the EU. The sustained popularity of the UK amongst those dreaming for a fresh start through migration, despite the hostility faced by Bulgarian immigrants, poses a paradox that cannot be explained with the ‘push–pull’ and cost–benefit calculation models pre-vailing in migration research. This article proposes a more balanced understanding of migration moti-vations on the basis of would-be migrants’ own perceptions. Drawing on biographical interviews with self-ascribed ‘ordinary people’ with long-term plans for settling in the UK, I shed light on individuals’ imaginings and expectations of life after migration. Firstly, I analyse the notion of ‘survival’ through which my informants articulated frustrations with their precarious financial situation, their inferior social and symbolic positioning within society and their inability to partake in forms of consumption and lifestyle that would allow them to experience a sense of social advancement. I then explore would-be migrants’ imaginings of life in the UK (and ‘the West’) which depict an idealised ‘normality’ of life, in which they conveyed longings for security and predictability of life, social justice and working-class dignity and respectability. These insights into people’s disappointment, desperation and disillusionment with a precarious present help us to understand the continuous construction of an ‘imaginary West’ as an ideal ‘elsewhere’, in the search of which migrants are ready to undergo hardship and stigmatisation. By engaging with the existing debates in migration studies and literature on Bulgarian migration, this article exposes the deficiencies of economic reductionism, which presents migration decision-making as a conscious, rational and calculative act and, instead, demonstrates that, very often, people are led by dreams and idealisations that are reflective of their emotions and life-worlds.

The article shows that during the forming of grammatical category of gender in Indo-European languages, names of non-living objects and names of those animals whose sex is unimportant for humans were receiving grammatical meanings of gender on the basis of similarity or dissimilarity of designated objects with males or females. Such grammatical metaphors were based on the ideas of different peoples about some minor characteristics of persons of different sex, such as the difference between men and women with higher activity, greater size, strength and independence. By now, the metaphorical motivation of category of gender in the Russian language has survived only in certain nouns. These nouns are interrogative pronouns кто (masc.) ʻwhoʼ and что (neut.) ʻwhatʼ, paired nouns-synonyms, e. g. конь (masc.) ʻstrong horseʼ – лошадь (fem.) ʻordinary horseʼ, generic versions of nouns, e. g. ворон (masc.) ʻravenʼ – ворона (fem.) ʻcrowʼ, and nouns-occasionalisms used in speech oriented to expressiveness and creativity.

It is worth mentioning that despite of the decrease of coal generation in the energy mix, the fuel remains crucial for energy sector stabilizing the energy system and securing the energy supply in Poland as well as has a positive impact on the energy security of the European Union. The development of renewable energy will be possible with conventional energy compensating the unstable operation of renewable energy sources as climate conditions in Poland do not allow for the sustainable usage of renewable energy sources and thus, their effective utilization. The modernization of 200 MW energy generating units as well as the possible construction of 2–3 similar units will enable the stabilization of the amount of electricity in the transmission grid. The modern and modernized 200 MW energy generating units are able to maintain grid operation if needed and it will be easier to phase them out gradually as prosumer energy and energy storage technologies are being developed. Due to the held and planned general and additional generation capacity auctions for years following 2020, we are assured that despite the substantial increase of distributed generation sources in Poland’s energy mix, the electricity supply to end-users will be stable and safe.

Given the significance of teacher characteristics in student motivation for class attendance, the present paper aimed to investigate the roles of teacher success, credibility, and stroke in students’ Willingness to Attend Classes (WTAC). To this aim, a total number of 276 undergraduate students majoring in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and English Language and Literature completed four scales: Characteristics of Successful EFL Teachers Questionnaire (Moafian & Pishghadam, 2008), Teacher Credibility Scale (McCroskey & Teven, 1999), Student Stroke Scale (Pishghadam & Khajavi, 2014), and WTAC Scale (Rajabnejad, Pishghadam, & Saboori, 2017). For data analysis, Pearson multiple correlation coefficients and path analysis were employed. The results of correlational analyses revealed a significantly positive correlation, first, between teacher success and students’ WTAC, secondly, between teacher credibility and students’ WTAC, and thirdly, between teacher stroke and students’ WTAC. Furthermore, the results of path analysis indicated that students’ WTAC was significantly predicted by teacher success, credibility, and stroke. At the end, the results were discussed in light of previous findings, and potential conclusions were made in the EFL context accordingly.

This article discusses and expands on two related issues. The first is the unexplored reasons for the departure of Polish migrant women: the forced migration phenomenon. The author describes the system behind forced migration as created at the intersections not only of care, gender and migration regimes but also of legal regimes. Second, the author points out that the close relation between forced migration and the process of ‘unbecoming a wife in the transnational context’ creates a distinctive type of trans-national motherhood experience. In order to explain the specificity of these types of experiences better the author introduces a new typology of transnational motherhood biographies. The case study of Al-dona is representative of the experiences of some Polish women in the period under study, 1989–2010.

One of the key issues in contemporary urban studies is to consider the city from the perspective of culture and consumption, which are treated as new drivers of urban development and economic prosperity, the essence of urban ways of life, and arenas for the implementation of urban policies. In a consumer society, cities become important nodes where collective and individual consumption takes place on a massive scale. The urban system organizes capabilities and provides the resources for consumption, thus facilitating various kinds of lifestyles. As a result, the urban space operates as an arena of competition, where different consumer orientations and social categories strive physically and symbolically to occupy ground, produce meanings, and create belonging in the spaces and places that constitute the city. In applying Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of a “social field,” the aim of the article is to show how the space of social positions corresponds to the space of cultural practices. Drawing on the study of cultural and leisure activities in Wrocław, four general categories of urban residents are revealed and characterized by their distinct positions in different dimensions of the social space. The analysis also points to social capital (social networks) as an efficient new principle of cultural differentiation. The paper closes with the author’s concluding remarks and guidelines for further research.

The author champions the belief that Karl Marx offered a theory of capitalism, and not a theory of socialism. This explains, she argues, why we cannot find a detailed and well-constructed conception of human society that will exist in the future. Marx continued, however, to draw prognostic conclusions from his diagnosis of the capitalist status quo, and his numerous manuscripts are replete with social predictions. They were different at different times, and as the capitalist system tended to change in his lifetime, so changed Marx’s expectations about the future course of events. One thing remained unchanged, however. He always proclaimed the coming of a classless community based on the principle that a free development of each is a necessary prerequisite of a free development of all.

Function of duck (Anas platyrhynchos) major histocompatibility complex class I (Anpl-MHC I) molecules in binding peptides is through the peptide binding groove (PBG), which is thought to be influenced by the high polymorphism of α1 and α2 domains. However, little is known about the polymorphism of Anpl-MHC I peptide binding domain (PBD), especially in the domestic duck. Here, we analyzed the polymorphism of forty-eight Anpl-MHC I α1 and α2 domains from domestic duck breeds previously reported. All sequences were analyzed through multiple sequence alignment and a phylogenetic tree was constructed. The coefficient of variance of the peptide binding domains (PBDs) from WS, CV, JD, and SX duck breeds was estimated based on the Wu-Kabat variability index, followed by the location of the highly variable sites (HVSs) on reported crystal structure models. Analysis of α1 and α2 domains showed common features of classical MHC class I and high polymorphism, especially in α1 domain. The constructed phylogenetic tree showed that PBDs of domestic ducks did not segregate based on breeds and had a close phylogenetic relationship, even with wild ducks. In each breed, HVSs were mostly located in the PBG, suggesting that they might determine peptide-binding characteristics and subsequently influence peptide presentation and recognition. The combined results of sequence data and crystal structure provide novel valuable insights into the polymorphism and diversity of Anpl-MHC I PBDs that will facilitate further studies on disease resistance differences between duck breeds and the development of cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) epitope vaccines suited for preventing diseases in domestic ducks.