The human health depends on environmental conditions in which we live, There arc no uniform methods which can estimate the influence of the environment on the human health and the health hazard resulting from this exposure. There arc no parameters, which can describe condition of environment in relation to health effects either. The paper discusses the Environmental Health Indicators ( elaborated by WHO experts) which arc indicative of influence of the environment on the human health, so they point to and describe the relationship between health and environment. There have been shown practical use of Environmental Health Indicators to estimate water and sanitation quality in the Silesia region. There have been presented methods ot' results calculating and interpreting. Indicators were adapted to methods and procedures of data collection used in Poland.

The aim of this study was to determine the impact of the temperature of wastewater in a biological reactor with activated sludge and the BOD₅/N-NH₄ ratio in the influent to the treatment plant on nitrification efficiency and the concentration of ammonium nitrogen in treated wastewater. Tests were carried out in a household wastewater treatment plant which collects and treats sewage from a school building and a teacher’s house. During the 3-year study, large fluctuations in the sewage temperature in bioreactor were noted which was closely related to the ambient temperature. There were also large fluctuations in the concentration of organic matter and the concentration of ammonium nitrogen in inflowing sewage. The influence of wastewater temperature in the bioreactor and the BOD₅/N-NH₄ ratio on the concentration of ammonium nitrogen in treated wastewater was determined using Pearson’s linear correlation. A statistical analysis showed that a 1°C decrease in the temperature of wastewater in the bioreactor increased the concentration of ammonium nitrogen in treated wastewater by 2.64 mgN-NH₄·L^-1. Moreover, it was found that nitrification depended on the ratio of BOD₅ to the concentration of ammonium nitrogen in wastewater flowing into the bioreactor. An increase in the BOD₅/N-NH₄ ratio by 1 value led to a 5.41 mgN-NH₄·L^-1 decrease in the concentration of ammonium nitrogen.

The aim of the study was to determine the impact of selected factors on the reduction of organic pollutants, expressed in BOD₅ and COD_Cr, in wastewater treated in a laboratory scale model of moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR). The factors included in the experiment: the degree of filling the fluidized bed with biomass carriers, hydraulic load, and aeration intensity. The tested model of the bioreactor consisted of five independent chambers with diameter D = 0.14 m and height H = 2.0 m, which were filled with biomass carriers at 0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 70% of their active volume. During the test period, hydraulic loads at the level of Q_h1 = 0.073 m³·m^-2·h^-1 and Q_h2 = 0.036 m³·m^-2·h^-1 were applied, which ensured one-day and two-day sewage retention, respectively.The said reactors were subjected to constant aeration at P₁ = 3.0 dm³·min^-1 and P₂ = 5.0 dm³·min^-1. The highest efficiency of the reduction of the analysed indicators was demonstrated by reactors filled with carriers in the degree of 40–60%. Based on the statistical analyses (the analyses of the ANOVA variations and the Kruskal-Wallis test) carried out, it was found that the studied factors significantly modified the mutual interaction in the process of reducing BOD₅ in treated wastewater of the reactors tested. The significance of the impact of the discussed factors on the values of the studied indicators in treated wastewater depends on mutual interactions between the investigated factors.

Nitrated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (nitro-PAHs) may be formed during combustion of Diesel and gasoline rud and may be produced in gas-phase reactions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) with oxides of nitrogen. These compounds can form a significant fraction olthc mainly direct-acting mutagenie compounds present in extracts of ambient air particles. Using own analytical method of nitro-PAHs determination, concentrations or total PAHs, nitro- and dinitro-PAHs in urban and non-urban area of three cites of Upper Silesia in Poland were measured. The dependence between concentration of PAHs and nitro-pAHs in urban and non-urban area as well as their distribution depending on roadway distance were searched. The study showed a significant influence of road transport on the levels ofnitro-PAHs concentration.

The sedimentary environment, sediment characteristics and age−depth models of sediment sequences from Arctic lakes Revvatnet and Svartvatnet, located near the Polish Polar Station in Hornsund, southern Svalbard (77 ° N), were studied with a view to establishing a basis for paleolimnological climate and environmental reconstructions. The results indicate that catchment−to−lake hydroclimatic processes probably affect the transportation, distribution and accumulation of sediments in different parts of lakes Revvatnet and Svartvatnet. Locations with continuous and essentially stable sedimentary environments were found in both lakes between water depths of 9 and 26 m. We used several different dating techniques, including 137 Cs, 210 Pb, AMS 14 C, and paleomagnetic dating, to provide accurate and secured sediment chronologies. A recovered sequence from the northern basin of Revvatnet spans more than one thousand years long with laminated stratigraphy in the upper part of the sediment. Based on AMS 14 C dates, it is possible to suppose that Revvatnet basin was not occupied by a valley glacier during the Little Ice Age. The dates were supported by 137 Cs chronologies, but not confirmed with other independent dating methods that extent beyond the last 50 years. A sedimentary sequence from the northern basin of Svartvatnet provides a potential archive for the study of climate and environmental change for the last ca. 5000 years. Based on the stratigraphy and a Bayesian age−depth model of AMS 14 C and paleosecular variation (PSV) dates, the recovered sediment sections represent a continuous and stable sedimentation for the latter half of the Holocene.

Saprotrophic filamentous microfungi were isolated by means of the soil dilution method from soil samples collected from four locations in the Bellsund region of Spitsbergen (77°33’N, 14°31’E) representing the following forms of surface micro-relief: an old stormbank, a sorted circle, a frost fissure between tundra polygons, and the central part of a tundra polygon. The fungal isolates were identified and screened for their ability to grow at low temperatures. The oligotrophy of psychrophilic and psychrotrophic strains was then determined as the ability of growth on silica gel without a C source added. Differences in some physico-chemical properties were found between the soils sampled from the four sites. A total of 89 taxa from 17 genera were isolated. Most of the isolates were species of Mortierella, Penicillium, Chrysosporium and Phialophora, and half of them were psychrophiles. Fungal communities isolated from a frost fissure between tundra polygons (site 3) and from the central part of a tundra polygon (site 4) were dominated by psychrophiles but those isolated from an old stormbank (site 1) and a sorted circle (site 2) were predominantly psychrotrophic. Oligopsychrophilic taxa accounted for 27% and oligopsychrotrophic for 20% of all the isolated taxa but only from 0.7% to 11.7% and from 1.2% to 6.3% of the total number of cfu (colony forming unit) isolated from an individual site, respectively. The results of the present study suggest that the abundance of fungi in Arctic soil is mostly affected by the content of organic matter in the A horizon and the plant cover, but other factors, such as the stage of soil development and the micro-relief of the surface, are more important for species richness of fungal communities.

Software power protection tester implemented in a real-time operating system (RTOS) might replace the conventional testing setups in IEC 61850 protection systems. This paper describes an open power protection testing platform. Linux RT capabilities related to runtime environment for such a tester are examined and OS latency sources are identified and evaluated. An algorithm for a multithreaded tester operation is proposed, including Sampled Values (SV) publisher, GOOSE input/output and time synchronization. SV and GOOSE services implemented in RT Linux environment are evaluated in accordance with IEC 61850‒5 transfer time requirements. Linux PTP time synchronization service of two similar systems controlling its electrical ports is evaluated in different synchronization scenarios. The developed tester is compared to an equivalent conventional setup during the test of IED over-current function. The conducted tests show that the Linux implementation of power protection tester in the case of scheduler latency, time synchronization accuracy and transfer time all meet the requirements of IEC 61850.

The paper discusses the application possibilities of ceramic foam in a thermal combustion process of a lean methane-air mixture. The experiments were done in a ceramic foam bed. The foam (Vukopor ^® A) was made mainly of Al ₂O ₃. The foam samples were packed in a tubular reactor symmetrically placed in a laboratory furnace. It was assumed that the tested foam should have a surface close to the monolith surface area which was tested in a previous work (Pawlaczyk and Gosiewski, 2015). Pore density of the tested foam was 10 PPI. The tested air mixture contained 0.51 - 0.76 vol. % of methane. The results show that thermal methane oxidation in foam is possible in the acceptable range of temperatures. The combustion process in foam is characterized by similar ignition temperature to tests carried out in monolith, a more intense course, and better methane conversion at lower temperatures.

The aim of the work was to determine the technological reliability of the selected pollution indicators removal BOD5, CODCr and total suspension from the sewage treatment plant working with the bioreactor Pomiltek Mann type. Wastewater treatment plant which is a subject of this study is located in Lesser Poland, in Siepraw commune. The analysis was per-formed using the Weibull method for basic indicators of impurities, BOD5, CODCr and total suspended solids. Physico-chemical analyses of raw and treated wastewater, were carried out in the period from 2003 to 2014 (11 years). The research period included measured values of pollutions indicators in 38 samples of raw and treated sewage. For each of pollution indicators descriptive statistic, percentage reduction (��) and treatment plant reliability factors (RF) were calculated. Aver-age reduction for BOD5 and TSS was on level equal 94%, only for COD the average reduction was lower and was on level 89%. The reliability values determined by Weibull method, were: 75% (BOD5), 90% (CODCr) and 89.5% (TSS). The relia-bility results have been lower than the presented by literature source, which means that work of wastewater treatment plant in Siepraw was not satisfied in 11 years of research.

In this paper, we present an improved efficient capsule network (CN) model for the classification of the Kuzushiji-MNIST and Kuzushiji-49 benchmark datasets. CNs are a promising approach in the field of deep learning, offering advantages such as robustness, better generalization, and a simpler network structure compared to traditional convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Proposed model, based on the Efficient CapsNet architecture, incorporates the self-attention routing mechanism, resulting in improved efficiency and reduced parameter count. The experiments conducted on the Kuzushiji-MNIST and Kuzushiji-49 datasets demonstrate that the model achieves competitive performance, ranking within the top ten solutions for both benchmarks. Despite using significantly fewer parameters compared to higher-rated competitors, presented model achieves comparable accuracy, with overall differences of only 0.91% and 1.97% for the Kuzushiji-MNIST and Kuzushiji- 49 datasets, respectively. Furthermore, the training time required to achieve these results is substantially reduced, enabling training on nonspecialized workstations. The proposed novelties of capsule architecture, including the integration of the self-attention mechanism and the efficient network structure, contribute to the improved efficiency and performance of presented model. These findings highlight the potential of CNs as a more efficient and effective approach for character classification tasks, with broader applications in various domains.

Real time simulators of IEC 61850 compliant protection devices can be implemented without their analogue part, reducing costs and increasing versatility. Implementation of Sampled Values (SV) and GOOSE interfaces to Matlab/Simulink allows for interaction with protection relays in closed loop during power system simulation. Properly configured and synchronized Linux system with Real Time (RT) patch, can be used as a low latency run time environment for Matlab/Simulink generated model. The number of overruns during model execution using proposed SV and GOOSE interfaces with 50 µs step size is minimal. The paper discusses the implementation details and time synchronization methods of IEC 61850 real time simulator implemented in Matlab/Simulink that is built on top of run time environment shown in authors preliminary works and is the further development of them. Correct operation of the proposed solution is evaluated during the hardware-in-the-loop testing of ABB REL670 relay.