The paper is a review of analog and digital electronics dedicated to monitor nanosecond pulses. Choosing the optimal peak detector construction depends on many factors for example precision, complexity, or costs. The work shows some virtues and limitations of selected peak detection methods, for example standard peak detector with rectifier, sample and hold circuit with triggering units and ADC fast acquisition. However, the main attention is paid to problems of results from effective triggering signal for sample and hold operation. The obtained results allow for designing a peak detector construction as an alternative for costly and very complex fast acquisition systems based on ADC and FPGA technologies.

Recently, transition metal oxides, which exhibit favorable catalytic abilities, have also been investigated as a material for the detection of hydrazine (N2H4). It has been reported that mixed metal oxides usually offer a higher electrochemical activity than binary oxides. In this work, a TiO2–Fe2O3 coupled system is presented as an enhanced material with major applications in electrochemical detectors. The electrochemical behavior of glassy carbon electrodes modified with TiO2–Fe2O3 in the absence and presence of hydrazine was evaluated via cyclic voltammetry (CV). Experimental results also suggest that the formation of the TiO2– Fe2O3 coupled system enhances electrochemical catalytic performance in N2H4 detection. The modification TiO2 + 2 mol% Fe2O3 provides good analytical performance of detection (0.13 mM) and quantification limits (0.39 mM). The presented coupled system provides the premise for a suitable material for a stable and sensitive N2H4 sensor.

A π-phase-shifted fiber Bragg grating (π-FBG) shows high sensitivity to the ultrasonic (US) wave as compared to the conventional FBG due to the strong slow-light phenomenon at the resonance peak. However, its sensitivity is limited by the interrogation schemes. A combination of π-FBG and unbalanced fiber Mach– Zehnder interferometer (F-MZI) are theoretically analyzed and optimized for the highly sensitive acoustic sensor. The coupled-mode theory (CMT) and transfer matrix method (TMM) are used to establish the numerical modelling of π-FBG. For the optimized grating parameters of π-FBG, the proposed sensing system shows the high strain sensitivity of 1.2 × 108/ε, the highest dynamic strain resolution of 4.1fε/√Hz, and the highest wavelength shift resolution of 4.9 × 10−9 pm. Further, the proposed sensing system strongly supports both time andwavelength division multiplexing techniques. Therefore, the proposed sensing system shows extreme importance in single as well as quasi-distributed US acoustic wave sensing networks.

Thiswork presents results of comparative studies of the optical absorption coefficient spectra of ion implanted layers in silicon. Three nondestructive and noncontact techniques were used for this purpose: spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE), modulated free carriers absorption (MFCA) and the photo thermal radiometry (PTR). Results obtained with the ellipsometric method are the proof of correctness of the results obtained with the MFCAandPTRtechniques. These techniques are usually used for investigations of recombination parameters of semiconductors. They are not used for investigations of the optical parameters of semiconductors. Optical absorption coefficient spectra of Fe+ and Ge+ high energy and dose implanted layers in silicon, obtained with the three techniques, are presented and compared.

ISFET (Ion Sensitive Field Effect Transistors) microsensors are widely used for pH measurements as well as analytical and biomedical applications. At the same time, ISFET is a good candidate for testing various materials for their applications in sensitive membranes. For example, hydrogen sensitive carbonaceous films containing Pd nanocrystallites (C–Pd) make this material very interesting for sensor applications. A cost effective silicon technology was selected to fabricate n-channel transistors. The structures were coupled to specially designed double-sided PCB (Printed Circuit Board) holder. The holder enables assembly of the structure as part of an automatic stand. The last step of production of MIS structures was deposition of the C–Pd layer. The C–Pd films were fabricated by the Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) method in which C60 and palladium acetate were evaporated. Electrical resistance of structures with C–Pd films was measured during their interaction with hydrogen. Finally, a new type of highly sensitive FET hydrogen sensor with C–Pd layer was demonstrated and characterized.

In this paper both envelope approach and morphological filters for characterisation of surface textures were proposed, applied and thoroughly examined. Obtained results were compared with those received after appliance of commonly-used algorithms. The effect of appliance of proposed procedures on surface topography parameters (from ISO 25178 standard) was taken into consideration. The following types of surface textureswere assessed: two-process plateau-honed cylinder liners, plateau-honed cylinder liners with additionally burnished dimples, turned piston skirts, grinded and/or isotropic topographies. It was assumed that envelope characteristics (envelope filtration) can provide results useful for assessments of deep and/or wide oil-reservoirs especially when they are edge located. Moreover, some near-valley areas of surface texture details can be less distorted when envelope filtering is accomplished. It was also found that closing and/or opening envelope filtration can be valuable for reduction of some surface topography measurement errors.

In the framework of non-destructive evaluation (NDE), an accurate and precise characterization of defects is fundamental. This paper proposes a novel method for characterization of partial detachment of thermal barrier coatings from metallic surfaces, using the long pulsed thermography (LPT). There exist many applications, in which the LPT technique provides clear and intelligible thermograms. The introduced method comprises a series of post-processing operations of the thermal images. The purpose is to improve the linear fit of the cooling stage of the surface under investigation in the logarithmic scale. To this end, additional fit parameters are introduced. Such parameters, defined as damage classifiers, are represented as image maps, allowing for a straightforward localization of the defects. The defect size information provided by each classifier is, then, obtained by means of an automatic segmentation of the images. The main advantages of the proposed technique are the automaticity (due to the image segmentation procedures) and relatively limited uncertainties in the estimation of the defect size.

Due to the skin effect of eddy currents, the depth of cracks which can be detected by the traditional eddy current probe is very limited. In order to improve the ability of eddy current probes to inspect deep cracks in metal thick-walled structures, a new eddy current probe using an excitation system with phase shifted fields was proposed. Its feasibility for detecting deep cracks was verified by simulation and experiments. The results showed that the penetration depth of eddy currents in austenitic stainless steel is effectively enhanced by using the new probe.

The paper reports experimental results of the analysis of the 145Cr6 steel surface after erosion using the profilometrical technique by means of interferometry streaks. Erosive tests were carried out using abrasive containing quartz sand used in water jet cutting. Differences in the intensity of erosive wear were dependent on the angle of the abrasive stream (10◦ ; 15◦ ; 20◦ ; 30◦ ; 60◦ ; 90◦). In order to determine the characteristic features of the surface layer after the impact of the erosive stream, its characteristic parameters, such as roughness Ra and Sa for linear and field measurements, were analysed. Geometrical features of the regions investigated, such as shape, depth, angle of the abrasive stream, are presented. The analysis was carried out in two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) coordinate systems.

The grid-tied inverter synchronizes with the network on the basis of the instantaneous voltage phase angle. This angle is computed by the so-called synchronization algorithms. During grid disturbances, it is estimated with a certain accuracy, which varies for different disturbances and depends on the choice of algorithm. The tests presented here determine how to make an optimal selection of the synchronization algorithm. The research methods used are modeling, simulation and analysis of the results obtained. One of the most important outcomes is the determination of the root-mean-square sync error and its dynamics denotation. The research conclusions should be of particular interest to designers of distributed energy systems with a large number of inverter energy sources.

Assessment of the state of a pulse power supply requires effective and accurate methods to measure and reconstruct the tracking error. This paper proposes a tracking error measurement method for a digital pulse power supply. A de-noising algorithm based on Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) is used to analyse the energy of each Intrinsic Mode Function (IMF) component, identify the turning point of energy, and reconstruct the signal to obtain the accurate tracking error. The effectiveness of this EMD method is demonstrated by simulation and actual measurement. Simulation was used to compare the performance of time domain filtering, wavelet threshold de-noising, and the EMD de-noising algorithm. In practical use, the feedback of current on the prototype of the power supply is sampled and analysed as experimental data.

The article presents the assumptions, characteristics and description of the implementation of a pilot system for on-line monitoring of partial discharges in heads of the high-voltage cable lines. The main purpose of the implementation was to increase the reliability of cable line heads by equipping them with a system of continuous assessment of technical condition with direct transmission of measurement data and alarms to the SCADA system. In order to achieve the assumed goal, unconventional methods for measuring partial discharges were used, the application of which does not require disconnecting the line from the voltage. The implementation was carried out on an active 110 kV high voltage cable line in the area of activity of one of the Distribution System Operators.

Etymologies demonstrate complexity of semantic changes that the Maltese words underwent as well as reflect the local history and lifestyle of peasants dwelling in rural areas of Malta and Gozo. In such way the words may be considered as a reservoir of the collective memory of Maltese people. Strikingly, the Maltese language, though Semitic in its grammar, semantically seems to be attached more to the Romance word. It is manifested not only in the preponderance of Sicilian words in Maltese dictionaries, but also in the transposition of some semantic structures mirroring the internal development of Romance languages. In the article the following Maltese terms were discussed: mgħażqa, zappun, minġel, xatba, rixtellu, minġla, ranċila, romblu tad-dris, midra, luħ, mannara, lexxuna.

In 2010, three Polish scholars published A Preliminary Report on the Wanli Kanjur Kept at Jagiellionian Library, Kraków.1 It was at this time the world began to know that the Jagiellonian Library has an incomplete collection of the Tibetan Kanjur printed in the Wanli period (1573–1620), as well as many other Tibetan texts, manuscripts and xylographs.2 The library also possesses a huge collection of Chinese Buddhist literature, including the Yongle Northern Canon. There is also a scripture that does not belong to the Chinese Buddhist Canon, or Daoist Canon, or Baojuan ����.3 In June 2017, the author discovered one volume of the Buddhist text entitled Saddharmapuṇdarīka Sūtra in the Tangut language. This is particularly precious as it is the only extant copy worldwide. These volumes of the Tibetan Kanjur and the Yongle Northern Canon were obtained by a German scholar and collector named Eugen Pander (1854–1894?) who got acquainted with the reincarnated Tibetan Buddhist Master Thu’u bkvan Khutugtu of Yonghe Temple in Beijing. The volumes were shipped to Berlin around 1889 where they were placed in the Museum of Ethnography in Berlin and later moved to the State Library in Berlin. In 1943, the Allied Forces began to bomb Berlin and the Germans made an effort to hide their treasures. They transported over 500 boxes of books from the State Library in Berlin to Książ castle, and then to the Cistercian monastery in Krzeszów. After WWII the region was on the Polish side of the border. All the treasures, including Beethoven’s manuscript of the “Ninth Symphony,” and the Mozart’s manuscript of “Magic Flute,” were transferred as a deposit to the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków.

The article presents the results of the discovery and text-critical analysis of the Mongolian language “golden” manuscript fragments brought to Russia and Europe from Dzungaria in the 18th century. At present 34 fragments have been detected in various depositories. The fragments belong to one set of the Mongolian Kanjur most likely dated from the first half of the 17th century. The list of the texts, to which the fragments belong, is given at the end of the article. The text-critical analysis of the fragments reveals that they contain a plethora of preclassic orthography and spelling of loanwords. Three fragments contain the text of the hitherto unknown Mongolian version of the Bhadrakalpika-sūtra, which differs from Dayičing Tayiǰi’s translation included in the bulk of the Mongolian Kanjur copies.

The aim of this paper is to provide a brief introduction to the life and tales of Abdelaziz El-Aroui1 (1898–1971), a well-known Tunisian storyteller. He was above all a journalist and a playwright. He was also an active member of the literary group Taht Essour. His tales were transmitted by Tunisian radio and later by TV. Their popularity spread to neighboring countries, especially Algeria and Libya. This popularity derives from his practice of drawing upon traditional sayings, stories and proverbs and from his intention to associate his work with the Tunisian dialect and to penetrate the depth of the human soul.

This paper discusses the question of how the old Kazakh custom of the ban on uttering the name of a husband and his male relatives by his wife is still observed in modern Kazakhstan. To do this, material from five main regions of Kazakhstan (North, South, Central, East and West) was collected and analysed. The study aims to do a sociolinguistic analysis of the result of the questionnaire. Although this old tradition is well known and described a long time ago by such researchers as Nikolaj Ilminskii, Nikolaj Grodekov, Ybyraı Altynsarın, Grigorij Potanin, Aleksandr Samoilovich and others, no modern fieldwork was done to check whether this tradition is still alive and how it changes. As is known, present-day Kazakhstan had changed significantly since the 19th century, when Ilminskii first studied the Kazakh language and traditions, Wilhelm Radloff and the researchers mentioned earlier, who were linguists and explorers. However, many cultures are still observed. As Grodekov noted, the avoiding of the pronunciation of a husband’s name and his male relatives by his wife is familiar to the Kazakhs and Kirghiz. Somoilovich, basing on Mustafa Shoqaı’s materials, devoted a paper to this question. Perhaps the best story was related by Altynsarın, who has registered an anecdote how a woman who went to bring water and saw a wolf killing an ewe rushed back to her house and shouted for help, transforming the words ‘lake’, ‘reed’, ‘wolf’, ‘sheep’ and ‘knife’, since her husband and his male relatives bore names composed of these words.

The collection of the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw contains significant objects representing the culture of peoples from many regions of Asia, including Polynesia, Indonesia and even Papua New Guinea. The cultures of Turkish and Mongolian peoples of Central Asia are richly represented among them. Among the objects of these regions and cultures, a collection of felt products significantly distinguishes itself. However, these felts have never been exhibited as a whole collection, nor as a part of a monographic exhibition dedicated to the craft of felt. A significant part of them belongs to the earliest collections from the 1990’s from Afghanistan. It represents many different cultural groups: Turkmen, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz people and even Tajiks. From the historian’s or art historian’s point of view, it is a very young and new collection. But, taking into account the specifics of felt production and the ways it is used, as well as the fact that felt is rather underestimated by its producers, users, traders, researchers and collectors (in terms of the art market), it should be noted that felt products were rarely bought and collected by esteemed institutions. Apart from museums of Tsarist Russia, and later, their heirs: Soviet and post-Soviet museums in Central Asian countries, along with some western European museums, collections of felt products are rather rare in the world. The felt collection of the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw appears to be a rare example here. The aim of this paper is to present the felt collection of the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw, in terms of its objects, as well as its ethnographic and historical value.

Photographs from the Archive of the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw were taken by Eugeniusz Helbert and Ewa Soszko-Dziwisińska.

Photographs from the author’s archive were taken by Marzena Godzińska.

The pattern of collection, which characterizes the classical Indian though in general, may serve as a strongly persuasive literary device. In that role it is often employed in Sanskrit grand narratives, specifically, in Hindu epics, purāṇas, and ornate epic poems (mahākāvya). The study seeks to examine the conceptual grounds, figurative realisations and persuasive ends of this pattern in Jinasena’s (9th century CE) Ādipurāṇa, an important text of the Digambara Jain tradition. Jinasena’s work represents the genre of Jainpurāṇas, which combines and modifies the generic properties of the afore mentioned Sanskrit grand narratives.

This paper addresses the questions that were left unanswered in my previously published works on the Mongolian translations of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā. It shows that the five earliest Mongolian translations of the sutra were based on the Tibetan version known as gzo sbyangs, suggesting that in the first half of the 17th century the gzo sbyangs version, which is a rarity today, dominated the transmission of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā in Mongolia and was later replaced by the widely spread phreng ba can version. Two of the early Mongolian translations have preserved a rare Tibetan colophon. Currently this colophon is known to have survived in a unique Tibetan manuscript kept at the Otani University, Japan. The colophon declares that the sutra was edited by several figures of the snga dar period, whose identities are under question.

The aim of this paper is to explain the meaning of two mural fragments housed in the Central Asian Collection of the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. The two mural fragments under discussion, nos. III 9023a and III 9023b–c (Pl. 1, Fig. 1), were brought to Berlin by the 4th Turfan Expedition in the year 1914 from the Buddhist cave monasteries in Kizil in the area of Kucha on the Northern Silk Road, today’s Province Xinjiang, an autonomous region of the Peoples Republic of China. The murals show peculiar waterscape with persons trying to cross it; they can be compare with similar representations from the area of Kucha.

Józef Kowalewski, a founding father of Mongolian studies in Russia, stayed in Beijing from November 1830 until July 1831. He stayed with the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission and, being a Catholic himself, Kowalewski was very interested in the history and current state of Catholicism in China. In those years Catholicism in China faced severe persecution. All European missionaries were expelled from China with the exception of Bishop Gaetano Pirès Pereira, who was allowed to stay at the Russian Mission because of his old age. Kowalewski is said to have written a history of Catholicism in China which was destroyed by fire. However, unpublished diaries of Kowalewski, which survive in the Russian archives, contain much interesting information about Catholic cemeteries in Beijing, the life of Chinese converts, the Jesuit library and records of his talks with the last Catholic bishop.

The present paper describes the Manchu Collection in the Jagiellonian University Library in Cracow which was a part of the former Prussian State Library in Berlin. The historical Manchu collection comprised over 300 items (call numbers, including “duplicates” of the same title). The paper offers a historical sketch of the forming of the collection as well as short description of some interesting items.

The article is devoted to the world’s first popularizers of the nō theatre outside Japan, with particular emphasis on the pioneering achievements of two Americans, Ernest Francisco Fenollosa (1853–1908) and Ezra Pou nd (1885–1972), as well as the next generation representing various European countries. The latter included, among others, William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), Paul Claudel (1868–1955), Jacques Copeau (1879–1949), Charles Dullin (1885–1949), Jean-Louis Barrault (1910–1994), Gabriel Cousin (1918–2010), Edward Gordon Craig ( 1872–1966), Benjamin Britten (1913–1976), Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) and Samuel Beckett (1906–1989), who, influenced by the fascination with the nō theatre, were the first to reform, in a more or less visible way, the traditional, realistic European theatre.