A large amount of research has shown that there are two types of trait content in social cognition – agency (including competence) and communion (including morality). Because communal traits are more instrumental in locating a person on the approach-avoidance dimension than agentic ones, the former are considered to be relatively more important in person (and group) perception processes. We developed a proposal that this difference in importance extends to spontaneous trait inferences based on the behavior of the perceived person. The hypothesis that trait inferences are stronger in the communal than agentic domain was tested in four experiments (N = 265) using three different methods of studying spontaneous trait inferences (i.e., the cued recall of distractors procedure, the false recognition paradigm, and the lexical decision task). Despite the variation in methods, the studies yielded the same result – spontaneous trait inferences appeared stronger in the communal than agentic domain, but the effect was restricted to the traits of positive rather than negative valence. For the agentic domain the strength of trait inferences remained relatively low, independent of trait valence. Possible reasons for the difference between positive and negative communal traits are discussed.

Thermoelectric generators using the Seebeck effect to generate electricity are increasingly used in various areas of human activity, especially in cases where a cheap high-temperature heat source is available. Despite many advantages, TEG generators have one major disadvantage: very low efficiency of heat conversion into electrical power which strongly depends on the applied load resistance. There is a maximum of generated power between the short and the open circuit in which it is zero. That is why optimization of TEG modules is particularly important. In this paper a method of maximization of generated power in a single TEG module is presented for two cases. The first case concerns a problem with fixed heat flux flow into the hot side of the module whereas the second one concerns a problem with fixed heat transfer parameters in hot heat exchanger i.e. supply gas temperature and heat transfer coefficient. A number of optimization results performed for various values of these parameters are presented and discussed.

An analysis of observation material concerning fog occurrence in Hornsund collected by seven whole-year expeditions of the Polish Academy of Sciences' to Spitsbergen in 1957—58, 1978—1980, 1981—1985 is presented. The frequencies of fog occurrence in Hornsund during a year and in particular months are compared with respective frequencies calculated for Norwegian stations in Svalbard. Data from the Poland territory are also quoted. The dependences of the fog frequency in Hornsund on air masses advection, circulation type, direction and speed of local winds, time of observation and temperature are shortly analyzed. The periods with long-lasting fogs (exampled by synoptic situations that favor them) are discussed more precisely. A short description of main meteorologie processes favoring the occurrence of fog in this part of Spitsbergen is presented.

Periodic adsorption in a perfect mixing tank of a limited volume was considered. It was assumed that the adsorption rate is limited by diffusion resistance in a pellet. The approximate model of diffusion kinetics based on a continued fraction approximation was compared with the exact analytical solution. For the approximate model an algorithm was developed to determine a temporal variation of the adsorbate concentration in the pellet. The comparison was made for different values of the adsorbent load factor. In the numerical tests different shapes of pellets were considered. Both the numerical tests as well as our own experimental results showed that the approximate model provides results that are in good agreement with the exact solution. In the experimental part of this work adsorption of p-nitrophenol and acetic acid from aqueous solutions on cylindrical pellets of activated carbon was conducted.