In the course of his pontifi cate John Paul II delivered over 200 speeches to research workers, students, senates and chancellors of universities on various forums. As the research worker he always cared about the good of the university which he regarded as the masterpiece of culture for the sake of research efforts undertaken by it which include particular aspects of the reality and the didactic and educational activity which serves the entire mankind and the future of the young generation.

Indeed John Paul II addressed his speeches, letters and proclamations to Catholic universities but the subjects touched by him have an universal character, that is to say they relate to all universities. In the present study it has been treated of the most important aspects of the activity of the university. First of all the university ought to serve the truth. The pope considers the truth to be the greatest value from which all other values originate and to which they aim; every truth comes from God who is the Highest Truth.

John Paul II insists strongly on the ethical dimension of scientific research, especially in the subject of biogenetics and bioethics, since all scientific researches have to serve the good of the man and his development and also the respect of dignity of the human. As according to John Paul II modern universities become more and more dehumanised, therefore he insists on the restitution of their humanistic visage since the man and his good have to be the fundamentals of all knowledge. Two further arguments exposed by the pope refer to the neccessity of interdisciplinary research for the sake of fragmentation of particular scientific areas and their results, as well as the need of their synthesis and high qualifications of the professor’s staff who on the one hand have to deepen their specialistic knowledge and have to be the real authority for the young people. The university not only teaches but also educates.

Professor Lech Kłosiewicz left us on the 11th of March, 2016. The professor was known not only in the community of architects and urbanists, but also in the wider world of men of science and culture. The opinions that he formulated were always marked with a deepened scientific reflection, based on a wide ranging analysis of the matters that He investigated. As a scholar and analyst of Modern Architecture, he continually discovered in it qualities which arose from the comparison of particular works, which allowed them to be viewed as the components of the larger urban scale.

The text is a general outline of the character of Professor Stefan Żychoń – a native of Zakopane, an excellent skier and architect – the co-founder and a professor of the Faculty of Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology. This work is an introduction to a scientific work by the Professor, published after more than half a century from the time of its writing, which he devoted to the matter of the beginnings and the development of industry at the foot of the Tatra Mountains.

This article is an introduction to the subject matter discussed in the forty-seventh issue of “Teka…”, the Journal of the Urban Design and Architecture Commission of the Krakow Branch of the Polish Academy of Sciences. It focuses on the aesthetic matters associated with the shaping and protection of urban spaces. It is also a homage to the academic achievements of Professor Wojciech Kosiński, as a scholar and an architect.

A project containing suggested amendments to the act of 2010 regulating the work of Commission for Research Integrity (CIR) has been forwarded to the Ministry of Education and Science In August 2022 – no decision has been communicated yet. In April 2022 CIR met with President of PAS prof. J. Duszyński. Current organizational and legislative issues have been discussed as well as means to strenghten the work of CRI. A meeting between CRI and Council for Scientific Excellence was held on 1 August 2022 which dealt with the need to modify the legislation relevant for promotion to full professorship. As pointed out earlier by CRI referees should have access to complete scientific output of a candidate (and not only to its fragments selected by a candidate). In addition, the evaluation should also include ethical aspects of a candidate scientific activity.

This paper is a form of a report on conservation repairs on the internal walls of the semibasement of the Castle in Kórnik. One key element of these works is the desalination of the cellar walls. The excessive amount of salt results from a number of measures undertaken towards the end of the 19th c. and in the early 20th c., in order to rescue the architectural gem against a disaster. Carried out in the early 1950s, the cebertization (petrification of soil) proved to be the most spectacular measure leading to the stabilization of the structure. Unfortunately, however, this operation generates a side effect in the form of a huge amount of harmful salts, which permeate from the soil into the castle walls, leading to their gradual destruction.
In view of the progressing degradation of the walls in the castle cellars, measures leading to the elimination of the increased level of dampness and the damaging salts in the walls were implemented as of 2012. After works stabilising the level of dampness were carried out, the process of desalination, i.e. removal of salt from the structure of the walls, was undertaken as the subsequent stage – and is currently in progress. Special compresses placed onto the surface of the salinated building are used for the purpose.
The scale of the facility and the complexity of desalination itself resulting from the size and heterogeneity of the semibasement walls enforced the necessity to determine the appropriate scope of the works and assign them individually to each wall in the particular parts of the cellars. In the course of a year, in three stages, the majority of the wall surface was successfully covered with the first compress. The desalination method adopted does not bring about instant results, and the possibility to assess its final effects requires time.