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Gdańsk University of Technology

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  • Public art in the era of urban transformations. A case study of Eduardo Paolozzi’s artistic output in Edinburgh and in London
    • Beata Kołakowska
    • Bogusława Konarzewska
    2020 Full text Przestrzeń i Forma

    Urban space dedicated to cultural life, entertainment or business is currently exposed to dynamic urbanistic transformations. Monumental works of art within the boundaries of cities, for years embedded in the urban landscape and awareness of viewers, are moved to other places or even destroyed. Decisions about a change of their location and context, which are fundamental aspects for the impression made by a given work of art, cause anxiety among the general public and give rise to discussions among experts as well as artists. Examples of the translocation of sculptures by the contemporary Scottish artist E. Paolozzi ‘The Mauscript of Monte Cassino’ in Edinburgh and ‘Mosaic’ from Tottenham Court Road tube station in London demonstrate the inevitability of the above process while making us more sensitive to the risk of losing valuable artifacts in the literal and cultural sense. PL Przestrzenie miejskie dedykowane życiu kulturalnemu, rozrywce, czy biznesowi poddawane są dziś dynamicznym transformacjom. Monumentalne dzieła sztuki znajdujące się w ich granicach, od lat utrwalone w miejskim pejzażu oraz świadomości odbiorców, bywają przenoszone w inne miejsca, a nawet likwidowane. Przykład translokacji dzieł współczesnego szkockiego rzeźbiarza E. Paolozziego ‘Manuskryptu z Monte Cassino’ w Edynburgu oraz ‘Mozaiki’ z londyńskiego metra pokazuje nieuchronność wyżej wspomnianego zjawiska i uwrażliwia na ryzyko utraty wartościowych dzieł w dosłownym, jak i kulturowym znaczeniu.

  • Public relations w społeczeństwie
    • Ewa Hope
    2020

    W artykule stawiam tezę – powtarzając za „„Standardami profesjonalnych public relations”- o konieczności wysuwania na plan pierwszy - we wszelkich działaniach w obszarze public relations - ich zgodności z wartościami i normami etycznymi, ponieważ wszelkie działania public relations są nie tylko realizowane w przestrzeni społecznej, ale mają istotny wpływ na kształt, kondycję społeczeństwa, również na budowę demokracji i społeczeństwa obywatelskiego. Budowanie zaufania – nie tylko do organizacji – ale i w społeczeństwie współczesnym tzw „społeczeństwie ryzyka” jest ważnym elementem pracy PR-owca – poprzez stosowanie przejrzystej, rzetelnej komunikacji, opartej na prawdziwych informacjach, emitowanych przez jawne źródła. Wiedza, doświadczenie, znajomość narzędzi PR nie decydują jeszcze o profesjonalizmie – dopiero korzystanie z nich z odpowiedzialnością, świadomością konsekwencji – dla zleceniodawcy, społeczeństwa i samego wykonawcy, dołożenie starań, aby działania nie były destrukcyjne dla żadnej ze stron, mogą w pełni zasługiwać na miano działań profesjonalnych. Konieczność uzgadniania interesów wszystkich stron procesu PR może być też źródłem dylematów etycznych specjalistów PR, dylematów związanych z ochroną wartości jak np. lojalność – wobec zleceniodawcy, interesariuszy, społeczeństwa. Doświadczenie, wiedza, odpowiedzialność stanowią tzw triadę profesjonalizmu, a to oznacza, że profesjonalista public relations w pełni powinien uznawać i korzystać z wartości tak własnego doświadczenia, doświadczenia praktyków jak i dorobku naukowego dziedziny.

  • Pulsed Laser Deposition of Bismuth Vanadate Thin Films—The Effect of Oxygen Pressure on the Morphology, Composition, and Photoelectrochemical Performance
    • Konrad Trzciński
    • Mariusz Szkoda
    • Maria Gazda
    • Jakub Karczewski
    • Adam Cenian
    • Galina Grigorian
    • Mirosław Sawczak
    2020 Full text Materials

    Thin layers of bismuth vanadate were deposited using the pulsed laser deposition technique on commercially available FTO (fluorine-doped tin oxide) substrates. Films were sputtered from a sintered, monoclinic BiVO4 pellet, acting as the target, under various oxygen pressures (from 0.1 to 2 mbar), while the laser beam was perpendicular to the target surface and parallel to the FTO substrate. The oxygen pressure strongly affects the morphology and the composition of films observed as a Bi:V ratio gradient along the layer deposited on the substrate. Despite BiVO4, two other phases were detected using XRD (X-ray diffraction) and Raman spectroscopy—V2O5 and Bi4V2O11. The V-rich region of the samples deposited under low and intermediate oxygen pressures was covered by V2O5 longitudinal structures protruding from BiVO4 film. Higher oxygen pressure leads to the formation of Bi4V2O11@BiVO4 bulk heterojunction. The presented results suggest that the ablation of the target leads to the plasma formation, where Bi and V containing ions can be spatially separated due to the interactions with oxygen molecules. In order to study the phenomenon more thoroughly, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy measurements were performed. Then, obtained electrodes were used as photoanodes for photoelectrochemical water splitting. The highest photocurrent was achieved for films deposited under 1 mbar O2 pressure and reached 1 mA cm−2 at about 0.8 V vs Ag/AgCl (3 M KCl). It was shown that V2O5 on the top of BiVO4 decreases its photoactivity, while the presence of a bulk Bi4V2O11@BiVO4 heterojunction is beneficial in water photooxidation.

  • Pulsowo-różnicowa woltamperometria jako narzędzie pozwalające na wyznaczenie wartości mocy przeciwutleniającej
    • Klaudia Suliborska
    • Monika Baranowska
    • Agnieszka Bartoszek-Pączkowska
    • Wojciech Chrzanowski
    • Jacek Namieśnik
    2020

    Standardowy potencjał redukcji (E0) jako parametr określający zdolność przeciwutleniaczy, jak np. flawan-3-oli do przyjmowania elektronów wykazywał wysoką korelację z ich aktywnością biologiczną. Jednak, w przypadku oceny całkowitej aktywności przeciwutleniającej mieszanin tych związków, parametr ten może okazać się być niewystarczającym. Bowiem do określenia tzw. mocy przeciwutleniającej ang. antioxidant power (AOP) powinny być brane pod uwagę trzy elementy takie jak: wielkość przenoszonego ładunku, czas jego przeniesienia oraz energia przenoszonego ładunku odzwierciedlająca potencjał piku utlenienia. Sumarycznie elementy te – jako wynik oznaczeń woltamperometrycznych, mogą zostać wyrażone w jednostce mocy prądu elektrycznego (wat) jako parametr mocy przeciwutleniającej. Spośród znanych technik woltamperometrycznych – pulsowo-różnicowa woltamperometria (DPV) charakteryzująca się wysoką czułością jest najbardziej odpowiednia do pomiaru całkowitej aktywności przeciwutleniającej próbki. Wartości AOP dla mieszanin flawan-3-oli, odzwierciedlające matrycę żywieniową – kakao, zostały otrzymane dwiema technikami: elektrochemiczną (DPV) i spektrofotometryczną z wykorzystaniem rodnika DPPH. Pomiary elektrochemiczne przeprowadzono w układzie trójelektrodowym, gdzie elektrodę pracującą stanowiła elektroda szklista węglowa. Otrzymane piki utlenienia – zależność zadanego potencjału od zmierzonego prądu, a także zaproponowany szereg obliczeń pozwoliły na wyznaczenie wartości AOP badanych próbek. Co z kolei pozwoliło na określenie efektu synergistycznego, antagonistycznego czy addytywnego poszczególnych składników matrycy żywieniowej.

  • Quality of Service in ASON/GMPLS Network with Hierarchical Control Plane Structure
    • Sylwester Kaczmarek
    • Magdalena Młynarczuk
    2020

    The paper presents the problem of quality of service for hierarchical control plane structure of Automatically Switched Optical Network (ASON) utilizing Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS). The approach is implemented to control the multidomain network with required quality of service, in a use case of incomplete domain network information. The authors examine different factors, including resource reservation algorithms with pools resources assumptions to indicate if they have significant impact on required quality of service in ASON/GMPLS network with hierarchical control plane. The analysis is performed by simulating the European network structure with the use of OMNeT++ discrete-event simulator.

  • QUANTITATIVE EASING POLICY AND ITS IMPACT ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
    • I. Shkodina
    • Oleksandr Melnychenko
    • M. Babenko
    2020 Full text Financial and Credit Activity-Problems of Theory and Practice

    Based on the analysis of the impact of quantitative easing policies on the global economy, there was concluded that the world’s largest central banks and widespread debt stimulation have created the model of economic growth. This model was based on the productivity growth. The lack of productivity growth in the developed world, the active integration of developing countries (first of all China and India) in the global economy have completely changed the directions of global financial flows and caused fundamental geopolitical changes. Striving to confront the cyclical nature of the economy, government regulators transform the global economy into a «zombie economy». There are unprofitable companies and banks, which operate on cheap money from central banks and government bailouts. The monetization of fiscal policy transforms the risks from governments to central banks and destroys their independence. We concluded that the strategy of tackling the global economy through cheap credit is doomed to failure because governments do not solve the problems of real economy, productivity increase, management of public and corporate debt, stagflation, unemployment, and increase in income differentiation. Nowadays, in the context of COVID-19 pandemic, central banks use the new and forgotten old tools to expand economic activity (so-called QE and «Not QE»). These tools provide the necessary stimulus only in the short-term period, but in the long term period it will inevitably lead to serious disparities, undermine the market mechanism, increase the administrative influence and lead the global economy to a choice between depression, unemployment, hyperinflation or systemic collapse. We believe that the global coronavirus pandemic stimulates the scientific debate on rethinking monetary policy goals and instruments, as the use of various «non-standard tools» has repeatedly proven ineffective in combating crises and it has helped only to create new global imbalances and crises.

  • Quantitative Storytelling in the Making of a Composite Indicator
    • Marta Kuc-Czarnecka
    • Samuele Piano, Lo
    • Andrea Saltelli,
    2020 Full text Social Indicators Research

    The reasons for and against composite indicators are briefly reviewed, as well as the available theories for their construction. After noting the strong normative dimension of these measures—which ultimately aim to ‘tell a story’, e.g. to promote the social discovery of a particular phenomenon, we inquire whether a less partisan use of a composite indicator can be proposed by allowing more latitude in the framing of its construction. We thus explore whether a composite indicator can be built to tell ‘more than one story’ and test this in practical contexts. These include measures used in convergence analysis in the field of cohesion policies and a recent case involving the World Bank’s Doing Business Index. Our experiments are built to imagine different constituencies and stakeholders who agree on the use of evidence and of statistical information while differing on the interpretation of what is relevant and vital.

  • Quasi-Global Optimization of Antenna Structures Using Principal Components and Affine Subspace-Spanned Surrogates
    • Jon Tomasson
    • Sławomir Kozieł
    • Anna Pietrenko-Dąbrowska
    2020 Full text IEEE Access

    Parametric optimization is a mandatory step in the design of contemporary antenna structures. Conceptual development can only provide rough initial designs that have to be further tuned, often extensively. Given the topological complexity of modern antennas, the design closure necessarily involves full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulations and—in many cases—global search procedures. Both factors make antenna optimization a computationally expensive endeavor: population-based metaheuristics, routinely used in this context, entail significant computational overhead. This letter proposes a novel approach that interleaves trust-region gradient search with iterative parameter space exploration by means of local kriging surrogate models. Dictated by efficiency, the latter are rendered in low-dimensional subspaces spanned by the principal components of the antenna response Jacobian matrix, extracted to identify the directions of the maximum (frequency-averaged) response variability. The aforementioned combination of techniques enables quasi-global search at the cost comparable to local optimization. These features are demonstrated using two antenna examples as well as benchmarking against multiple-start local tuning.

  • Radar and Sonar Imaging and Processing
    • Andrzej Stateczny
    • Witold Kazimierski
    • Krzysztof Kulpa
    2020 Full text Remote Sensing

    The 21 papers (from 61 submitted) published in the Special Issue “Radar and Sonar Imaging Processing” highlighted a variety of topics related to remote sensing with radar and sonar sensors. The sequence of articles included in the SI dealt with a broad profile of aspects of the use of radar and sonar images in line with the latest scientific trends. The latest developments in science, including artificial intelligence, were used.

  • Random field model of foundations at the example of continuous footing
    • Kamil Żyliński
    • Aleksandra Korzec
    • Karol Winkelmann
    • Jarosław Górski
    2020 Full text AIP Conference Proceedings

    The purpose of the paper is to indicate an efficient method of foundation settlement analysis taking into account the variability of soil properties. The impact of the random variable distribution (Gauss or Lognormal) describing soil stiffness on foundation deposits was assessed. The Monte Carlo simulation method was applied in the computations. The settlements of the strip foundation with the subsoil described by a single random variable and a random field were compared.

  • Random field modelling of mechanical behaviour of corroded thin steel plate specimens
    • Krzysztof Wołoszyk
    • Yordan Garbatov
    2020 Full text ENGINEERING STRUCTURES

    The objective of this work is to explore the possibility of corrosion degradation modelling of thin steel plate specimens with the use of random field approach. The mechanical properties are obtained via the nonlinear Finite Element Analysis with the use of an explicit dynamic solver. The fully nonlinear material model is adopted to obtain the proper stress-strain response. Sensitivity analysis considering the main statistical descriptors of the random field is performed. The results of the analysis are validated with the available experimental data showing a good agreement for lower levels of Degree of Degradation and significant deviations for severely corroded specimens. The analysis shows that the irregularities in the corroded plate surface are one of the main reason for the mechanical properties reduction. Random field modelling revealed to be a swift and practical tool for representing the corroded surfaces in steel structures.

  • Ranking of Generation Source Locations by a Hybrid Multi-Criteria Method
    • Alicja Stoltmann
    • Marcin Jaskólski
    • Paweł Bućko
    2020 Full text Acta Energetica

    The paper presents a ranking of the locations of eight renewable energy sources (RES) made using a hybrid multi-criteria analysis method. The method is a combination of the analytical hierarchical process (AHP) method and numerical taxonomy. The considered generating sources, i.e. solar plants, biogas plants, and wind farms are sources that will significantly contribute to implementing the provisions of the energy and climate package for Poland (by 2030). Increasing the share of energy from renewable sources will increase the country's energy security. Low-emission generation sources obtain energy from renewable sources. Therefore, their location is influenced by factors such as environmental impact, availability and origin of raw materials, e.g. biogas, as well as technological aspects. The multitude of factors mentioned makes the location of a biogas plant a multi-threaded issue. The AHP method is a mathematical method with a high degree of sophistication and time consumption. The method's advantage is its ability to compare countable and uncountable factors with each other, which was used in conjunction with the numerical taxonomy method. The analysis' effect is ranking of the locations in question.

  • Ranking Speech Features for Their Usage in Singing Emotion Classification
    • Szymon Zaporowski
    • Bożena Kostek
    2020 Full text

    This paper aims to retrieve speech descriptors that may be useful for the classification of emotions in singing. For this purpose, Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and selected Low-Level MPEG 7 descriptors were calculated based on the RAVDESS dataset. The database contains recordings of emotional speech and singing of professional actors presenting six different emotions. Employing the algorithm of Feature Selection based on the Forest of Trees method, descriptors with the best ranking results were determined. Then, the emotions were classified using the Support Vector Machine (SVM). The training was performed several times, and the results were averaged. It was found that descriptors used for emotion detection in speech are not as useful for singing. Also, an approach using Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) employing spectrogram representation of audio signals was tested. Several parameters for singing were determined, which, according to the obtained results, allow for a significant reduction in the dimensionality of feature vectors while increasing the classification efficiency of emotion detection.

  • Rapid and simple multi-analyte LC–MS/MS method for the determination of benzodiazepines and Z-hypnotic drugs in blood samples: Development, validation and application based on three years of toxicological analyses
    • Laura Banaszkiewicz
    • Mateusz Woźniak
    • Marzena Kata
    • Ewa Domagalska
    • Marek Wiergowski
    • Beata Szpiech
    • Agata Kot-Wasik
    2020 JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL AND BIOMEDICAL ANALYSIS

    Benzodiazepines (BZDs) and Z-drugs have been particularly important treatments for sleeping and anxiety disorders for many years. However, recently, a number of new benzodiazepines (named designer benzodiazepines, DBZDs) were synthesised, but some of them have never been used in the clinic; they reached the black drug market as new psychoactive substances and are used for recreational purposes. The abuse of these substances has led to many crimes and even deaths. Therefore, it is necessary to develop new methods for their quantification for forensic and clinical toxicology. A liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry-based method was developed for the simultaneous determination of 20 classical BZDS, 4 DBZDs and 3 Z-hypnotic drugs in human whole blood. As a sample preparation step, liquid-liquid extraction requiring the use of only 0.5 mL of blood sample and 1 mL of extraction solvent was applied. The selectivity, linearity, carry-over effects, limits of detection (LOD) and quantification (LOQ), precision, accuracy (both intra- and inter-day assays) and recovery were evaluated for validation. Calibration curves were linear with r values > 0.98. The LODs ranged from 0.01 to 0.33, and the LOQs were assumed to be 1 ng/mL. Inter-day precisions and accuracies were in the ranges of 87.8% - 108.5% and 1.8% - 11.2%, respectively. The recovery values ranged from 81.0% to 106.7%. The developed method proved to be sensitive, specific, simple, and fast and can be quickly modified and expanded for new compounds by the optimization of MRM. The method was applied for analysis of blood samples in 145 toxicological cases over a three-year study (2017 - 2019), which allowed us to obtain information on the prevalence of the use of these substances. The most frequently determined compounds were nordazepam (87 cases; 60%), diazepam (81 cases; 55.9%), temazepam (72 cases; 49.7%), oxazepam (56 cases; 38.7%), and midazolam (36 cases; 24.8%). The ranges of concentrations were wide and are presented as box plots. The results were used for the preparation of medico-legal opinions, which proved the utility of the method for routine toxicology analyses.

  • Rapid multi-objective optimization of antennas using nested kriging surrogates and single-fidelity EM simulation models
    • Sławomir Kozieł
    • Anna Pietrenko-Dąbrowska
    2020 Full text ENGINEERING COMPUTATIONS

    Ever increasing performance requirements make the design of contemporary antenna systems a complex and multi-stage process. One of the challenges, pertinent to the emerging application areas but also some of the recent trends (miniaturization, demands for multi-functionality, etc.), is the necessity of handling several performance figures such as impedance matching, gain, or axial ratio, often over multiple frequency bands. The fundamental difficulty is that most of the design objectives are at least partially conflicting. Hence, an improvement of one generally implies degradation of the others. The knowledge of available trade-offs is indispensable and can be acquired through multi-objective optimization (MO). Unfortunately, MO is computationally expensive when executed at the level of EM simulation models, otherwise necessary from the standpoint of antenna evaluation reliability. This paper proposes a computationally efficient framework for MO of antennas. Its keystone is the recently introduced nested kriging modeling technology, here adopted for identifying the design space region that contains the best design trade-offs, as well as for constructing a fast surrogate model to be processed by the MO algorithm. The technique is demonstrated through a two-objective optimization of a planar Yagi antenna (with respect to the impedance matching and gain enhancement) and three-objective design of a compact wideband antenna (with respect to the impedance matching, gain variability, and the footprint area). In both cases, the Pareto set is obtained at the low cost of a few hundred of antenna simulations, even though the optimization process is exclusively based on high-fidelity EM analysis.

  • Rapid optimization of compact microwave passives using kriging surrogates and iterative correction
    • Sławomir Kozieł
    • Anna Pietrenko-Dąbrowska
    2020 Full text IEEE Access

    Design of contemporary microwave components is—in a large part—based on full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulation tools. The primary reasons for this include reliability and versatility of EM analysis. In fact, for many microwave structures, notably compact components, EM-driven parameter tuning is virtually imperative because traditional models (analytical or network equivalents) are unable to account for the cross-coupling effects, strongly present in miniaturized layouts. At the same time, the cost of simulation-based design procedures may be significant due to a typically large number of evaluations of the circuit at hand involved. In this paper, a novel approach to expedited design closure of compact microwave passives is presented. The proposed procedure incorporates available designs (e.g., existing from the previous design work on the same structure) in the form of the kriging interpolation models, utilized to yield a reasonable initial design and to accelerate its further refinement. An important component of the framework is an iterative correction procedure that feeds the accumulated discrepancies between the target and the actual design objective values back to the kriging surrogate to produce improved predictions. The efficacy of our methodology is demonstrated using two miniaturized impedance matching transformers with the optimized designs obtained at the cost of a few EM simulations of the respective circuits. The relevance of the iterative correction is corroborated through the comparative studies showing its superiority over rudimentary gradient-based refinement.

  • Rapid redesign of multiband antennas with respect to operating conditions and material parameters of substrate
    • Sławomir Kozieł
    • Adrian Bekasiewicz
    2020 Full text INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NUMERICAL MODELLING-ELECTRONIC NETWORKS DEVICES AND FIELDS

    This work addresses geometry parameter scaling of multi-band antennas for Internet of Things applications. The presented approach is comprehensive and permits re-design of the structure with respect to both the operating frequencies and material parameters of the dielectric substrate. A two-step procedure is developed with the initial design obtained from an inverse surrogate model constructed using a set of appropriately prepared reference points, and the final design identified through an iterative correction procedure. The latter is necessary in order to account for limited accuracy of the surrogate. The proposed approach is validated using a dual-band microstrip patch antenna scaled over wide ranges of operating frequencies (1.5 GHz to 2.5 GHz for the lower band, and 5.0 GHz to 6.0 GHz for the upper band), substrate thickness (0.7 mm to 1.5 mm), and substrate permittivity (2.5 to 3.5). The re-design cost corresponds to only up to three electromagnetic simulations of the antenna at hand. Reliability of the process is confirmed through experimental validation of the fabricated antenna prototypes.

  • Rapid tolerance‐aware design of miniaturized microwave passives by means of confined‐domain surrogates
    • Anna Pietrenko-Dąbrowska
    2020 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NUMERICAL MODELLING-ELECTRONIC NETWORKS DEVICES AND FIELDS

    The effects of uncertainties, primarily manufacturing tolerances but also incomplete information about operating conditions or material parameters, can be detrimental to the performance of microwave components. Quantification of such effects is essential to ensure a meaningful evaluation of the structure, in particular, its reliability under imperfect fabrication procedures. The improvement of the circuit robustness can be achieved by reducing sensitivity to geometry/material parameter deviations, which requires optimization of suitably chosen statistical performance metrics such as the yield. The prerequisite for the latter is statistical analysis. In the case of compact circuits, it is executed through full‐wave electromagnetic (EM) analysis. The fundamental difficulty, that is, the high CPU cost, can be alleviated by the employment of fast surrogate models, which is the method of choice for the majority of contemporary approaches. Despite its advantages, a practical challenge of surrogate‐assisted design is the initial computational overhead related to metamodel construction. As a workaround, this work proposes the employment of a recently introduced concept of constrained modelling, where the surrogate domain is confined only to contain the essential subsets of the parameter space. In the context of yield optimization, the domain needs to correspond to directions featuring maximum variability of the circuit responses (particularly the parts thereof that affect the yield value in the most significant way) with respect to its geometry parameters. The small volume of the domain spanned by such directions permits setting up an accurate model using a fraction of training data samples required by conventional methods. The proposed technique is demonstrated using a miniaturized microstrip rat‐race coupler with its yield optimized at the cost of just a few dozen of EM simulations of the circuit. EM‐based Monte Carlo simulations corroborate the reliability of the approach.

  • Raportowanie obrotu produktami leczniczymi w doskonaleniu przepływu informacji o stanach magazynowych aptek
    • Olga Mąka
    • Anna Zielińska
    • Grzegorz Zieliński
    2020 Problemy Jakości

    Celem opracowania jest identyfikacja roli raportowania obrotu produktami leczniczymi w aptekach. Zaprezentowano podstawowe założenia wymogu raportowania stanów magazynowych, w odniesieniu do poszczególnych grup interesariuszy, związanych z informacją o stanach magazynowych w aptece. Zidentyfikowano również korzyści dla poszczególnych grup interesariuszy wynikające z konieczności przygotowania tego typu raportów.

  • Raportowanie społeczne w sądach powszechnych
    • Sylwia Morawska
    • Przemysław Banasik
    2020

    Pomimo upływu 20 lat od pojawienia się pierwszych pionierskich badań nad raportowaniem społecznym w organizacjach publicznych stan wiedzy w tym obszarze jest wciąż na wczesnym etapie. Liczba obecnych badań, chociaż wykazuje tendencję wzrostową, jest nadal niewielka i są one lokalne. Niedobór prac teoretycznych z pewnością stanowi hamulec dla pełnego rozwoju potencjału tej dziedziny badań. Intencją autorów rozdziału jest opracowanie modelu raportowania społecznego w sądach powszechnych. Wykorzystano literaturę krajową i międzynarodową dotyczącą prezentowanej tematyki, a także dokonano analizy stron internetowych wszystkich sądów powszechnych w celu identyfikacji sposobów komunikowania działań prospołecznych na rzecz interesariuszy przez sąd. Badania wykazują, że sądy sporadycznie komunikują działania prospołeczne na rzecz swoich interesariuszy. Żaden z badanych sądów nie opublikował na stronie internetowej raportu społecznego.

  • Reactive extrusion of biodegradable aliphatic polyesters in the presence of free-radical-initiators: A review
    • Marta Przybysz-Romatowska
    • Józef Haponiuk
    • Krzysztof Formela
    2020 POLYMER DEGRADATION AND STABILITY

    Nowadays, growing attention is being paid to the environment and sustainability, what fully justified research works focused on modification of biodegradable polymers and their composites. In this field of research reactive extrusion seems to be the most promising approach, which fits well to sustainable development strategy. In In the present work, the in-situ modification of biodegradable aliphatic polyesters and the compatibilization of their blends by the action of free-radical initiators has been reviewed. The main concerns are the mechanisms of the free radicals induced modification of aliphatic polyesters and their blends. The cross-linked, branched or degraded structures of the formed polymers/blends were comprehensively characterized as function of modifier type and processing conditions. Moreover, the reactive processing and various types of irradiation in respect to the inter chain modification of polymers were presented. Main advantages and disadvantages related to reactive extrusion of biodegradable aliphatic polyesters and their blends in presence of free-radical-initiators were also pointed and discussed.

  • Reactive Processing and Functionalization of Ground Tire Rubber
    • Łukasz Zedler
    • Marta Przybysz-Romatowska
    • Aleksander Hejna
    • Xavier Colom
    • Javier Cañavate
    • Mohammad Saeb
    • Krzysztof Formela
    2020

    The dynamic development of the automotive industry resulted in a sig- nificant increase in rubber wastes, especially end-of-life tires, which are a serious threat to the natural environment and human health. This situation has enforced the industry and academic research groups to search new and cost-effective methods for recycling waste tires. In this field of research, reactive processing and functionaliza- tion seem to be a very promising approach to extend recycling and the ‘up-cycling’ of ground tire rubber. This chapter presents recent progress in the modification of waste rubber and valorization strategies with special attention on structure-properties relationships of the products obtained.

  • Reactive Sintering of Ground Tire Rubber (GTR) Modified by a Trans-Polyoctenamer Rubber and Curing Additives
    • Łukasz Zedler
    • Daria Kowalkowska-Zedler
    • Xavier Colom
    • Javier Cañavate
    • Mohammad Reza Saeb
    • Krzysztof Formela
    2020 Full text Polymers

    The proposed method of ground tire rubber (GTR) utilization involves the application of trans-polyoctenamer rubber (TOR), a commercially available waste rubber modifier. The idea was to investigate the influence of various curing additives (sulfur, N-cyclohexyl-2-benzothiazole sulfenamide (CBS), dibenzothiazole disulfide (MBTS) and di-(2-ethyl)hexylphosphorylpolysulfide (SDT)) on curing characteristics, physico-mechanical, thermal, acoustic properties as well as the morphology of modified GTR, in order to evaluate the possibility of reclaiming GTR and the co-cross-linking between applied components. The results showed that the presence of the modifier without the addition of curing additives hinders the physico-mechanical properties of revulcanized GTR. The addition of SDT, CBS, MBTS and sulfur change the melting kinetics of TOR, indicating partial degradation and/or co-cross-linking between components. In the studied conditions, the best mechanical properties were obtained by the samples cured with sulfur. The morphology analysis, combined with the physico-mechanical results, indicated that when the surface of the GTR is more developed, obtained by the addition of TOR, the properties of the GTR improve.

  • REALIZACJA USŁUGI DSR NA PRZYKŁADZIE DOMÓW JEDNORODZINNYCH
    • Paweł Bućko
    • Wiktoria Stahl
    2020 Full text Rynek Energii

    W artykule przedstawiono ideę usługi DSR, czyli reakcji strony popytowej, dla odbiorców rozproszonych. Polega ona na zmniejszeniu zapotrzebowania na energię elektryczną lub przesunięcia go w czasie. Wdrożenie usługi może w znaczny sposób wpłynąć na pracę systemu elektroenergetycznego – usługa DSR może wspomóc bilansowanie systemu elektroenergetycznego, a także pozytywnie oddziaływać na jego elastyczność, wydajność oraz stabilność. W artykule wykazano możliwy wpływ redukcji zapotrzebowania na energię elektryczną przez mieszkańców domów jednorodzinnych. Oszacowano spodziewany wpływ na obciążenie systemu skoordynowanego wykorzystania zagregowanych możliwości świadczenia usługi DSR przez większą grupę odbiorców indywidualnych w domach jednorodzinnych.

  • Realization, programming and controlling of the Stewart-Gough platform
    • Dawid Owoc
    • Krzysztof Ludwiczak
    • Robert Piotrowski
    2020 Full text Journal of Automation, Mobile Robotics and Intelligent Systems - JAMRIS

    This paper presents realizaon, programming, and controlling of a low cost Stewart-Gough plaorm (SGP) with rotary actuators. The realized SGP is applied in a ball & plate control system. Developed dedicated software consists of embedded and applicaon soware for both the SGP posioning system and the ball & plate control. system. A ball posion is being obtained using computer vision. The paper contains tests results for both an SGP posioning accuracy

  • Realizm kapitalistyczny. Czy nie ma alternatywy? / Mark Fisher; przełożył i posłowiem opatrzył Andrzej Karalus
    • Andrzej Karalus
    2020

    Praca rozważa, jak neoliberalna hegemonia instalując „ontologię biznesu” we wszystkich sferach rzeczywistości, formatuje niepostrzeżenie nasze pragnienia, aspiracje i nadzieje. Wbrew triumfalistycznej retoryce „efektywności” i „społecznej odpowiedzialności” realizm kapitalistyczny nie przestaje jednak generować systemowych zaburzeń, które w dłuższej perspektywie go destabilizują. Jest nie tylko przyczyną degradacji środowiska naturalnego i jednym z powodów, dla których mierzymy się z plagą depresji i neuroz, jest również odpowiedzialny za proliferację dużo mniej oczywistych i paradoksalnych zjawisk charakterystycznych dla post-fordowskiej fazy kapitalizmu: rozrostu biurokracji, „PRyzacji” rzeczywistości, sentymentalizacji polityki czy skasowania czasu. Fisher udanie łączy erudycję, zmysł obserwacji, krytyczną przenikliwość oraz wrażliwość na zjawiska i procesy kulturowe, nie uciekając przy okazji od pytań dotyczących kondycji współczesnej lewicy. Jak przełamać monopol realizmu kapitalistycznego i przezwyciężyć rodzące się tendencje autorytarne, nie popadając zarazem w paraliżujący tryb nostalgii i bezproduktywnej tęsknoty za państwem dobrobytu, dawno pogrzebanym światem powojennego konsensusu?

  • Real-Time Volatilomics: A Novel Approach for Analyzing Biological Samples
    • Tomasz Majchrzak
    • Wojciech Wojnowski
    • Małgorzata Rutkowska
    • Andrzej Wasik
    2020 Full text TRENDS IN PLANT SCIENCE

    The use of the ‘omics techniques in environmental research has become common-place. The most widely implemented of these include metabolomics, proteomics, genomics, and transcriptomics. In recent years, a similar approach has also been taken with the analysis of volatiles from biological samples, giving rise to the so-called ‘volatilomics’ in plant analysis. Developments in direct infusion mass spectrometry (DI-MS) techniques have made it possible to monitor the changes in the composition of volatile flux from parts of plants, single specimens, and entire ecosystems in real-time. The application of these techniques enables a unique insight into the dynamic metabolic processes that occur in plants. Here, we provide an overview of the use of DI-MS in real-time volatilomics research involving plants.

  • Recent advances in compatibilization strategies of wood-polymer composites by isocyanates
    • Aleksander Hejna
    • Marta Przybysz-Romatowska
    • Paulina Kosmela
    • Łukasz Zedler
    • Jerzy Korol
    • Krzysztof Formela
    2020 Full text WOOD SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

    Wood-polymer composites technologies are gaining more and more attention in the scientific community, positively affecting the increase in their industrial applications, for example, automotive, building, 3D printing, etc. Many research works are focused on the improvement in matrix–lignocellulosic filler interactions to produce highly filled composites with satisfying performance properties. In this field of research, using isocyanates due to their versatile structure and functionality seems to be a very promising approach. This paper aims at reporting on recent advances in compatibilization strategies of wood-polymer composites by isocyanates. Particular attention is focused on the correlation between isocyanate structure, as well as modification conditions on the matrix–lignocellulosic filler interactions and their impact on the structure–property relationships of wood-polymer composites. Furthermore, limitations and future research trends related to applications of isocyanate to wood-polymer composites technologies are also discussed.

  • Recent advances in high-frequency modeling by means of domain confinement and nested kriging
    • Sławomir Kozieł
    • Anna Pietrenko-Dąbrowska
    2020 Full text IEEE Access

    Development of modern high-frequency components and circuits is heavily based on full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulation tools. Some phenomena, although important from the point of view of the system performance, e.g., EM cross-coupling effects, feed radiation in antenna arrays, substrate anisotropy, cannot be adequately accounted for using simpler means such as equivalent network representations. Consequently, the involvement of EM analysis, especially for tuning of geometry parameters, has become imperative in high-frequency electronics. Notwithstanding, excessive computational costs associated with massive full-wave simulations required by these procedures and even more by tasks such as uncertainty quantification or multi-criterial optimization, constitute a practical bottleneck. Repetitive evaluations of a structure can be facilitated by the use of fast replacement models (surrogates). Among available methods, approximation models are by far the most popular due to their flexibility and accessibility. Unfortunately, surrogate modeling of high-frequency structures is hindered by the curse of dimensionality and nonlinearity of system responses, primarily frequency characteristics. The recently proposed performance-driven techniques attempt to address this issue by appropriate confinement of the model domain to focus the modeling process only on the relevant part of the parameter space, i.e., containing the designs that are of high quality from the point of view the assumed performance figures. The nested kriging framework is perhaps the most advanced of these methods and allows for constructing reliable surrogates over broad ranges of the system parameters and operating conditions. This article summarizes the recent developments of the technique, including the basic formulation and several advancements aiming at the improvement of the surrogate predictive power or lowering the computational cost of training data acquisition. These include the incorporation of sensitivity data, as well as dimensionality reduction through principal component analysis. The problem of uniform data sampling in confined domains is also discussed. Our considerations are comprehensively illustrated using several examples of antennas and microwave circuits.

  • Recent Advances in Performance-Driven Surrogate Modeling of High-Frequency Structures
    • Sławomir Kozieł
    • Anna Pietrenko-Dąbrowska
    2020 Full text INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NUMERICAL MODELLING-ELECTRONIC NETWORKS DEVICES AND FIELDS

    Design of high‐frequency structures, including microwave and antenna components, heavily relies on full‐wave electromagnetic (EM) simulation models. Their reliability comes at a price of a considerable computational cost. This may lead to practical issues whenever numerous EM analyses are to be executed, e.g., in the case of parametric optimization. The difficulties entailed by massive simulations may be mitigated by the use of fast surrogates, among which data‐driven models are the most popular ones due to their versatility and accessibility. Unfortunately, conventional modeling techniques are significantly affected by the curse of dimensionality. It is particularly restrictive in the case of high‐frequency components, typically exhibiting highly nonlinear characteristics. Recently, the concept of performance‐driven modeling has been proposed where the surrogate model setup is focused on a small subset of the parameter space, containing the designs that are optimal or nearly optimal with respect to the considered performance figures. Domain confinement allows for a dramatic reduction of the number of training data samples needed for rendering reliable surrogates valid over wide ranges of the system parameters. In this paper, we review some of the recent techniques employing these concepts, discuss their properties, and illustrate them using real‐world examples of antenna and microwave components.

  • Recent advances in traffic optimisation: systematic literature review of modern models, methods and algorithms
    • Aleksander Rydzewski
    • Paweł Czarnul
    2020 IET Intelligent Transport Systems

    Over the past few decades, the increasing number of vehicles and imperfect road traffic management have been sources of congestion in cities and reasons for deteriorating health of its inhabitants. With the help of computer simulations, transport engineers optimise and improve the capacity of city streets. However, with an enormous number of possible simulation types, it is difficult to grasp valuable, innovative solutions which are of the greatest value to city citizens. In this work, the authors expose various problems within this area having reviewed and analysed over 130 papers selected out of 1200 works in the field of urban simulations. The study describes the selection process of important papers and highlights characteristics of microsimulations, macrosimulations, computation optimisations and other approaches found in the literature which are especially useful and should be further built on in the future. They present and compare results provided in reviewed works in terms of throughput improvement, queue, waiting and travel time reduction, vehicle speed increase, speed‐ups as well as assumed simulation parameters. Finally, they focus on research gaps, such as a small number of works considering crisis simulations, few real‐world scale simulations as well as on software architectural changes and low‐level optimizations.

  • Recent progress in the development of steroid sulfatase inhibitors – examples of the novel and most promising compounds from the last decade
    • Mateusz Daśko
    • Sebastian Demkowicz
    • Karol Biernacki
    • Olga Ciupak
    • Witold Kozak
    • Maciej Masłyk
    • Janusz Rachoń
    2020 Full text JOURNAL OF ENZYME INHIBITION AND MEDICINAL CHEMISTRY

    The purpose of this review article is to provide an overview of recent achievements in the synthesis of novel steroid sulfatase (STS) inhibitors. STS is a crucial enzyme in the biosynthesis of active hormones (including estrogens and androgens) and, therefore, represents an extremely attractive molecular target for the development of hormone-dependent cancer therapies. The inhibition of STS may effectively reduce the availability of active hormones for cancer cells, causing a positive therapeutic effect. Herein, we report examples of novel STS inhibitors based on steroidal and nonsteroidal cores that contain various functional groups (e.g., sulfamate and phosphorus moieties) and halogen atoms, which may potentially be used in therapies for hormone-dependent cancers. The presented work also includes examples of multitargeting agents with STS inhibitory activities. Furthermore, the fundamental discoveries in the development of the most promising drug candidates exhibiting STS inhibitory activities are highlighted.

  • Recent total cross section measurements in electron scattering from molecules
    • Czesław Szmytkowski
    • Paweł Możejko
    2020 Full text EUROPEAN PHYSICAL JOURNAL D

    The grand-total cross sections (TCSs) for electron scattering from a range of molecules, measured over the period 2009-2019 in various laboratories, with the use of different electron transmission systems, are reviewed. Where necessary, the presented TCS data are also compared to earlier results. Collection of investigated molecular targets (biomolecules, biofuels, molecules of technological application,hydrocarbons) reflects their current interest in biology, medicine, ecology and industry. Most of measurements covered the energy range from about 1 eV to some hundreds of eV, with a few exceptions extending those limits down to near thermal or up to almost high impact energies. The importance of reliable TCS data in the field of electron-scattering physics is emphasized. Problems encountered in TCS experiments are also specified

  • Reclaimed Rubber/Poly(ε‐caprolactone) Blends: Structure, Mechanical, and Thermal Properties
    • Aleksander Hejna
    • Łukasz Zedler
    • Marta Przybysz-Romatowska
    • Javier Cañavate
    • Xavier Colom
    • Krzysztof Formela
    2020 Full text Polymers

    The amount of elastomeric waste, especially from tires is constantly increasing on a global scale. The recycling of these residua should be considered a priority. Compounding the waste rubbers with other polymers can be an excellent alternative to reuse waste materials. This procedure requires solving the issue of the lack of compatibility between the waste rubber particles and other polymers. Simultaneously, there is a claim for introducing biodegradable plastics materials to reduce their environmental impact. In this work, reclaimed rubber/poly(ε‐caprolactone) (RR/PCL) blends are proposed to enhance the recycling and upcycling possibilities of waste rubbers. The results show that the addition of PCL to the RR allows obtaining blends with improved mechanical properties, good thermal stability, and enhanced interfacial compatibility between the used components. Structure and properties of the proposed RR/PCL have been studied by means of static and dynamic mechanical testing, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA)‐FTIR analysis.

  • Reconfiguring Minimum Dominating Sets in Trees
    • Magdalena Lemańska
    • Paweł Żyliński
    2020 Full text Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications

    We provide tight bounds on the diameter of γ-graphs, which are reconfiguration graphs of the minimum dominating sets of a graph G. In particular, we prove that for any tree T of order n ≥ 3, the diameter of its γ-graph is at most n/2 in the single vertex replacement adjacency model, whereas in the slide adjacency model, it is at most 2(n − 1)/3. Our proof is constructive, leading to a simple linear-time algorithm for determining the optimal sequence of “moves” between two minimum dominating sets of a tree.

  • Recovery and Management of Postindustrial Spaces in the City on Selected Examples od European Implementations
    • Anna Stasiak
    2020 Full text Przestrzeń i Forma

    Undeveloped, neglected and then abandoned post-industrial areas often located in a short distance from city centers have become, on one hand a major problem for city stewards due to the formation of dead urban tissue disturbing the continuity and cohesion of urbanized areas, on the other hand are spaces with high potential for a good location. The article aims to formulate, from the architectural and urban perspective, an answer to the important question arising in this context: what activities are carried out to recover and properly manage post-industrial spaces?

  • Reduced-Cost Constrained Modeling of Microwave and Antenna Components: Recent Advances
    • Anna Pietrenko-Dąbrowska
    • Sławomir Kozieł
    • Leifur Leifsson
    2020

    Electromagnetic (EM) simulation models are ubiquitous in the design of microwave and antenna components. EM analysis is reliable but CPU intensive. In particular, multiple simulations entailed by parametric optimization or uncertainty quantification may considerably slow down the design processes. In order to address this problem, it is possible to employ fast metamodels. Here, the popular solution approaches are approximation surrogates, which are versatile and easily accessible. Notwithstanding, the major issue for conventional modeling methods is the curse of dimensionality. In the case of high-frequency components, an added difficulty are highly nonlinear outputs that need to be handled. A recently reported constrained modeling attempts to broaden the applicability of approximation surrogates by confining the surrogate model setup to a small subset of the parameter space. The said region contains the parameter vectors corresponding to high-quality designs w.r.t. the considered figures of interest, which allows for a dramatic reduction of the number of training samples needed to render reliable surrogates without formally restricting the parameter ranges. This paper reviews the recent techniques employing these concepts and provides real-world illustration examples of antenna and microwave structures.

  • Reducing common mode voltage and bearing currents in quasi - resonant DC - link inverter
    • Marek Turzyński
    • Piotr Chrzan
    2020 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS

    In the paper, a concept of separation of an inverter-fed induction motor drive from its mains supply by two transistor switches inserted in the dc-link circuit is reexamined based on the proposed parallel quasi-resonant dc-link inverter (PQRDCLI). The objective of the paper is to show an advantage of the proposed topology in limiting high frequency common mode voltage and bearing currents. In the laboratory setup, an induction machine was equipped with hybrid ceramic bearings and an insulated clutch to measure the shaft-to-frame bearing voltage and the shaft-grounding current. Experimental tests of the PQRDCLI confirm significant reduction of common mode voltage and shaft-to-frame bearing voltage at dc-link zero voltage notches. By controlling the output voltage slopes, the shaft-grounding brush current and the ground leakage current are also reduced. The efficiency measurement and evaluation of the proposed topology, as compared with a two-level hard switched inverter, reveal comparable efficiency of around 95% and indicate loss distributions in both inverters

  • Reduction of the Multipath Propagation Effect in a Hydroacoustic Channel Using Filtration in Cepstrum
    • Agnieszka Czapiewska
    • Andrzej Łuksza
    • Ryszard Studański
    • Andrzej Żak
    2020 Full text SENSORS

    During data transmission in a hydroacoustic channel, one of the problems is the multipath propagation effect, which leads to a decrease in the transmission parameters and sometimes completely prevents it. Therefore, we have attempted to develop a method, which is based on a recorded hydroacoustic signal, that allows us to recreate the original (generated) signal by eliminating the multipath effect. In our method, we use cepstral analysis to eliminate replicas of the generated signal. The method has been tested in simulation and during measurements in a real environment. Additionally, the influence of the method on data transmission in the hydroacoustic channel was tested. The obtained results confirmed the usefulness of the application of the developed method and improved the quality of data transmission by reducing the multipath propagation effect.

  • Refinement of the Hardening Soil model within the small strain range
    • Marcin Cudny
    • Andrzej Truty
    2020 Full text Acta Geotechnica

    The popularity of the elasto-plastic Hardening Soil (HS) model is based on simple parameter identification from standard testing and empirical formulas. The HS model is implemented in many commercial FE codes designed to analyse geotechnical problems. In its basic version, the stress–strain behaviour within the elastic range is subject to the hypoelastic power law, which assures the barotropy of the elastic stiffness. However, a proper modelling within the small strain range, i.e. strain-induced stiffness degradation and correct reproduction of the hysteretic behaviour, was one of the most important drawbacks in the HS formulation. The first small strain stiffness extension to the HS model was proposed by Benz (Small strain stiffness of soils and its numerical consequences, 2007), and the new model was called Hardening Soil Small (HSS). Despite the simple isotropic formulation, its applicability was proved in various numerical simulations in geotechnics. However, the HSS formulation exhibits a serious fault known in the literature as overshooting, i.e. uncontrolled reset of the loading memory after tiny unloading–reloading cycles. The authors’ main aim was to retain the set of material parameters for the HSS formulation and to propose a new small strain extension to the HS model without overshooting. The new proposal is based on the BRICK model which represents the concept of nested yield surfaces in strain space. The implementation aspects of the new HS-Brick model are described, and its performance is presented in some element tests and selected boundary value problems by comparisons with the HSS formulation.

  • Regulacja napięcia w sieci nN z rozproszonymi źródłami energii
    • Zbigniew Krzemiński
    2020 Full text Przegląd Elektrotechniczny

    Podłączanie rozproszonych źródeł energii do sieci energetycznych niskiego napięcia powoduje powstawanie problemów zmienności i niesymetrii napięcia, zwłaszcza w przypadku dużych odległości od transformatora zasilającego. W skrajnych przypadkach zachodzi konieczność redukcji mocy generowanej przez źródło podczas oddawaniu energii do sieci. Rozwiązaniem tego problemu jest zastosowanie energoelektronicznego regulatora napięcia składającego się z dwóch falowników, z których jeden służy do dodawania, za pomocą transformatora dodawczego, napięcia o regulowanej małej amplitudzie. Drugi falownik służy do dostarczania energii czynnej do układu regulacji oraz do korekty poboru mocy biernej w założonym zakresie. W referacie pokazano zastosowanie regulatora do stabilizacji napięcia sieci nN z generacją rozproszoną.

  • Regularity of weak solutions for aclass of elliptic PDEs in Orlicz-Sobolev spaces
    • Jakub Maksymiuk
    • Karol Wroński
    2020 Full text Topological Methods in Nonlinear Analysis

    We consider the elliptic partial differential equation in the divergence form $$-\div(\nabla G(\nabla u(x))) t + F_u (x, u(x)) = 0,$$ where $G$ is a convex, anisotropic function satisfying certain growth and ellipticity conditions We prove that weak solutions in $W^{1,G}$ are in fact of class $W^{2,2}_{loc}\cap W^{1,\infty}_{loc}$.

  • Regulation of the First Committed Step in Lipopolysaccharide Biosynthesis Catalyzed by LpxC Requires the Essential Protein LapC (YejM) and HslVU Protease
    • Daria Biernacka
    • Patrycja Gorzelak
    • Gracjana Klein-Raina
    • Satish Raina
    2020 Full text INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR SCIENCES

    We previously showed that lipopolysaccharide (LPS) assembly requires the essential LapB protein to regulate FtsH-mediated proteolysis of LpxC protein that catalyzes the first committed step in the LPS synthesis. To further understand the essential function of LapB and its role in LpxC turnover, multicopy suppressors of ΔlapB revealed that overproduction of HslV protease subunit prevents its lethality by proteolytic degradation of LpxC, providing the first alternative pathway of LpxC degradation. Isolation and characterization of an extragenic suppressor mutation that prevents lethality of ΔlapB by restoration of normal LPS synthesis identified a frame-shift mutation after 377 aa in the essential gene designated lapC, suggesting LapB and LapC act antagonistically. The same lapC gene was identified during selection for mutations that induce transcription from LPS defects-responsive rpoEP3 promoter, confer sensitivity to LpxC inhibitor CHIR090 and a temperature-sensitive phenotype. Suppressors of lapC mutants that restored growth at elevated temperatures mapped to lapA/lapB, lpxC and ftsH genes. Such suppressor mutations restored normal levels of LPS and prevented proteolysis of LpxC in lapC mutants. Interestingly, a lapC deletion could be constructed in strains either overproducing LpxC or in the absence of LapB, revealing that FtsH, LapB and LapC together regulate LPS synthesis by controlling LpxC amounts.

  • Reinforced Secure Gossiping Against DoS Attacks in Post-Disaster Scenarios
    • Christian Esposito
    • Zhongliang Zhao
    • Jacek Rak
    2020 Full text IEEE Access

    During and after a disaster, the perceived quality of communication networks often becomes remarkably degraded with an increased ratio of packet losses due to physical damages of the networking equipment, disturbance to the radio frequency signals, continuous reconfiguration of the routing tables, or sudden spikes of the network traffic, e.g., caused by the increased user activity in a post-disaster period. Several techniques have been introduced so far (mainly using data retransmission mechanisms) to tolerate such circumstances. Among them, gossiping has been shown to be efficient in the recovery from message losses. However, a conventional gossiping scheme may exhibit security problems, which can be exploited for further attacks (such as Denial of Service – DoS attack). For instance, the flooding method used by the gossiping can be used to forward the traffic towards many vulnerable nodes to drain their resources and compromise them. Typically, protection against DoS attacks is realized by using cryptographic primitives. However, their scalability limits and costs make them improper for emergency communications after a disaster. In this article, we introduce an approach based on reinforcement learning and game theory to protect the gossiping scheme from DoS attacks without incurring the costs of cryptographic primitives. In our method, nodes properly select which requests to satisfy, which in turn helps other nodes to avoid receiving manipulated gossip messages from malicious and colluded nodes. Additionally, our method operates without exploiting any cryptographic primitives, which prevents excessive energy waste that is undesired in post-disaster resilient networking. Simulation experiments performed in OMNeT++ confirmed the advantages of our approach over the reference schemes in terms of reliability, security, overhead, latency, and power efficiency.

  • Relacje międzyorganizacyjne w dobie Industry 4.0
    • Anna Horzela
    • Ewa Salecka
    • Edyta Gołąb-Andrzejak
    • Anna Tomaszuk
    2020 Full text

    Strukturę opracowania zbudowano w odniesieniu do zagadnienia relacji międzyorganizacyjnych. Omawianą kwestię osadzono w obecnych realiach Industry 4.0. Celem monografii jest omówienie roli Industry 4.0 w budowaniu i rozwoju relacji międzyorganizacyjnych oraz w kształtowaniu ich specyfiki. W pięciu rozdziałach przedstawiono aspekty „sieciowego” powiązania różnych podmiotów i jednostek na gruncie teorii zarządzania. Opracowanie otwiera nakreślenie założeń dotyczących koncepcji Industry 4.0. Kolejny rozdział poświęcono koncepcji kapitału relacyjnego przedsiębiorstw. W nawiązaniu do tematyki rozdziału 2 w kolejnym dokonano rozwinięcia koncepcji organizacji sieciowych. W kolejnych rozdziałach (4 i 5) zaprezentowano przykłady rozwoju relacji międzyorganizacyjnych: koncepcję zaangażowania klientów biznesowych (BCE) oraz koncepcję społecznej odpowiedzialności biznesu (CSR).

  • Relatively high-Seebeck thermoelectric cells containing ionic liquids supplemented by cobalt redox couple
    • Anita Sosnowska
    • Edith Laux
    • Herbert Keppner
    • Tomasz Puzyn
    • Maciej Bobrowski
    2020 Full text JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR LIQUIDS

    Meanwhile no general and reliable equation determining the Seebeck coefficient (S e ) and involving electro-chemical reaction effects was derived for solutions. We reported the database of 15,000 ionic liquids supplemented by three different redox couple systems: 0.01 mol/l Co 3+/2+ (bpy) 3 , 0.01 mol/l I 3-/3I- and 0.2 mol/l 3- /3I- , and the corresponding estimated Seebeck coefficients. We also reported methods for estimating Seebeck coefficients for those systems. First, Seebeck coefficients were measured for 17 ionic liquids and the 3 redox couples independently, and afterwards an analytical QSPR equation was derived after which the Seebeck coefficients for all possible combinations of cations and anions (resulting in 15,000 conceivable ionic liquid compounds) were derived. Following this, we analyzed the data and discovered tendencies and regularities. It was revealed that small, symmetrical and not branched cations and anions which contained less electronegative atoms, made the Seebeck increased. The highest S e = 2.3 mV/K, was observed for small ammonium and phosphonium cations with a triethyl-n-hexylboride anion. We also discovered that for thermo-electric applications cobalt-based redox couples are much better than the ones based on the iodine/iodide system.

  • Reliability of Corroded Stiffened Plate Subjected to Uniaxial Compressive Loading
    • Krzysztof Wołoszyk
    • Yordan Garbatov
    2020 International Journal of Maritime Engineering

    The work is focused on the reliability of corroded stiffened plates subjected to compressive uniaxial load based on the progressive collapse approach as stipulated by the Common Structural Rules for Bulk Carriers and Oil Tankers, employing the limit state design. Two different cases have been investigated. In the first model, the corrosion degradation led to uniform thickness loss, whereas the mechanical properties were unchanged, as given in the Rules. In the second model, the plate thickness degradation was followed by mechanical properties reduction. The uncertainties related to the mechanical properties, thicknesses, and initial imperfections of the corroded stiffened plate were taken into account. Several initial design solutions of stiffened plates, as well as different severity levels of corrosion degradation were investigated. The results show that structural reliability significantly decreases with corrosion development, especially when in addition to the initial imperfections and corrosion plate thickness reduction, corroded plate surface roughness and the changes in the mechanical properties were considered. The uncertainties, their origins and confidence levels are discussed. It was found that non-linear time-dependent corrosion degradation accounting not only for the thickness reduction due to corrosion wastage but also the subsequent decrease of mechanical properties lead to a significant reduction in the reliability index. Additionally, it was defined that the reliability estimate is very sensitive to the uncertainties related to the initial thickness and the spread of corrosion degradation as a function of the time. Incorporating the probability of corrosion detection into the original reliability model introduces additional information about the validity of structural degradation that may lead to a higher beta reliability index estimate compared to the original model.

  • Reliability-Based Stability Analysis of a Baltic Cliff by the Combined Response Surface Method
    • Karol Winkelmann
    • Lesław Zabuski
    • Jarosław Przewłócki
    • Jarosław Górski
    2020 Full text Geotechnical and Geological Engineering

    A simple, straightforward computational procedure was proposed, incorporating the Response Surface Method (RSM) linked with the standard Monte Carlo (MC) simulation method and the Point Estimate Method (PEM). PEM samples make it possible to analyse the sensitivity of the cliff’s stability to variation in subsoil parameters and to reduce the number of random variables of the problem. The proposed methods were tested in two cases: a high failure probability (undrained state) and a moderate failure probability (drained case). The proposed method (CRSM) has been applied to probabilistic stability analysis of a Baltic cliff in Jastrzebia Gora, Poland.

  • Reliable OFDM Data Transmission with Pilot Tones and Error-Correction Coding in Shallow Underwater Acoustic Channel
    • Iwona Kochańska
    2020 Full text Applied Sciences-Basel

    The performance of Underwater Acoustic Communication (UAC) systems are strongly related to the specific propagation conditions of the underwater channel. Horizontal, shallow-water channels are characterised by extremely disadvantageous transmission properties, due to strong multipath propagation and refraction phenomena. The paper presents the results of communication tests performed during a shallow, inland-water experiment with the use of a laboratory model of a UAC system implementing the Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technique. The physical layer of data transmission is partially configurable, enabling adaptation of the modulation and channel coding parameters to the specific propagation conditions. The communication tests were preceded by measurement of the UAC channel transmission properties. Based on the estimated transmission parameters, four configurations of OFDM modulation parameters were selected, and for each of them, communication tests were performed with the use of two Error-Correction Coding (ECC) techniques. In each case, the minimum coding rate was determined for which reliable data transmission with a Bit Error Rate (BER) of less than 10−4 is possible

  • Reliable Surrogate Modeling of Antenna Input Characteristics by Means of Domain Confinement and Principal Components
    • Anna Pietrenko-Dąbrowska
    • Sławomir Kozieł
    2020 Full text Electronics

    A reliable design of contemporary antenna structures necessarily involves full-wave electromagnetic (EM) analysis which is the only tool capable of accounting, for example, for element coupling or the effects of connectors. As EM simulations tend to be CPU-intensive, surrogate modeling allows for relieving the computational overhead of design tasks that require numerous analyses, for example, parametric optimization or uncertainty quantification. Notwithstanding, conventional data-driven surrogates are not suitable for handling highly nonlinear antenna characteristics over multidimensional parameter spaces. This paper proposes a novel modeling approach that employs a recently introduced concept of domain confinement, as well as principal component analysis. In our approach, the modeling process is restricted to the region containing high-quality designs with respect to the performance figures of antennas under design, identified using a set of pre-optimized reference designs. The model domain is spanned by the selected principal components of the reference design set, which reduces both its volume and dimensionality. As a result, a reliable surrogate can be constructed over wide ranges of both operating conditions and antenna parameters, using small training datasets. Our technique is demonstrated using two antenna examples and is favorably compared to both conventional and constrained modeling approaches. Application case studies (antenna optimization) are also discussed.