The article considers the issues of the value of invested capital, methods of its measurement and its growth mechanisms. The author draws attention to relationship between the value of capital and the paradigm of economics, which ultimately indicates the existence of connections between the effectiveness of investment and the philosophy of economics. The main purpose of the article is to identify abnormalities in the valuation of assets by investors due to their incorrect or incomplete understanding of the value growth mechanism, the effects of which may assume significance on a macroeconomic scale.

The selection of appropriate financial sources by enterprises is one of the key tasks faced by the management board. In the presented article, the Authors decided to verify the capital structure of companies from selected European economies and to compare this capital structure between developed and advanced developing markets. The research was conducted on 18 European economies, taking into consideration data for 2017 and five variables defining the structure of financing. The results of the analysis show that the economies in the basket of developed countries are characterised by a higher level of indebtedness, with the major difference in taking on interest-bearing liabilities.

Pope Francis often speaks about the new evangelization. He notices areas that need a special care of the Church. One of them is the problem of poverty. The Pope encou-rages all the faithful to engage in the transformation of this situation . It can be called a “throwaway culture” and a sign of real poverty of the whole society when people remain indifferent to the cause of the poor. It is one of the negative consequences of the culture of prosperity. The Pope also calls it a “globalisation of indifference” and calls on all people of the three states in the Church to care for those who are poor and abandoned and to act against poverty. In a particular way Francis addresses his appeal to the consecrated persons, encouraging them to contemplate the poor Jesus, to the consecration of their lives through a faithful fulfilment of their vow of poverty and to the apostolate among the poor and the marginalized . By means of such an attitude of men and women religious they would contribute to their own sanctification, to bearing witness to love to the poor before the world and at least partly they will help those in need among whom they live and serve.

This paper focuses on three issues. First, it is about the context and environment of pre-Nicene theology. It is emphasized that pre-Nicene theology did not neglect ca-techetical and liturgical reflection (ad intra) while at the same time successfully ente-red into a critical and creative dialogue with both the Semitic and Greco-Roman world where first Christians lived (ad extra). For contemporary theology its means that it cannot reject historical reasoning, placed in space and time. The second part stresses that, in spite of different situations and all historical and cultural contexts, theology before Nicea was above all an understanding of Sacred Scripture to which the key is the Risen Christ as the source and definitive fulfilment of the inspired writings. Finally, the third part of the paper focuses on the existential and spiritual experience from which pre-Nicene theology originated. For this theology the Gospel of Christ is not just the rule of faith but also the rule of life. This leads to a conclusion that a contem-porary theologian is a to take up an existential-personalistic reflection on Revelation using the historical-hermeneutic method .

The article discusses the category of the option for the poor, by answering four key questions: 1) What is the option for the poor?; 2) Who are the poor?; 3) Why the option for the poor?; 4) How to opt? The category of the option for the poor emerged in Latin America at the turn of the 60s and 70s of the twentieth century, as the fruit of an audit of faith and the personal, communitarian, social and ecclesial life . The author defines the category according to the teaching of the bishops (Medellin and Puebla), to John Paul II and Latin-American theologians . He highlights the need for clarifying the meaning of poverty and the poor, specifically of the current theological understanding of these concepts . He then describes main theological reasons of the option for the poor: God’s plan of salvation; the theology of creation; human dignity; the mystery of sin; the phenomenon of poverty as a place of proving the fundamental statements about God and Jesus Christ; an ecclesiological significance of the option for the poor. In the last part of the paper the author quotes the Polish translation of the so-called The Pact of St. Domitilla Catacombs, which illustrates one of more promising ways of implementing that option in both personal and ecclesial life.

The Christian laity is called to the ministry of evangelization in the Church and for the Church. In this work, basic ecclesial communities play an important role, because they are forming disciples of Christ and preparing them to bear testimony to the Gos-pel in the world. The communities have been initiated in the Church of South America and are centres of evangelization as a true expression of ecclesial communion (ChL no. 26). They also express the preferential option of the Church for the poor, because they are often created by people deprived of fair access to material goods and live on the margins of society. In the activities of basic ecclesial communities, the poor evan-gelize themselves first, feeding on the Word of God, to make it a source of inspiration for life and action. At that time, the poor are becoming subjects of evangelization, when they recognize the proclamation of the Good News of salvation as their task, not only with words but also through the testimony of life. The transmission of the Gospel occurs in interpersonal encounters in which the attitude of believers in Christ urges people to adopt Christian values and imbue in them the culture created by them.

The main task of the paper is to analyse pope Benedict XVI’s social teaching on poverty as introduced in the encyclical letter ‘Caritas in veritate’. While the methodo-logical language of the papal teaching is anthropological and theological in character, the document uses its own interdisciplinary approach that is characteristic of Catholic Social Teaching. Consequently such a Christian reflection on social issues like pover-ty, inequality, marginalisation and globalisation can be compared with other social fin-dings. In the global context the pope identifies growing economic inequalities but also the advantages of cooperation within the global economy. The analysis also discerns the theories of social development that are convergent with the papal social diagnosis. Finally, comparing the pope’s social teaching with some studies in economy, sociolo-gy and political sciences, the author of the paper examines the possibility to construct an interdisciplinary link between Catholic Social Teaching and other social sciences.

This study presents an analysis of the unprecedented growth of international research collaboration in Europe in terms of distribution of co-authorship and citation of globally indexed publications over the last decade (2009–2018). The dynamics of change that emerge from this analysis are as follows: the increasing level of international cooperation is drawing key European systems away from institutional cooperation, with stable and strong national cooperation. National scientific output, i.e. the total number of publications, remains stable, and the entire increase in the number of publications over the period should be attributed to international co-authorship publications, which are the only driving force behind the increase in the number of publications in Europe. Due to the emergence of global networked science, in which the role of national policies in cooperation is decreasing and the role of scientists is growing, the key to the development of cooperation in Europe (and in Poland) is the readiness of individual scientists to undertake international cooperation. Researchers cooperate internationally when it is profitable for them in terms of academic prestige, scientific recognition and access to research funding, which is suggested by the three models proposed here (the model of credibility cycle in science, the model of prestige maximization and the model of global science). The total number of analyzed articles indexed in the Scopus database was 5.5 million, including 2.2 million articles written in international cooperation.

The main statement of the paper is that the post-truth is expanding at an unprecedented rate, continuously forcing itself into new areas of public life and permeating millions of minds. This phenomenon has not so far been satisfactorily explained by researchers of global-range social phenomena. The paper presents various definitions of post-truth and its interpretations. The argument revolves around what truth means and what it is threatened by, as well as the most important institution that is, by definition, concerned about the truth: the university. The article outlines the functions of the university and contemporary conditions of its functioning, including the threats to the preservation of its mission and axiological foundation: striving towards the truth. The idea of the university, created in Europe at the beginning of the second millennium, has shown to be strong and durable. It has adopted various organisational forms, depending on the period and region. The secret of the universities’ persistence and meaning cannot be considered apart from the history of the European civilisation. However, the phenomenon of post-truth expansion is the most serious threat to this institution. The expansion of post-truth also leads to changes in the quality of the public life, bringing about its degeneration, with considerable contributions of the numerous pathologies of the Internet, distribution of lies and surprisingly quickly growing acceptance of this phenomenon.

The spread of pseudoscientific beliefs and opinions is one of the more serious problems of modern societies. Pseudoscientific beliefs and opinions question the authority of science and may lead to serious harms to individuals and whole societies. In recognition of these hazards, the Committee of Ethics in Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences submits the following statement for the consideration of researchers, teachers in higher education and primary and secondary schools, as well as institutions which are responsible for education, and the society at large. The statement characterizes pseudoscience, its main causes and forms, as well as its key ethical aspects. It also contains recommendations for scientists and academic institutions on the appropriate responses to this troubling phenomenon.

Blockchain technology currently receives a lot of public attention with its disruptive potential to rebuild a currently state of economy. While blockchain technology is treated potentially disruptive in socio-economic environment, there is a lack of understanding where and how blockchain technology is effectively applicable and where it has mentionable practical effects. The use of this technology inside many businesses caused a need to create a system of tools and methods allow properly description to generate valuable information for governments, management, customers etc. Due to a lack of information related to blockchain technology it is a must to explore potential of blockchain in the context of risk. This paper examinees a problem of implementation blockchain technology within finance industry. The main aim of the article was to outline how important is to understand potential of blockchain technology and its limitations, therefore the author prepared a model which can be used to classify blockchain technology implementations in finance industry. This study describes existing issues in the financial aspect.

The research on default cases of the issuers of Catalyst-listed bonds, encompassing observation period between the years 2011 and 2017, showed that the credit quality of issuers was highly diversified and positively correlated with the size of the issue (the bigger the issue the lower the risk). Catalyst has been an important part of the Polish bond market for several years now, gathering more than 1/3 of the value of all outstanding bond issues. The advantage of trading on organized market such as Catalyst’s includes the presence of specific legal requirements, including market discipline (information obligations), concentration of turnover in one place and the universal availability of quotations (prices, turnover, submitted offers, etc.). The organised market reduces information asymmetries by giving everyone concerned the opportunity to follow price developments, trading and information on the issues and issuers present on the market. Furthermore, regular sessions should provide a higher level of liquidity. In the case of Catalyst, the liquidity level for most listed bonds is still quite low, but some features of organised markets determine the advantages of its existence. From the perspective of funds seekers, especially small ones, the organised market provides better access to the investor base and is often the only chance for them to obtain financing. On the other hand, this segment - i.e. small issuers - is unfortunately the source of the greatest number of problems (defaults and bankruptcies). This picture is not altered by the common practice of offering secured bonds. As we have shown in this article, collaterals of bonds listed on Catalyst can be ineffective for various reasons, especially in the case of issuers who do not cooperate with investors or even deliberately avoid paying off the bonds after defaults. The persistently high share of default rates and the high level of expected loss (EL) in the Gr1 group despite the very favourable economic situation, should lead to an analysis of the admission to trading criteria, exploring the possibility of strengthening the legal protection of bonds as well as the possibility of tightening the subsequent control over the performance of information duties by issuers.

This paper addresses weighted L2 gain performance switching controller design of discrete-time switched linear systems with average dwell time (ADT) scheme. Two kinds of methods, so called linearizing change-of-variables based method and controller variable elimination method, are considered for the output-feedback control with a supervisor enforcing a reset rule at each switching instant are considered respectively. Furthermore, some comparison between these two methods are also given.

Researchers have paid significant attention on hyperjerk systems, especial hyperjerk ones with chaos. A new hyperjerk system with seven terms and two parameters is analyzed. Chaotic attractors as well as coexisting attractors are displayed by the hyperjerk system. Thus it is a new multi-stable chaotic hyperjerk system. Further properties of the proposed hyperjerk system such as circuit design and backstepping-based control and synchronization are reported.

This paper proposes a generalized fractional controller for integer order systems with time delay. The fractional controller structure is so adopted to have a combined effect of fractional filter and Smith predictor. Interestingly, the resulting novel controller can be decomposed into fractional filter cascaded with an integer order PID controller. The method is applied to two practical examples i.e. liquid level system and Shell control fractionator system. The closed- loop responses resulting from the proposed method are compared with that of the available methods in the literature. For quantitative evaluations of the proposed method, Integral Absolute Error (IAE) and Integral Square Control Input (ISCI) performance criteria are employed. The proposed method effectively enhances the closed-loop response by improving the IAE values, reducing the control effort inputs to achieve the desired output. The disturbance rejection and robustness tests are also carried out. The robustness test reveals a significant improvement in the maximum absolute sensitivity measure. That is displayed in numerical simulations of the paper.

In global path planning (GPP), an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) tracks a predefined path. The main objective of GPP is to generate a collision free sub-optimal path with minimum path cost. The path is defined as a set of segments, passing through selected nodes known as waypoints. For smooth planar motion, the path cost is a function of the path length, the threat cost and the cost of diving. Path length is the total distance travelled from start to end point, threat cost is the penalty of collision with the obstacle and cost of diving is the energy expanse for diving deeper in ocean. This paper addresses the GPP problem for multiple AUVs in formation. Here, Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) algorithm is used to find the suboptimal path for multiple AUVs in formation. The results obtained are compared to the results of applying Genetic Algorithm (GA) to the same problem. GA concept is simple to understand, easy to implement and supports multi-objective optimization. It is robust to local minima and have wide applications in various fields of science, engineering and commerce. Hence, GA is used for this comparative study. The performance analysis is based on computational time, length of the path generated and the total path cost. The resultant path obtained using GWO is found to be better than GA in terms of path cost and processing time. Thus, GWO is used as the GPP algorithm for three AUVs in formation. The formation follows leader-follower topography. A sliding mode controller (SMC) is developed to minimize the tracking error based on local information while maintaining formation, as mild communication exists. The stability of the sliding surface is verified by Lyapunov stability analysis. With proper path planning, the path cost can be minimized as AUVs can reach their target in less time with less energy expanses. Thus, lower path cost leads to less expensive underwater missions.

The field of research of this paper combines Human Computer Interface, gesture recognition and fingertips tracking. Most gesture recognition algorithms processing color images are unable to locate folded fingers hidden inside hand contour. With use of hand landmarks detection and localization algorithm, processing directional images, the fingertips are tracked whether they are risen or folded inside the hand contour. The capabilities of the method, repeatibility and accuracy, are tested with use of 3 gestures that are recorded on the USB camera. Fingertips are tracked in gestures presenting a linear movement of an open hand, finger folding into fist and clenched fist movement. In conclusion, a discussion of accuracy in application to HCI is presented.

Controlling mechanical systems with position and velocity cascade loops is one of the most effective methods to operate this type of systems. However, when using low-rate sampling electronics, the implementation is not trivial and the resulting performance can be poor. This paper proposes effective tuning rules that only require establishing the bandwidth of the inner velocity loop and an estimation of the inertia of the mechanism. Since discrete-time mechatronic systems can also exhibit unstable behavior, several stability conditions are also derived. By using the proposed methodology, a P-PI control algorithm is developed for a desktop haptic device, obtaining good experimental performance with low sampling-rate electronics.