Abstract Arcaded houses forming porticoes are characteristic of many medieval European towns in Spain, France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Czechia, Poland, Silesia and Ukraine. They are a unique feature at the border between public and private space, used for commerce, crafts and communication. Taking the arcaded houses of Silesia as a case-study, this article focuses on the legal and urban contexts in which they were constructed and removed. Comparison with the broader European context suggests that the form and appearance of arcaded houses in Silesia follow similar patterns and chronology to those that have been observed in much better-studied regions.
This article explores the evolution of fame discourse in Poland from 1750 to 1850, tracing its transition from traditional posthumous glorification to a nuanced understanding of contemporaneous recognition. As a response to the scholarship on the historical emergence of celebrity culture in Western Europe in the period, it highlights the correspondences between Polish and Western European discourses while noting the specificity of East Central European case. Drawing on a wide array of sources including academic texts, dictionaries, newspapers, and literature, the study explains how Polish discourse increasingly recognised celebrity as a distinct mode of public recognition. Despite the absence of a direct equivalent term, the Polish discussion on fame paralleled broader European discourse, notably regarding the democratisation of fame, its intersection with media, and its engagement with the audience.
Tekst przedstawia genezę i położenie mniejszości słowackiej w Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej, zamieszkałej na przyłączonych do Polski w 1920 r. częściach Spiszu i Orawy. Działania na rzecz zachowania słowackiej tożsamości narodowej realizowane były m.in. na płaszczyźnie edukacyjnej i religijnej. Na ogół spotykały się one z nieprzychylnym nastawieniem polskich władz państwowych, samorządowych i kościelnych.
Random disturbances such as air pollution may affect cognitive performance, which, particularly in high-stakes settings, may have severe consequences for an individual's productivity and well-being. This paper examines the short-term effects of air pollution on school leaving exam results in Poland. I exploit random variation in air pollution between the days on which exams are held across three consecutive school years. I aim to capture this random variation by including school and time fixed effects. The school-level panel data is drawn from a governmental program where air pollution is continuously measured in the schoolyard. This localized hourly air pollution measure is a unique feature of my study, which increases the precision of the estimated effects. In addition, using distant and aggregated air pollution measures allows me for the comparison of the estimates in space and time. The findings suggest that a one standard deviation increase in the concentration of particulate matter PM2.5 and PM10 decreases students' exam scores by around 0.07-0.08 standard deviations. The magnitude and significance of these results depend on the location and timing of the air pollution readings, indicating the importance of the localized air pollution measure and the distinction between contemporaneous and lingering effects. Further, air pollution effects gradually increase in line with the quantiles of the exam score distribution, suggesting that high-ability students are more affected by the random disturbances caused by air pollution.
A large part of spatial planning projects in Polish rural communes deals with landscape issues such as protection and planning. Besides legal regulations extended public consultations (EPCs) on spatial planning processes provide an opportunity to comprehensively address and negotiate landscape arguments. This research aims to identify the understanding and value of the concept of landscape by local communities in the examined EPC cases. This paper explores landscape issues through a systematic analysis (multiple-case study) of six cases of EPCs carried out in Poland between 2019 and 2022. The landscape was negotiated in terms of its various functions to provide value for aesthetics, culture, history, identity, recreation, and economy. In some cases, the landscape was used as an argument to promote a hidden agenda. In the rural communes, aesthetic functions of landscapes were frequently addressed, while natural, ecological, and climatic functions of the landscape were barely mentioned, suggesting that the understanding of landscape remains at a representative, cultural, and visual level, which differs from urban discourses that often focus on climatic and ecological functions of landscape. EPCs are a sound instrument to further integrate landscape as a common asset into spatial planning processes.
The studies published in the first issue of 2024 focus on particular aspects of military conflicts: they reflect the experiences of civilians, as they face the horrors of war and repressions in their everyday lives, describe the efforts of aid organisations to alleviate the situation of war victims, analyse the challenge of providing the necessary armaments for combat, and portray the specific perspectives of the diplomatic community on international conflicts. Three of the articles in the current journal are dedicated to the experiences of Latvia and Lithuania during the final stages of the First World War and the War of Independence, while one article and a source publication focus on the Second World War.
Traditionally, we offer our readers one article in each issue of the journal, which is based on a recently defended master’s thesis. In this issue, it is the research by Laura Kļaviņa on the culmination of the repressive policy exerted by Iskolat regime in Vidzeme – the arrests and deportation of civilians to Moscow and Ekaterinburg in February 1918. The author traces the processes of arrest and relocation of the deported inhabitants of Smiltene area, describes the conditions in deportation and, ultimately, their liberation and return to their homeland.
Lithuanian researcher Kestutis Kilinskas examines the processes of the Lithuanian War of Independence from a specific perspective, tracing the attempts of the newly founded Republic of Lithuania in 1919 to provide its army with weapons and ammunition, clothing and food, requesting and receiving these materials from both belligerents – Germany and the Entente countries. This study perfectly illustrates the direct link between arms supplies and changes in the foreign policy interests of the supplying countries, a trend that we once again observe today in the case of arms supplies to Ukraine.
We are publishing the extensive study dedicated to the activities of Lady Muriel Paget’s mission in Daugavpils from 1920 to 1922, implemented by Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Swain of the University of Glasgow – this material is released in two sequels. The current issue contains the first part of the study, which concerns the establishment of the mission in Daugavpils and reflects Lady Muriel’s efforts to find the most effective way to help the Latvian society, which had suffered severely during the long war, especially seeking to aid the most vulnerable part of the society – the children. In the second and final part, which will be published in the next issue of the journal at the end of 2024, the author details the complex relationship between the mission and its main financial supporter, the international Save the Children Fund, and the perceptions of the nature of aid work, which differed between the two parties.
The Romanian researcher Bogdan Alexander Schipor offers an interesting and, for Latvian readers, unusual perspective on the events at the beginning of the Second World War in Latvia, depicting them through the prism of Romanian diplomat Grigore Niculescu-Buzešti, who resided in Riga at the time.
In his telegrams sent to Bucharest, which are analysed in the article, the Romanian diplomat reveals both the prevailing mood in Latvian society at the end of 1939 and in 1940, as well as the annexation course of the Baltic states by the Soviet Union.
A special, and in its apparent simplicity extremely appealing historical source published in this issue is the report of the head priest of the Latvian Orthodox parish of Ērgļi Jānis Plaudis to the Riga Eparchy Administration, wherein the author describes the situation in Ērgļi and its surroundings after the intense fighting in this region in August 1944. The report was prepared for publication by Baiba Pazāne, a doctoral student at the Faculty of History and Philosophy, University of Latvia. In the historical document, J. Plaudis vividly depicts the sudden intrusion of active warfare into the everyday lives of civilians, the associated emotional turmoil, loss of life, material damage and – most vividly – chaos, insecurity and fear created by the war.
The journal concludes with reviews of three recently published, very different studies – a textbook on security aspects of Latvian history by academician Guntis Zemītis, a study of Latvian traditional outfits by clothing history researchers Aija Jansone and Inga Vīksna, and a book by Polish researcher Wojciech Materski on the border issue between Latvia and Russia in historical context, published in Poland.
Kristīne Beķere
History (General) and history of Europe, Slavic languages. Baltic languages. Albanian languages
In the theoretical study of distributed communication networks, "history trees" are a discrete structure that naturally models the concept that anonymous agents become distinguishable upon receiving different sets of messages from neighboring agents. By conveniently organizing temporal information in a systematic manner, history trees have been instrumental in the development of optimal deterministic algorithms for networks that are both anonymous and dynamically evolving. This note provides an accessible introduction to history trees, drawing comparisons with more traditional structures found in existing literature and reviewing the latest advancements in the applications of history trees, especially within dynamic networks. Furthermore, it expands the theoretical framework of history trees in new directions, also highlighting several open problems for further investigation.
The paper addresses Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) in the context of fuel delivery to gas stations. The CVRP aims to minimize total travel distance for a fleet with limited capacity. Fuel delivery, however, introduces unique complexities within the CVRP framework. We propose a novel approach that integrates the Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithm with a customized CVRP model specifically designed for gas station networks. This model incorporates real-world constraints like vehicle capacity, fuel demands at each station, and road network distances. The paper outlines the design of SA-based CVRP model for fuel delivery. We detail the objective function (minimizing distance) and the SA's exploration mechanism for generating candidate solutions. To assess its effectiveness, the proposed approach undergoes computational tests in Poland's gas station network serviced by the Samat transportation company. We compare the performance of our SA-based CVRP model with the conventional Mixed Integer Programming model for CVRP powered by Gurobi. The results aim to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed SA-based heuristic in finding efficient routes for fuel deliveries.
Tatyana Court, Naděžda Čapková, Andrzej Pająk
et al.
AimsImpaired lung function has been strongly associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD) events. We aimed to assess the additive prognostic value of spirometry indices to the risk estimation of CVD events in Eastern European populations in this study.MethodsWe randomly selected 14,061 individuals with a mean age of 59 ± 7.3 years without a previous history of cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases from population registers in the Czechia, Poland, and Lithuania. Predictive values of standardised Z-scores of forced expiratory volume measured in 1 s (FEV1), forced vital capacity (FVC), and FEV1 divided by height cubed (FEV1/ht3) were tested. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) of CVD events of various spirometry indices over the Framingham Risk Score (FRS) model. The model performance was evaluated using Harrell’s C-statistics, likelihood ratio tests, and Bayesian information criterion.ResultsAll spirometry indices had a strong linear relation with the incidence of CVD events (HR ranged from 1.10 to 1.12 between indices). The model stratified by FEV1/ht3 tertiles had a stronger link with CVD events than FEV1 and FVC. The risk of CVD event for the lowest vs. highest FEV1/ht3 tertile among people with low FRS was higher (HR: 2.35; 95% confidence interval: 1.96–2.81) than among those with high FRS. The addition of spirometry indices showed a small but statistically significant improvement of the FRS model.ConclusionsThe addition of spirometry indices might improve the prediction of incident CVD events particularly in the low-risk group. FEV1/ht3 is a more sensitive predictor compared to other spirometry indices.
Diseases of the circulatory (Cardiovascular) system
W artykule zaprezentowano mało znaną aktywność Johanna Baptisty Homanna z Norymbergi, który kojarzony jest przede wszystkim jako kartograf i wydawca. Postawiono tezę, że w rodzinnym mieście jest to postać dzisiaj prawie nieznana i zapomniana, natomiast w epoce był bardzo aktywnym uczestnikiem życia gospodarczego, ale przede wszystkim – intelektualnego miasta. Wielka popularność jego map i atlasów powodowała, że w pewnym sensie stał się kreatorem wizerunku świata, zaś rozległe kontakty z uczonymi, artystami i bogatym kupiectwem włączały go w proces tworzenia środowiska norymberskiej elity.
Johann Baptist Homann – a forgotten cartographer
The article presents the little-known activity of Johann Baptist Homann from Nuremberg, who is known above all as a cartographer and publisher. It presents a thesis that today he is almost unknown and forgotten in his home town, however, in his time he was a very active participant of the economic and, above all, intellectual life of the town. The great popularity of his maps and atlases meant that he became, to some extent, the creator of the world’s image, while his extensive contacts with scholars, artists and rich merchants led to his involvement in creating the environment of the Nuremberg elite.
KEY WORDS: history of cartography, early modern history, Nuremberg in the 18th century, Johann Baptist Homann, politics of memory
Historic gardens are often seen in the context of botanical heritage, which emphasizes their aesthetic and botanical value. Yet, their architectural importance as an integral part of the architectural heritage of the bastion castle ensemble is ignored. Finding the relationship between the castle and the garden is presently complicated by considerable changes in the townscape since the 17th century and the lack of details on these gardens’ depictions on maps. The paper demonstrates how historical maps, especially military ones combined with modern on-site analyses can reveal the main architectural types of the gardens in the bastion castle ensemble and show their most important architectural features that should be preserved. The results demonstrate three scenarios in the relationship between the garden and the palace component of bastion castle, their main features, and the challenges facing them. This elucidation of the main features can help to conserve and to valorize plans for the gardens in these ensembles.
I apply Dawid's Meta-Empirical Assessment (MEA) methodology to the theory of cosmological inflation. I argue that applying this methodology does not currently offer a compelling case for ascribing non-empirical confirmation to cosmological inflation. In particular, I argue that despite displaying strong instances of Unexpected Explanatory Coherence (UEA), it is premature to evaluate the theory on the basis of the No Alternatives Argument (NAA). More significantly though, I argue that the theory of cosmological inflation fails to sustain a convincing Meta-Inductive Argument (MIA) because the empirical evidence and theoretical successes that it seeks to draw meta-empirical support from do not warrant a meta-inductive inference to inflation. I conclude by assessing how future developments could pave the way towards crafting a more compelling case for the non-empirical confirmation of cosmological inflation.
The paper re-examines the principal methodological questions, arising in the debate over the cosmological standard model's postulate of Dark Matter vs. rivalling proposals that modify standard (Newtonian and general-relativistic) gravitational theory, the so-called Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) and its subsequent extensions. What to make of such seemingly radical challenges of cosmological orthodoxy? In the first part of our paper, we assess MONDian theories through the lens of key ideas of major 20th century philosophers of science (Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, and Laudan), thereby rectifying widespread misconceptions and misapplications of these ideas common in the pertinent MOND-related literature. None of these classical methodological frameworks, which render precise and systematise the more intuitive judgements prevalent in the scientific community, yields a favourable verdict on MOND and its successors -- contrary to claims in the MOND-related literature by some of these theories' advocates; the respective theory appraisals are largely damning. Drawing on these insights, the paper's second part zooms in on the most common complaint about MONDian theories, their ad-hocness. We demonstrate how the recent coherentist model of ad-hocness captures, and fleshes out, the underlying -- but too often insufficiently articulated -- hunches underlying this critique. MONDian theories indeed come out as severely ad hoc: they do not cohere well with either theoretical or empirical-factual background knowledge. In fact, as our complementary comparison with the cosmological standard model's Dark Matter postulate shows, with respect to ad-hocness, MONDian theories fare worse than the cosmological standard model.
Całość problemu zostanie ujęta w trzyczęściowy artykuł prezentujący pamiętniki działaczy komunistycznych jako ważnego źródła do dziejów „walki klasowej” w okresie od rewolucji 1905–1907 do wybuchu II wojny światowej. Pierwsza jego część zawiera opis metod badawczych oraz analizę doświadczeń poszczególnych pokoleń rewolucjonistów wraz ze wskazaniem zarówno punktów wspólnych, jak i różnic w ich życiorysach. Niezależnie bowiem od propagandowej funkcji omawianych tekstów, pozwalają one przyjrzeć się różnym wydarzeniom z historii Łodzi (np. strajkom i demonstracjom) niejako pod mikroskopem, oddając emocje towarzyszące ich uczestnikom, a czasem też indywidualne odczucia i charaktery autorów.
History of Poland, Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
Święto Pracy było w II Rzeczpospolitej polem rywalizacji między Polską Partią Socjalistyczną a Komunistyczną Partią Polski. Ponieważ w Łodzi stacjonował bardzo duży garnizon wojskowy, tego dnia wiele działań komunistów skierowanych było przeciwko armii. Prowadził je Centralny Wydział Wojskowy Komitetu Centralnego KPP, nazywany potocznie „wojskówką”. Władze wojskowe doskonale orientowały się w zamierzeniach komunistów i skutecznie im przeciwdziałały, m.in. podczas manifestacji pierwszomajowych. Największe tego typu obchody współorganizowane przez KPP, miały miejsce w 1936 r. Wzięło w nich udział około 25 tys. osób. Z tego powodu łódzki garnizon postawiono w stan gotowości bojowej. Na szczęście nie doszło do eskalacji wydarzeń i wojsko nie musiało być użyte.
Niels C. M. Martens, Miguel Ángel Carretero Sahuquillo, Erhard Scholz
et al.
Editorial of a special issue on dark matter & modified gravity, distributed across the journals Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics and Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Published version of the open access editorial (in SHPS) available here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.08.015. The six papers are collected here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/studies-in-history-and-philosophy-of-science-part-b-studies-in-history-and-philosophy-of-modern-physics/special-issue/10CR71RJLWM.
Chromatic dispersion is a common problem to degrade the system resolution in optical coherence tomography (OCT). This study is to develop a deep learning network for automated dispersion compensation (ADC-Net) in OCT. The ADC-Net is based on a redesigned UNet architecture which employs an encoder-decoder pipeline. The input section encompasses partially compensated OCT B-scans with individual retinal layers optimized. Corresponding output is a fully compensated OCT B-scans with all retinal layers optimized. Two numeric parameters, i.e., peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity index metric computed at multiple scales (MS-SSIM), were used for objective assessment of the ADC-Net performance. Comparative analysis of training models, including single, three, five, seven and nine input channels were implemented. The five-input channels implementation was observed as the optimal mode for ADC-Net training to achieve robust dispersion compensation in OCT
The report discusses the activities of the Commission on the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020/2021. It presents the lists of: scientific meetings, conferences, symposia, seminars, new members and new publications.
History of scholarship and learning. The humanities, Science (General)
Irina Ruf, Jin Meng, Łucja Fostowicz-Frelik
et al.
Palaeolagus, a late Eocene to early Miocene North American lagomorph genus, represented by numerous and well-preserved specimens, has been long considered a basal leporid, although it is currently understood as a stem lagomorph. Based on micro-computed tomography (μCT) data and 3D reconstructions, here we present the first description of intracranial structures of the nasal and auditory regions of a complete skull of Palaeolagus haydeni from the early Oligocene of Nebraska. Although Palaeolagus haydeni shows a puzzling mixture of extant leporid and ochotonid characters, it helps to polarize and re-evaluate already known lagomorph intracranial characters based on outgroup comparison with Rodentia and Scandentia. Common derived features of Palaeolagus haydeni and extant Lagomorpha are the dendritic maxilloturbinal and the excavated nasoturbinal that contacts the lamina semicircularis. Generally, Palaeolagus haydeni and Leporidae have several characters in common, some of which are certainly plesiomorphic (e.g., thin wall of bulla tympani and flat conic cochlea). Palaeolagus haydeni resembles Leporidae in having an interturbinal between the two frontoturbinals, and three ethmoturbinals plus one interturbinal between ethmoturbinal I and II. Now, this should also be regarded as a plesiomorphic grundplan pattern for Leporidae whereas ochotonids are derived from the lagomorph grundplan as concerns the number of frontoturbinals. Concerning the middle ear, Palaeolagus haydeni significantly contributes to the polarization of the anterior anchoring of the malleus in extant lagomorphs. Palaeolagus haydeni resembles the pattern observed in early ontogenetic stages of Ochotonidae, i.e., the attachment of the malleus to the ectotympanic via a short processus anterior. The patterns in adult ochotonids and leporids now can be regarded as two different and apomorphic character states. Autapomorphic characters of Palaeolagus haydeni are the reduced frontoturbinal 2 and the additional anterolaterally oriented process of the lamina semicircularis. Interestingly, among the investigated intracranial structures the loss of the secondary crus commune is the only apomorphic grundplan character of crown Lagomorpha.
Celem artykułu jest omówienie specyfiki działalności księcia krakowskiego i sandomierskiego Bolesława V Wstydliwego wobec klasztorów. Wspomnianemu władcy nie można odmówić hojności wobec Kościoła. Nie można jednak nie spostrzec, że owa hojność – zwłaszcza wobec klasztorów założonych przez najbardziej potężne rody – była pochodną sytuacji politycznej i aktualnej pozycji owych rodów w elicie władzy. Ilość przywilejów dla „rodowych” konwentów była wprost proporcjonalna do znaczenia ich założycieli w państwie Bolesława. Działal-ność donacyjna księcia stała się narzędziem politycznym. Należy zwrócić uwagę, że zmniejszenia ilości wystawianych przywilejów nie doświadczyły fundacje rodów mało znaczących w XIII w., czy fundacje monarsze.