There is a need for quality control of wastewater introduced into drainage systems. Physical and chemical analyses of wastewater inform only about the situation existing at the moment of sampling. The analysis based on bioindication methods allows to evaluate the existing state before sampling and so to recognize a drop of excessive loads or harmful substances for activated sludge. This refers to the moment preceding the sample taking at least by the generation time of the species with the lowest reproduction rate. For these reasons, the possibility of using microfauna representatives (feeding on organic pollutions) for bioindication was evaluated. The estimation was made of the usefulness of indicator species from the Kolkwitz-Marssori system, the Shannon-Wiener index based on species abundance and the latter based on abundances of morphological-functional organism groups. The study results showed that the ShannonWiener index calculated for morphological-functional groups (easiest to determine) was accurate enough for bioindication.

The Histogram Test method is a popular technique in analog-to-digital converter (ADC) testing. The presence of additive noise in the test setup or in the ADC itself can potentially affect the accuracy of the test results. In this study, we demonstrate that additive noise causes a bias in the terminal based estimation of the gain but not in the estimation of the offset. The estimation error is determined analytically as a function of the sinusoidal stimulus signal amplitude and the noise standard deviation. We derive an exact but computationally difficult expression as well as a simpler closed form approximation that provides an upper bound of the bias of the terminal based gain. The estimators are validated numerically using a Monte Carlo procedure with simulated and experimental data.

An array consisting of four commercial gas sensors with target specifications for hydrocarbons, ammonia, alcohol, explosive gases has been constructed and tested. The sensors in the array operate in the dynamic mode upon the temperature modulation from 350°C to 500°C. Changes in the sensor operating temperature lead to distinct resistance responses affected by the gas type, its concentration and the humidity level. The measurements are performed upon various hydrogen (17-3000 ppm), methane (167-3000 ppm) and propane (167-3000 ppm) concentrations at relative humidity levels of 0-75%RH. The measured dynamic response signals are further processed with the Discrete Fourier Transform. Absolute values of the dc component and the first five harmonics of each sensor are analysed by a feed-forward back-propagation neural network. The ultimate aim of this research is to achieve a reliable hydrogen detection despite an interference of the humidity and residual gases.

On 29 November 2021 Professor Wiesław Boryś passed away in Kraków. He was an eminent expert in Slavonic studies, Serbian‑Croatian studies, and Kaszubian studies, and a distinguished etymologist, dialectologist and lexicographer. Professor Wiesław Boryś was born on 4 January 1939 in the village of Bzin in Kielce region. In 1956 he started education at the Chair in Slavonic Studies of the Jagiellonian University. He obtained an MA in Serbian‑Croatian studies in 1961, and eight years later a PhD from the JU Faculty of Philology. In 1974 he earned the title of habilitated doctor, became an associate professor in 1987 and gained full professorship in 1993.
Professor Boryś was associated with the Polish Academy of Sciences since 1961. He initially worked in the Section of Old Polish Language and then, from 1969 until retirement, in the Department of Proto‑Slavic Language. In 1986–2008 he taught a range of courses at the JU Institute of Slavonic Studies.
The scholarly work of Professor Boryś was especially focused on diachrony – the history of Slavonic language and lexicon, historical and comparative grammar, etymology, and the reconstruction of Proto‑Slavic language – as well as dialectology. The development of his research interests was largely shaped by Serbian‑Croatian studies, particularly into Čakavian and Kajkavian dialects as well as his work at the Polish Academy of Sciences – Proto‑Slavic studies and later also Kashubian studies.
The achievements of Professor Boryś include the publication of about 200 scholarly works, including 8 single‑authored books and 16 co‑authored books (e.g. eight volumes of Słownik prasłowiański). The crowning achievement of his career was the publication of two lexicographic works: Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego, the first dictionary since the times of Aleksander Brückner to provide a generally available etymological compendium of the Polish language, and Słownik etymologiczny kaszubszczyzny, the world’s first etymological dialect dictionary in the field of Slavonic studies, consisting of six volumes written together with Professor Hanna Popowska‑Taborska.
The chief focus of Professor Boryś was the description of South Slavonic languages and dialects, especially Čakavian and Kajkavian dialects. He was one of the greatest experts in this field, which is reflected in several dozen articles as well as the books Budowa słowotwórcza rzeczowników w tekstach czakawskich XV i XVI w., Studia nad dialektem czakawskim Juraja Križanicia. Akcentuacja rzeczowników and Czakawskie studia leksykalne. Dziedzictwo prasłowiańskie w słownictwie czakawskim.
The late Professor Wiesław Boryś will always be remembered for his impressive scholarly achievements and kept in fond memory.

The authors of the paper describe the way in which the longitudinal working Gussmann was mined in level V and the longitudinal working Kosocice in level VI, which in both cases resulted in a water flux from behind the northern boundary of the salt deposit. Only after concrete dams were seated on both levels, the brine flux was stopped leaving a direct contact of the dams with the pressurized water around the mine. For the sake of controlling water beyond the dams, steel pipelines were conducted through both dams and equipped with gauges before the dams. Their use in a saline environment, the developing corrosion increased the possibility that the tightness of the pipelines would be damaged. For this reason a decision was made to protect the mine by making a tight reconstruction of the safety pillar in both levels along the longitudinal working for about 600 m from the dams eastwards. For this purpose the pipeline injection method was applied. As the volume of voids to be tightly filled equaled to about 3800 m3, the task had to be divided into stages. Because of considerable distances of the liquidated workings from the closest shaft, the sealing slurries were prepared in a special injection center on the surface from where they were transported to the destination with a pumping pipeline through the Kościuszko shaft. The most important aspect of liquidating the end parts of the longitudinal working was to properly select the sealing slurries in view of their best cooperation with the rock mass, and such parameters as tightness, durability and cost. At the end stage of works, both longitudinal workings were equipped with dams, which were sealed up with the hole injection method. The innovative technology was implemented in the Wieliczka Salt Mine to reconstruct the safety pillar in levels VI and V in the most westward workings, the mine was shortened by about 600 m, the length of the ventilation system was reduced, systematic observations and pressure read-outs in dams 3 and 4 were systematically eliminated in dams 3 and 4. In this way the costs were lowered and safety of the mine improved.

The emission rate of fibers released lrorn the new/fresh and used/worn ceramic fiber material. glass wool and man-made mineral fiber material due lo mechanical impact was determined experimentally. The emission rate has been defined as a number or fibers emitted per unit mass and unit impaction energy. The averaged emission rate of short fibers (LS 5 run) for all studied fresh non-asbestos fiber materials ranged lrom 2.2 to 20 fibers/(g·.l), while the emission or long fibers (I,> 5 urn) was between 2.2 and I 00 fibers/(g·J). The susceptibility or worn fiber-containing materials 10 emitting fibrous particles due 10 mechanical impaction was significantly diverse. Emission from glass wool unchanged with the exploitation, while the emission rate of the mineral fiber material increased by a factor of I O·' compared 10 new material. The dominating population or emitted fibers from studied materials ranged trorn 2 10 around 8 pm in length.

Speech enhancement is fundamental for various real time speech applications and it is a challenging task in the case of a single channel because practically only one data channel is available. We have proposed a supervised single channel speech enhancement algorithm in this paper based on a deep neural network (DNN) and less aggressive Wiener filtering as additional DNN layer. During the training stage the network learns and predicts the magnitude spectrums of the clean and noise signals from input noisy speech acoustic features. Relative spectral transform-perceptual linear prediction (RASTA-PLP) is used in the proposed method to extract the acoustic features at the frame level. Autoregressive moving average (ARMA) filter is applied to smooth the temporal curves of extracted features. The trained network predicts the coefficients to construct a ratio mask based on mean square error (MSE) objective cost function. The less aggressive Wiener filter is placed as an additional layer on the top of a DNN to produce an enhanced magnitude spectrum. Finally, the noisy speech phase is used to reconstruct the enhanced speech. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed DNN framework with less aggressive Wiener filtering outperforms the competing speech enhancement methods in terms of the speech quality and intelligibility.

Snoring is a typical and intuitive symptom of the obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS), which is a kind of sleep-related respiratory disorder having adverse effects on people’s lives. Detecting snoring sounds from the whole night recorded sounds is the first but the most important step for the snoring analysis of OSAHS. An automatic snoring detection system based on the wavelet packet transform (WPT) with an eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) classifier is proposed in the paper, which recognizes snoring sounds from the enhanced episodes by the generalization subspace noise reduction algorithm. The feature selection technology based on correlation analysis is applied to select the most discriminative WPT features. The selected features yield a high sensitivity of 97.27% and a precision of 96.48% on the test set. The recognition performance demonstrates that WPT is effective in the analysis of snoring and non-snoring sounds, and the difference is exhibited much more comprehensively by sub-bands with smaller frequency ranges. The distribution of snoring sound is mainly on the middle and low frequency parts, there is also evident difference between snoring and non-snoring sounds on the high frequency part.

The possibility of applying gas chromatograph to air samples discrimination in regard to odour intensity and hedonic quality was examined. The air samples were arornatised with lemon oil and four admixtures. fourteen distinctive points of a chromatogram were appointed and the distances from the points lo a set basis were measured. The set of h 1-h 14 parameters (inputs) and varied individual sensory estimations of I and H (outputs) was used as a training data set for NN. Possibility of discrimination of the odour quality of the samples situated close to the threshold of odour quality difference detectability was confirmed on the level of approximately one.

The aims of the current study are the physicochemical characterization, spatial assessment and monitoring of hydrocarbon contamination in quagmire of three sites (Agreb, Gassi and Zotti) in the Hassi Messaoud region (Algerian Sahara), as a result of the presence of an important oil industry rejecting industrial wastewater. Samples were obtained from three different depths for each site. Total Hydrocarbons (THC) were determined by a gravimetric method, and the four (F1:C6-C10), (F2:C10-C16), (F3:C16-C34) and F4>C34) hydrocarbon fractions and BTEX (Benzene, Toluene, Ethyl-benzene and Xylene) were determined by using gas chromatography (FID). The results obtained show a high contamination with hydrocarbons in different sites and depths. The concentrations of THC, four hydrocarbon fraction and BTEX recorded on Agreb site in different depth were in this order: 51200–120000 mg/kg d.w.; <LOD – 59500 mg/kg d.w.; 2.4–90.8 mg/kg d.w. respectively; and for Gassi site, in this order: 59600–70300 mg/kg d.w.; < LOD – 43000 mg/kg d.w.; 8.5–112 mg/kg d.w. Finely they were in the following order: 18100–19200 mg/kg d.w.; <LOD – 9130 mg/kg d.w.; 2.75–65 mg/kg d.w. for Zotti site. Statistical analysis demonstrated an important site effect of THC and the three hydrocarbon fractions except for F4. However, there is no site and depth effect for BTEX. On the other hand the depth effect is significant just for THC, F1 and F2 of hydrocarbons. This variation can be attributed to the difference of physicochemical parameters between studied sites.

Potok Golawiecki (a river in the province of Silesia) is polluted in a way typical for the Upper Silesian industrial zone. It is the river into which the Ziemowit coal mine discharges its salt waters and it also receives municipal sewage. Changes in the values of selected indicators ofwater quality for Potok Golawiecki along its course were determined in the paper. It was found that the hydrochcmical character of the water in Potok Goławiecki depended strongly on salt water discharges from mines, which were the main factor disturbing the river's natural environment. The pollution of the river makes its water non-potable, and excludes its use even in industry

Leadership research is an essential part of all areas of organisational science worldwide, and there is still a lack of studies in this research area. The paper aims to determine leadership competency perceptions and their sub-competencies characteristics and determinants in the fourth industrial revolution era. The research survey, conducted in 2018-2021, covered a sample of 100 respondents from organisations from the Czech Republic. The most important competencies for leadership are effective communication, innovation, cooperation, creativity, solving problems, lifelong learning, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and motivation and support of others. We selected statistical methods ANOVA and linear regression for the characteristics of the respondents and the cluster analysis for the leaders’ 4.0 types determination. The linear regression results showed that age, the field of education, position in the organisation and tenure in the organisation of the respondents affect their assessment of the level of leadership competency. We identified three management types that are currently facing the challenges of Industry 4.0: ICT-oriented Junior Managers, Top 4.0 Prepared Leaders, and Non-Creative Unmotivated Senior Directors. The contribution of this paper is the in-depth study in the area of perceived levels of partial competencies for leadership for different criteria of respondents.

Simulations are becoming one of the most important techniques supporting production preparation, even in those industrial sectors with atypical technological processes, such as in metallurgy, where there is a multiphase material flow. This is due to the fact that in the conditions of a market economy, enterprises have to solve more and more complex problems in a shorter time. On the basis of the existing production process and the knowledge of the flow characteristics in a given process, a model is built, which, when subjected to simulation tests, provides experimental results in the scope of the defined problem. The use of computer techniques also creates new possibilities for the rational use of the reserves inherent in each technological process. Taking into account the existing demand and the state of modern technology, the computer model can be a source of information for further analysis and decision-making processes supporting company management. At work a model of the logistic system was made on the example of a hot-rolled steel strip mill, on which simulation experiments were carried out to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the analysis production line. The presented article aims to disseminate the idea of ??Industry 4.0 in Polish companies from the manufacturing industry sector, taking into account simulation techniques.

The present work focuses on examining the batch removal of Fe (III) from water using powdered Peganum Harmala seeds, characterized as FT-IR. In this work, several parameters are measured, including contact time, pH, Fe (III) concentration, reaction temperature effect, and adsorbent dose effect. Fe (III) adsorption was assessed using a UV-vis spectrophotometer at a wavelength of 620 nm. The findings demonstrated a positive correlation between the dosage of adsorbent and Fe (III) ions removal, with an increase in the adsorbent dose corresponding to higher elimination of Fe (III) ions. Therefore, the Langmuir isotherm model yielded more accurate equilibrium data compared to the Frendulich model. The kinetic data were mostly analyzed using a pseudo-second-order model rather than a pseudo-first-order model. Thermodynamic parameters, including enthalpy (ΔH◦), entropy (ΔS◦), and free energy (ΔG◦), were calculated. The adsorption process was found to be exothermic. Overall, Peganum Harmala was a favorable adsorbent for removing Fe (III) from aqueous solutions.

A glacier lake outburst flood occurred on James Ross Island, Antarctic Peninsula region, during the 2004-2005 austral summer season. The source lake was located on the Lachman II ice-cored rock glacier, and formed prior to 1980. The size of the lake has been increasing gradually since the 1990s. The lake basin extended to approximately 220 m in length and 160 m in width by the end of February 2005. We observed that the lake had drained by February 2005, and found a deep gully on the south side of the lake rim. It appears that the lake level rose and water overflowed the lake rim here. James Ross Island contains a large number of debris-covered glaciers, ice-cored moraines, and rock glaciers with glacier lakes which are dammed by these features or which form upon them. As climatic warming has recently been reported for this region, further glacier lake outburst floods seem likely to occur.

One of the most significant global climatic events in the Cenozoic was the transition from greenhouse to icehouse conditions in Antarctica. Tectonic evolution of the region and gradual cooling at the end of Eocene led to the first appearance of ice sheets at the Eocene/Oligocene boundary (ca. 34 Ma). Here we report geological record of mountain glaciers that preceded major ice sheet formation in Antarctica. A terrestrial, valley-type tillite up to 65 metres thick was revealed between two basaltic lava sequences in the Eocene– Oligocene Point Thomas Formation at Hervé Cove – Breccia Crag in Admiralty Bay, King George Island, South Shetland Islands. K-Ar dating of the lavas suggests the age of the glaciation at 45–41 Ma (Middle Eocene). It is the oldest Cenozoic record of alpine glaciers in West Antarctica, providing insight into the onset of glaciation of the Antarctic Peninsula and South Shetland Islands.

Recent foraminifera represented by 24 species belonging to 20 genera are recognized in marine and/or glacio-marine sediment samples collected at water depths of up to 75 m in Goulden Cove (Admiralty Bay) on King George Island, West Antarctica. The foraminifer assemblages are dominated by benthic taxa, such as Globocassidulina biora and Miliammina arenacea, the two most abundant species in the studied biocenosis.