The author analyses onymic practices of Poznań–based craftsmen forming guilds. In the names of the inhabitants of Poznań, which stabilised until the end of the 18th century, she seeks traces of the so-called cognomens, i.e. secondary personal designations granted to apprentices who were becoming masters. The names resulted from community acts of creation, which were of ludic nature. Referring to German onymic practices and pointing to the so-called Schleifnamen, the author discusses specific codes of European middle-class culture. She focuses on the transfer of models and patterns to Polish urban communities.

The aim of the article is to analyse the spread and diffusion of socio-economic development in Poland in 2004-2016, while considering spatial aspects. Using the linear ordering method in the non-pattern version, a synthetic development measure for all municipalities in Poland was built based on a set of 77 features illustrating various socio-economic aspects, reduced to 25 features. For the measure constructed in this way, the convergence of the beta and sigma type has been examined, divided into 3 groups of municipalities (rural, urban and urban-rural), as well as in regional division. Using the methods of spatial econometrics, the occurrence of spatial effects was examined, in particular the attention was paid to the relationship between the processes of spreading development and spatial forms of diffusion of development. The analysis also allowed to determine the strength of local impacts of spatial connections between individual municipalities.

The main problem in the measurement of airborne sound insulation is the measurement of the sound power radiated by the barrier, in practice performed by measuring the sound pressure level and the acoustic absorption in the receiving room. Large variations of the sound pressure level in a reverberation room indicate the presence of dominating strong standing waves, so that it becomes necessary to install diffusing elements. In ISO 10140, the limits have been defined in which the reverberation time at frequencies at and above 100 Hz should be included. Sometimes, however, in the case of rooms with a large volume, obtaining the required parameters is difficult and sometimes even impossible. It should then be checked whether the measured sound insulation depends on the reverberation time.

The paper presents the results of sound insulation measurements at various reverberation time lengths in subsequent stages of diffusing elements installation in the receiving room. An analysis of diffusing materials amount and arrangement influence on the uniformity of the sound pressure level distribution and reverberation time in the room as well as the value of the measured sound insulation was carried out. Uncertainty of sound insulation measurement with partial uncertainties was adopted as a criterion supporting the assessment of the obtained results.

Permanent grasslands – according to the Water Framework Directive – are typical water related ecosystems so they largely affect water quality, its cycling and balance and therefore deserve protection. They are an element of landscape structure (ecosystem function or service) commonly considered a factor stabilising environmental changes.

Most threats posed to waters in Poland originate from present cropland structure with its definite predominance of arable lands over grasslands. Agriculture should therefore focus on the improvement of land use structure in order to minimise environmental hazards and to guarantee at the same time optimum economic effects. This could be achieved by turning arable lands into grasslands (where justified e.g. on light soils) or at least by maintaining present grassland area (condition in negotiations with the EU) and management that would consider environmental protection.

Increasing the contribution of grasslands to cropland structure or at least maintaining their pre-sent status quo would help to achieve compromise between the goals of farmers and environmental protection. Purposeful utilisation of ecosystem services, particularly those of grasslands, allows to maintain more intensive farming without environmental hazard. Limited should be only such activi-ties whose intensity exceeds regenerative or buffering environmental capacity e.g. on grounds par-ticularly subjected to water pollution or those included into Natura 2000 network.

To obtain anti-corrosive thermo-diffusion zinc coatings, the authors use highly effective zinc saturating mixtures. This technology makes it possible to obtain coatings with a high zinc content in the δ-phase as well as a zinc-rich phase of FeZn13 (ζ-phase) on the coating surface. As a result of long-term studies into the corrosion properties of thermo-diffusion zinc (TDZ) coatings conducted by the authors, a number of features of their corrosive behavior have been established. The corrosion rate of those coatings in desalted and chloride-containing media is lower than those of galvanic or hot-dip zinc coatings. The corrosion behavior depends on the content of zinc on the surface and the texture features of the coating. The results showed that on the surface of thermo-diffusion coatings in the corrosion on media containing chloride ions, zinc hydroxychloride (simonkolleite – Zn5Cl2[OH]8[H2O]) has been formed. Compared to coatings obtained by other methods, the rate of simonkolleite formation was higher on TDZ coatings, which might have a positive effect on their resistance in aggressive atmospheres.

By means of small wind turbines, it is possible to create distributed sources of electricity useful in areas with good wind conditions. Sometimes, however, it is possible to use small wind turbines also in areas characterized by lower average wind speeds during the year. At the small wind turbine design stage, various types of technical solutions to increase the speed of the wind stream, as well as to optimally orientate it, can be applied. The methods for increasing the efficiency of wind energy conversion into electricity in the case of a wind turbine include: the use of a diffuser shielding the turbine rotor and the optimization of blades mounted on the turbine rotor. In the paper, the influence of the diffuser and rotor blades geometry on the efficiency of an exemplary wind turbine for exploitation in the West Pomeranian Province is investigated. The analyses are performed for three types of the diffuser and for three types of rotor blades. Based on them, the most optimal shapes of the diffuser and blades are selected due to the efficiency of the wind turbine. For the turbine with the designed diffuser, calculations of the output power for the assumed different values of the average annual wind speed and the constant Betz power factor and the specified generator efficiency are made. In all the analyzed cases, the amount of energy that can be generated by the turbine during the year is also estimated. Important practical conclusions are formulated on the basis of these calculations. In the final part of the paper, a 3D model of the wind turbine with the diffuser and rotor blades chosen based on earlier analyses is presented. As a material for the diffuser and rotor blades, glass fiber type A is applied. By means of calculations using the finite element method, the limit displacement of the turbine structure under the influence of a hurricane wind are determined. Based on these calculations, the correctness of the modelled small wind turbine structure has been demonstrated.

The safety of mining operations in hard coal mines must be constantly developed and improved. There is ongoing multi-directional research focused at best recognition of the phenomenon associated with the properties of the coal-gas system and its connections with mining and geological conditions. This article presents the results of sorption experiments on coals from the Upper Silesian Coal Basin, which are characterized by varying degrees of coalification. One of the parameters that describes the kinetics of methane sorption, determining and providing valuable information about gas hazard and in particular the risk of gas and rock outbursts, is the effective diffusion coefficient De. It is derived from the solution of Fick’s second law using many simplifying assumptions. Among them is the assumption that the carbon matrix consists of only one type of pore – micropores. In fact, there are quite often at least two different mechanisms, which are connected to each other, related to the diffusion of methane from the microporous matrix and flows occurring in voids and macropores. This article presents both the unipore and bidisperse models and a set of comparisons which fit them to experimental curves for selected coals. For some samples the more complex bidisperse model gave much better results than the classic unipore one. The supremacy of the bidisperse model could be associated with the differences in the coal structure related to the coalification degree. Initial results justify further analyses on a wider set of coals using the methodology developed in this paper.

The presence of more than one solute diffused in fluid mixtures is very often requested for discussing the natural phenomena such as transportation of contaminants, underground water, acid rain and so on. In the paper, the effect of nonlinear thermal radiation on triple diffusive convective boundary layer flow of Casson nanofluid along a horizontal plate is theoretically investigated. Similarity transformations are utilized to reduce the governing partial differential equations into a set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations. The reduced equations are numerically solved using Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg fourth-fifth order method along with shooting technique. The impact of several existing physical parameters on velocity, temperature, solutal and nanofluid concentration profiles are analyzed through graphs and tables in detail. It is found that, modified Dufour parameter and Dufour solutal Lewis number enhances the temperature and solutal concentration profiles respectively.

One of the most effective designs to control the road traffic noise is the T-shaped barrier. The aim of this study was to examine the performance of T-shape noise barriers covered with oblique diffusers using boundary element method. A 2D simulation technique based on the boundary element method (BEM) was used to compute the insertion loss at the center frequency of each one-third octave band. In designed barriers, the top surface of the T-shaped noise barriers was covered with oblique diffusers. The width and height of the barrier stem and the width of its cap were 0.3, 2.7, and 1 m, respectively. Angles of he oblique diffusers were 15, 30, and 45 degrees. The oblique diffusers were placed on the top surface with two designs including same oblique diffusers (SOD) and quadratic residue oblique diffusers (QROD). Barriers considered were made of concrete, an acoustically rigid material. The barrier with characteristics of QROD, forward direction, and sequence of angles (15, 30, and 45 degrees) had the greatest value of the overall A-weighted insertion loss equal to 18.3 to 21.8 dBA at a distance of 20 m with various heights of 0 to 6 m.

In the paper, differential quadrature method (DQM) is used to find numerical solutions of reaction-diffusion equations with different boundary conditions. The DQM-method changes the reaction- diffusion equation (ordinary differential equation) into a system of algebraic equations. The obtained system is solved using built-in procedures of Maple®(Computer Algebra System-type program). Calculations were performed with Maple®program. The test problems include reaction-diffusion equation applied in heterogeneous catalysis. The method can be employed even in relatively hard tasks (e.g. ill-conditioned, free boundary problems).