The paper presents selected issues related to the load carrying capacity of joints between concretes cast at different times. The most important factors affecting the shear resistance, such as: surface roughness (profile), shear reinforcement ratio, concrete strength as well as the aggregate composition are discussed, including results of previous experimental studies conducted on push-off specimens and composite reinforced concrete beams. The differences in behaviour and shear resistance of contacts between ordinary concretes, lightweight aggregate concretes and recycled aggregate concretes are presented. Principles of interface design in the light of codes of practise: AASHTO-LRFD, ACI 318-19, EN 1992-1-1 and prEN 1992-1-1 were described. The theoretical predictions were compared with 184 results of experimental tests on push-off specimens. It has been found that most of the procedures allow for a safe estimation of the load carrying capacity of interfaces – with and without shear reinforcement. However, the obtained results were mostly conservative (depending on the considered design procedure, ratio of the experimental to theoretical load carrying capacity lies in range 1.51÷2.68). This may indicate that the description of shear transfer mechanism between concretes cast at different times is still imperfect and need to be improved.

From a historical point of view, Peter F. Strawson’s philosophical studies are an important element within contemporary interdisciplinary investigations of the mind-body problem. The aim of this article is to present and analyze Strawson’s program of descriptive metaphysics, along with the associated conception of persons, that he has proposed. In the second part, I also present his non-reductive naturalism, focusing on two of his analyses that belong to the field of mind-body relations: these concern the problem of other minds, and the question of the nomological reduction of mental states of persons to physical ones (i.e. mind-body identity theory). I then point to several possibilities of using Strawson’s conception of persons in the context of issues raised by other questions linked to the mind-body problem (namely, personal identity as it relates to split-brain persons, and the different phases of a person’s development).