This article discusses the classical question whether general principles of law form a separate source of international law. To this end it adopts the method of a posteriori analysis, examining the normative nature of various principles of law one by one. This analysis leads to the conclusion that only some principles have a normative nature, while others lack it.

The Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences: Technical Sciences (Bull.Pol. Ac.: Tech.) is published bimonthly by the Division IV Engineering Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, since the beginning of the existence of the PAS in 1952. The journal is peer‐reviewed and is published both in printed and electronic form. It is established for the publication of original high quality papers from multidisciplinary Engineering sciences with the following topics preferred: Artificial and Computational Intelligence, Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology, Civil Engineering, Control, Informatics and Robotics, Electronics, Telecommunication and Optoelectronics, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Thermodynamics, Material Science and Nanotechnology, Power Systems and Power Electronics.

Journal Metrics: JCR Impact Factor 2018: 1.361, 5 Year Impact Factor: 1.323, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 2017: 0.319, Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 2017: 1.005, CiteScore 2017: 1.27, The Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education 2017: 25 points.

Abbreviations/Acronym: Journal citation: Bull. Pol. Ac.: Tech., ISO: Bull. Pol. Acad. Sci.-Tech. Sci., JCR Abbrev: B POL ACAD SCI-TECH Acronym in the Editorial System: BPASTS.

International law reflects systemic conditions compatible with its essence, which means that a space must exist inside the borders of that order for the presence of the phenomenon of general principles. The assumption that international law is a legal system ipso facto means that general principles must exist within its borders. A general principle of law is a necessary element of every legal order. It is a form and a tool in which the efforts of the individual seeking to comprehend a given phenomenon are materialized through imposing order on it rather than by breaking it down into unconnected and independent elements. Since law is an expression of order, law therefore applies general principles. The systematicity of law, and therefore of international law as well, creates the primary source of the binding force of any norm. Considerations of natural law or positive law justifications for the presence of general principles in international law are of little consequence, as the source of general principles is the systemic nature of the law. Order and hierarchy are part of the rationalized system in which norms of law present themselves. This dependency applies also to norms of international law. The role of the judge is to fill in the appropriate normative content (general principles) in fields constituting at one and the same time both a necessary element and a consequence of the systemic character of the international legal order. Within this context the principle of good faith constitutes one of the bases for considerations concerning the extent of the international legal order. The extent of international law reaches as far as the extent to which evidence of good faith are present among the subjects of international law. The impossibility of describing relations between two states by the use of the determinants of good faith, translated in turn into a normative general principle, determinates the limits of international law.

The main points of the UPoN-2018 talk and some valuable comments from the Audience are briefly summarized. The talk surveyed the major issues with the notion of zero-point thermal noise in resistors and its visibility; moreover it gave some new arguments. The new arguments support the old view of Kleen that the known measurement data “showing” zero-point Johnson noise are instrumental artifacts caused by the energy-time uncertainty principle. We pointed out that, during the spectral analysis of blackbody radiation, another uncertainty principle is relevant, that is, the location-momentum uncertainty principle that causes only the widening of spectral lines instead of the zero-point noise artifact. This is the reason why the Planck formula is correctly confirmed by the blackbody radiation experiments. Finally a conjecture about the zero-point noise spectrum of wide-band amplifiers is shown, but that is yet to be tested experimentally.

The article contains preliminary considerations on the principles of the standardization of geographical names in Poland, in particular the names of physiographic objects. The notion of a country’s language policy has been referred to as one of its tools is the standardization of geographical names. The general objectives of the Polish language policy were listed as such: the assertion of legal status of the Polish language as the first language in Poland; the assertion of conditions for the development of national and ethnic minority languages in the country; the construction of a Polish- language national and state community. Legal acts concerning Polish language and geographical nomenclature were indicated. It was stated that the assumed effect of political and linguistic actions should be to develop a nomenclature in correct Polish, one which is pragmatically effective, rooted in tradition and, as a result of this study, one should expect to achieve an optimal course of the language communication process in each communicative community. Then, the criteria of the linguistic correctness of geographical names applied to date were discussed and similarities indicated in the standardization procedure with regards to geonyms and specialist terms. The rules of the detailed standardization procedure will be presented in the second part of the article

The article presents an analysis of the real role of the complementarity principle and the reasons why immi-gration law is still based on this principle. The basic assumptions of the state’s attitude towards labour im-migration were set out in a period when this kind of immigration to Poland was at a much smaller scale than currently. First and foremost, one of the basic premises is the complementarity of labour immigration (com-plementarity principle) with the labour market test as an element of the procedures, although with some exceptions. The mechanism of controlling the complementarity is obligatory and preventive. The current economic situation in Poland, including the conditions for the functioning of immigration law, is very differ-ent from the reality of that time. In view of growing shortages of Polish employees on the labour market one can doubt whether preventive enforcement of complementarity by law is needed. The complementarity of labour immigration to Poland is a socio-economic fact and legal guarantees to ensure this result seem ob-solete. There are strong arguments to consider that opportunistic political motivations are the main reason against the rationalisation of legal regulations concerning immigration of workers. The complementarity principle has become a facade of restrictive immigration law, while allowing for its use in a way that ensures the access of immigrants to the labour market.

The term “cause” is ubiquitous in life and science. It is surprising how, generally speaking, the existing all-purpose dictionaries, and even «professional» ones, are clumsy in their attempts to define “cause” and its derivative terms. We urgently need a more satisfactory definition of these words, along the following lines: an acting of object x on object y is the cause of the change in object y, when at the same time object x acts on object y, object y changes, and if something of the type of object x acts on an object of the type of object y, then object y changes. When expanding the proposed definition, I consider, among others: (a) traditional counterarguments aimed at the existence of cause-effect relation, (b) the question of necessity as a component of the notion of causality, (c) the notion of acting on something and the circumstances of its occurrence, (d) the essence of change, and (e) the causality principle. In addition, I sketch the relation of the reconstructed notion of causality to the notions of motivation, perpetration, and the act of creation (in arts and in Catholicism).

This presentation outlines the movement of the contemporary Church away from the institutional ecclesiology. Within the context of the post-conciliar ecclesiology and being inspired by the thought of Y. Congar, I have developed 5 principles of reform (the Word of God and liturgy, love and witness, anthropological, ecumenical, interreligious). I have also submitted a few practical indications of this reform (tradition and modernity, unity with a whole, freedom and moral standards, respect for the transcendental reality) in order to perform it. The reform of the Church properly understood becomes her development, which should be seen as a long process, inscribed in the history of the Church as well as in the life of a believer. In their everyday life today’s mystics follow this way of the Church’s development and of their own conversion. Mysticism is not just for those who have been specially elected, but by the grace of Baptism, every Christian is called to holiness and to the practice of mysticism. Even not being aware of it, many are practicing it. Thus those principles and indications of the ecclesial reform also apply to our everyday life of following Christ in his Church.

In the paper, methodologies for the magnetic field simulation in an axial flux permanent magnet coreless (AFPMC) motor have been proposed and discussed. Two approaches have been considered and investigated, both based on representing the 3D field distribution by superimposing axisymmetric 2D patterns. The first of studied approaches applies directly to the Biot-Savart law while the second uses a 2D axisymmetric finite element method. The selected results of magnetic field distributions and electromagnetic torque characteristics for the considered AFPMC motor have been presented and compared with results obtained using the commercial FEM package 'Maxwell'. The elaborated algorithms have been incorporated into the design routines allowing multi-parameter optimisation of the considered motor construction.

The purpose of this article is to determine the relationship between the principles of subsidiarity and effectiveness and an effective remedy for the excessive length of proceedings within the legal order of the European Convention on Human Rights. The article assumes that these key principles of the ECHR’s legal order have an impact on such a remedy, both in the normative and practical dimensions. This assumption has helped explain many aspects of the Strasbourg case law regarding this remedy. Concerning the relationship of this remedy with the principle of subsidiarity, it raises issues such as: the “reinforcing” of Art. 6 § 1; the “close affinity” of Arts. 13 and 35 § 1; and the arguability test. In turn, through the prism of the principle of effectiveness, the reasonableness criterion and the requirement of diligence in the proceedings are presented, followed by the obligations of States to prevent lengthiness of proceedings and the obligations concerning adequate and sufficient redress for such an excessive length of proceedings. The analysis shows that an effective remedy with respect to the excessive length of proceedings is not a definitive normative item, as the Court consistently adds new elements to its complex structure, taking into account complaints regarding the law and practice of States Parties in the prevention of and compensation for proceedings of an excessive length.