The role and importance of energy security increases with the development of civilization, whose inherent element has become the demand for energy and its carriers. The article discusses the issue of cooperation in the field of energy security in Central Europe at the moment of finishing work on the North-South Corridor, which changes the existing gas architecture in the region. In order to better understand the situation in the region, the energy systems of the Visegrad Group countries, identical to the Central European region, have been analysed, according to the definition of the World Bank and OECD. Considering the historical and geopolitical connections of the Visegrad Group’s fate, it is important to create a common gas market. The physical interconnection of gas systems greatly increases energy security in this region. Moreover, thanks to the construction of LNG terminals in Poland and Croatia, it will be possible to diversify not only the routes, but also the sources of supply of this important raw material.

In the morphosyntactic literature, there exist two approaches to the problem of argument structure in English nominal synthetic compounds such as furniture moving or dog training. According to Borer (2012), such synthetic compounds belong to the class of referential nominals and thus lack argument structure. On the other hand, Alexiadou (2017) maintains that the external argument is present in the structure of synthetic compounds due to their ability to co-occur with by-phrases. In this paper, we present an extensive set of corpus data to show that synthetic -ing compounds do project the external argument, which is evidenced by their ability to license not only by-phrases but also agent-oriented adjectives and instrumental phrases. Importantly, the corpus data indicates that certain synthetic -ing compounds display the capacity to occur in aspectual contexts; nominal compounds fall in two classes in that regard.

This article provides a detailed review of the ethnosurvey, a research methodology that has been widely applied to the study of migration for almost four decades. We focus on the application of ethnosurvey methods in Mexico and Poland, drawing on studies done in the former country since the early 1980s and, in the latter, since the early 1990s (including several post-2004 examples). The second case is particularly relevant for our analysis as it refers to a number of novel migration forms that have been identified in Central and Eastern Europe in the post-1989 transition period. Drawing on these studies, we consider the advantages and disadvantages of the ethnosurvey as a research tool for studying inter-national migration. Its advantages include its multilevel design, blend of qualitative and quantitative methods, reliance on retrospective life histories and multisited data collection strategy. These features yield a rich database that has enabled researchers to capture circular, irregular, short-term and se-quential movements. Its disadvantages primarily stem from its hybrid sampling strategy, which neces-sarily places limits on estimation and generalisability and on the technical challenges of parallel sampling in communities of both origin and destination. Here we argue that the ethnosurvey was never proposed and should not be taken as a universal methodology applicable in all circumstances. Rather it represents a specialised tool which, when correctly applied under the right conditions, can be ex-tremely useful in revealing the social and economic mechanisms that underlie human mobility, thus yielding a fuller understanding of international migration’s complex causes and diverse consequences in both sending and receiving societies.

The smart grid concept is predicated upon the pervasive use of advanced digital communication, information techniques, and artificial intelligence for the current power system, to be more characteristics of the real-time monitoring and controlling of the supply/demand. Microgrids are modern types of power systems used for distributed energy resource (DER) integration. However, the microgrid energy management, the control, and protection of microgrid components (energy sources, loads, and local storage units) is an important challenge. In this paper, the distributed energy management algorithm and control strategy of a smart microgrid is proposed using an intelligent multi-agent system (MAS) approach to achieve multiple objectives in real-time. The MAS proposed is developed with co-simulation tools, which the microgrid model, simulated using MATLAB/Simulink, and the MAS algorithm implemented in JADE through a middleware MACSimJX. The main study is to develop a new approach, able to communicate a multi-task environment such as MAS inside the S-function block of Simulink, to achieve the optimal energy management objectives.

Analysis of the national and regional plans shows that the current year, 2006, shall deter-mine the key lines of national and regional development practically till 2015, that means till the time when, under the Water Framework Directive, Poland should have achieved its major objectives. This year shall witness decision making not only on the key objectives, priority strategies and measures undertaken for social and economic development of the country and regions, but also allocation of the main streams of funds from the EU and public funds from national sources. This is a sort of chal-lenge for administration bodies responsible for water management, particularly in respect of pro-gramming water management tasks and their incorporation into documents which are strategic for development on national and regional level. Over 2006–2008 efforts of water management admini-stration bodies should be focused on incorporation of water management issues into the consecutive edition of the National Ecological Policy and environmental protection programmes – at regional level, to be followed by county and community levels. This paper is a part of the broad stream of methodology and pilot work on the implementation of provisions of the Water Framework Directive in Poland. The main body of the paper consists of the summary of work done for the pilot river basin of Upper Narew.

The aim of the study was to determine the influence of the load on the water accumulation embankment crown on changes in the course of the filtration curve in its body. The study was carried out with a medium-size filtration apparatus. We made a model of hydrotechnical embankment with the following dimensions. Width: base 2.0 m, crown 0.5 m. Slope inclination: waterside 1:1.5, landside 1:1. Embankment height 0.6 m, width 1.0 m, weight 900 kg. The construction mater-ial included a homogeneous mineral subsoil classified as silty medium sand (siMSa). The embankment model made in a medium-size apparatus kept the accumulation level at a height of 0.5 m. With data from the recording systems, we deter-mined the course of the filtration curve. Next, we kept on loading and relieving the embankment crown using an actuator and a VSS plate with a diameter of 300 mm. During this process, we recorded changes in the level of the water table inside the embankment. A decrease in the water table was observed as a result of increased load. Once the load on the embankment crown was reduced, the water level inside the embankment increased. The embankment model built from natural soil works well as a structure that keeps damming water in a continuous manner. The use of drainage in the form of a stone prism at the foot of the landside slope allows protecting the slope against the negative influence of filtration (piping, lique-faction).