Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes are among the most effective modern error-correcting codes due to their excellent correction performance and highly parallel decoding scheme. Moreover, the nonbinary extension of such codes further increases performance in the short-block regime. In this paper, we review the key elements for the construction of implementation-oriented binary and nonbinary codes. These Quasi-Cyclic LDPC (QC-LDPC) codes additionally feature efficient encoder and decoder implementation frameworks. We then present a versatile algorithm for the construction of both binary and nonbinary QC-LDPC codes that have low encoding complexity and an optimized corresponding graph structure. Our algorithm uses a progressive edge growth algorithm, modified for QC-LDPC graph construction, and then performs an iterative global search for optimized cyclic shift values within the QC-LDPC circulants. Strong error correction performance is achieved by minimizing the number of short cycles, and cycles with low external connectivity, within the code graph. We validate this approach via error rate simulations of a transmission system model featuring an LDPC coder-decoder, digital modulation, and additive white Gaussian noise channels. The obtained numerical results validate the effectiveness of the proposed construction algorithm, with a number of constructed codes exhibiting either similar or superior performance to industry standard binary codes and selected nonbinary codes from the literature.

The objective of this paper is an experimental study of the most crucial parameters of the received acoustic signals (e.g. signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), side-lobes level (SLL), axial resolution) obtained as a result of simultaneous emission of mutually orthogonal Golay complementary sequences (MOGCS) to demonstrate their feasibility of being used in ultrasound diagnostics. Application of the MOGCS in ultrasound measurements allows the image reconstruction time to be shortened without decreasing the resulting quality of reconstructed images in comparison with regular complementary Golay coded sequences (CGCS). In this paper two sets of 16-bits long MOGCS were implemented in the Verasonics Vantage ^TM (Verasonics Inc., Kirkland, WA, USA) scanner. Ultrasound data were generated using a perfect reflector, a custom-made nylon wire phantom and tissue mimicking phantom. Parameters of the detected MOGCS echoes like SNR, SLL and axial resolution were determined and compared to that of the standard CGCS and the short two-sine cycles pulse. It was evidenced that applying MOGCS did not compromise the parameters of the separated and compressed echoes in comparison to the other types of transmitted signal – the CGCS and the short pulse. Concretely, both the MOGCS and CGCS yield similar SNR increase in comparison to the short pulse. Almost similar values of the axial resolution estimated at the full width at the half maximum level for all types of the transmitted signals were also obtained. At the same time, using the MOGCS the data acquisition speed can be increased twice in comparison with the CGCS signal.

The article proposes a method of assessing information transmission reliability by using the output normalized logarithmic ratio of the likelihood function (LRLF) of the decoder. Based on the evaluation, the method allows adapting system parameters with turbo codes (TC) or LDPC code. This method can be used in combination with other methods of parametric and structural adaptation using turbo codes or LDPC codes.

The article introduces a novel Internet diagnosis utility - an open source IP packet snifferwhich captures TCP and UDP packets sent and received by a single Linux process only. Preliminary evaluation results are presented. The utility can be applied in the field of IP traffic classification.

Mining industry is an important sector that produces materials for other industries, also plays an important role in economic and social development, especially in a developing country like Vietnam. However, mineral mining can destroy the environment and deplete resources over time. The biggest challenge for state managers is to balance the conflict between the mining planning, development planning of other economic sectors and environmental issues. One of the solutions is to replace backward, manual extraction tools with the application of the modern computer (Modernize government administration).
In Viet Nam, at present, the provincial management agency of mines faces up with difficult problems such as: backward management method, lowly informative level, not using the current data effectively, even some areas can manage data well but can hardly and lowly share them, the current softwares are mainly document management, most of maps are stored on paper, digital map manage is not really cared. The traditional procedure and technology needs to be innovated by the way of enhancing to synthetically manage mineral resources, this can advance speed and quality of data processing, reduce the burden on employees and raise the level of office automation. The article uses the open code ASP.NET combined with GIS (Geographic Information Systems), based on the mineral economic development planning map in Tuyen Quang province, tools for editing, storing and extracting informaion are built detailedly for activities in mines from the beginning to the end of mining process. As a result, managers and authorities can easily search information for their work.

Numerical simulation is an economical and effective method in the field of marine engineering. The dynamics of mooring cables has been analysed by a numerical simulation code that was created on a basis of a new element frame. This paper aims at verifying the accuracy of the numerical simulation code through comparisons with both the real experiments and a commercial simulation code. The real experiments are carried out with a catenary chain mooring in a water tank. The experimental results match the simulation results by the numerical simulation code well. Additionally, a virtual simulation of a large size chain mooring in ocean is carried out by both the numerical simulation code and a commercial simulation code. The simulation results by the numerical simulation code match those by the commercial simulation code well. Thus, the accuracy of the numerical simulation code for underwater chain mooring is verified by both the real experiments and commercial simulation code.

The question of what is the difference between borrowing and code-switching has attracted the attention of scholars far and wide and gave at the same time rise to a plethora of publications in order to draw a boundary between these two terms. In the most recent of these publications (Grosjean 1982, Poplack & Meechan 1995 & 1998; to name but a few), it has been often argued that borrowings are donor-language items that are integrated in the grammar of the recipient language at a community level, while code-switches take place at individual level and they retain the grammar of the language from which they derive. However, the current political and economic uncertainties in various regions of the world have been found to cause mass refugee movements to conflict-free places, where contact between newcomers and locals usually lead to some kind of linguistic interinfluencing. The current study discusses the contactinduced German-origin lone lexical items used by Iraqi-Arabic-speaking refugees in Germany. It is the aim of this study to show whether or not these lexical items can be considered as code-switches or established borrowings. The data I am analyzing come from spontaneous and elicited conversations of the first and second wave of Iraqi- Arabic-speaking refugees and asylum seekers to Germany as well as from online- and paper-pencil-questionnaires.

A lumped parameter type code, called HEPCAL, has been worked out in the Institute of Thermal Technology of the Silesian University of Technology for simulations of a pressurized water reactor containment transient response to a loss-of-coolant accident. The HEPCAL code has been already verified and validated against available experimental data, which in fact have been taken from separate effect tests mainly. This work is devoted to validation of the latest version of the HEPCAL code against experimental data from more complex tests. These experiments have been performed on three different test rigs (called TOSQAN,MISTRA and ThAI) and a part of them became the basis of the International Standard Problem No. 47 (ISP-47) dedicated to containment thermal-hydraulics. Selected experiments realized within the framework of the ISP-47 project have been simulated using the HEPCAL-AD code. The obtained results allowed for drawing of some important conclusions concerning heat and mass transfer models (especially steam condensation), two-phase flow model and buoyancy effects.

The article presents basic changes introduced in the first edition of the governmental Urban Planning and Building Code. The changes regard spatial development, especially planning and permit documents, and competences of the governmental bodies in accepting, legislating and issuing such documents. In this respect, the article points out important regulations for the mining industry, in particular for deposit protection and the initiation of mining projects. In certain cases, critical opinions of some of the governmental institutions are mentioned. In a new document regarding the “Spatial Development Study of a Community”, the draft of the Code orders a division of the community into functional zones. Therefore a mining and extractive industry could be delimited as a functional zone. The Code also specifies that while delimiting a new urbanization area, the documented mining deposits areas should be avoided. In relation to the local spatial plan, the Code establishes the following: in documented strategic mining deposit zones the initiation of non-public purpose investments can only be carried out according to the urban spatial plan. This project also orders that only the local spatial plan can allow for the localization of “establishments that carry a risk of serious industrial breakdown” and “investments that can seriously impact the environment”. The Code also introduces another innovation: the possibility of issuing the local spatial plan with an integrated evaluation on the environmental impact. The “investment permits” are intended to replace both the previous building permits and previous decisions on the conditions of development of the areas not covered in the local spatial plans. The investment permits referring to mining establishments will be issued by the mining administration authorities. The main adverse change for mining is that the exploration of mining deposits owned by the State Treasury loses its previous status of public purposes. The article also indicates that some of the described regulations might be changed during the further legislation process.

The article is a commentary to the Code of ethics by Polish Historical Society published in 2020.

The commission held 8 meetings using a hybrid approach to its work (remote work as well as work on-premises). CRI has pointed to shortcomings of remote work in science and education, where direct contacts between members of academic community assure optimal envirnment for achieving highest standards of research and teaching. Moreover, focusing the vast majority of research on COVID-related projects endangers progress in other scientific disciplines while an exaggerated pressure for the fast development of new anti-COVID medications may cause lowering of standards used to evaluate research results. CRI has expressed its concern caused by activities of Ministry of Education and Science related to s.c. „freedom package” – a planned amendments to Act on Higher Education and Science. CRI believes that the proposed changes may endanger academic freedom and contribute to dissemination of knowledge not based on solid scientific grounds. Following consultations with the entire Polish academic and scientific community CRI has amended its Code of Conduct for Research Integrity and published its updated version (approved by General Assembly of PAS on 25 June 2020). The new version addresses in a more detail the issue of conflict of interest (CoI). CRI believes that the issue of CoI is of growing importance in science, medicine and other aspects of human activities. Following the examples of leading universities and research institutions CRI has introduced an ethical requirement to report – on an annual basis – the existing CoI to university/research institute administration for possible instructions informing if and how such existing CoI need to be adjusted.

The article investigates the phenomenon of code-switching among bilingual speakers – Polish students studying English Philology who switch to English by inserting English words, phrases and even whole sentences while speaking their mother tongue Polish. The study is based on the questionnaire and aims at determining the various reasons and functions of code-switching (CS), the attitudes and the factors which either facilitate or impede its occurrence. The study demonstrates that code-switching constitutes an indispensable part in the respondents’ daily interactions although their attitudes, functions and factors which determine the incidence of code-switching are miscellaneous and vary considerably.

Channel coding provides numerous advantages to digital communications. One of such advantages is error correcting capabilities. This, however, comes at the expense of coding rate, which is a function of the codebook’s cardinality |C| or number of coded information bits and the codeword length M. In order to achieve high coding rate, we hereby report a channel coding approach that is capable of error correction under power line communications (PLC) channel conditions, with permutation coding as the coding scheme of choice. The approach adopts the technique of unequal error correction for binary codes, but with the exception that non-binary permutation codes are employed here. As such, certain parts of the information bits are coded with permutation symbols, while transmitting other parts uncoded. Comparisons with other conventional permutation codes are presented, with the proposed scheme exhibiting a relatively competitive performance in terms of symbol error rate.

W przeciągu najbliższych lat budownictwo (zwłaszcza mieszkaniowe) czekają nieuniknione zmiany w zakresie technologii, eksploatacji i całej filozofii projektowania, które okażą się być może tak rewolucyjne dla budownictwa i architektury, jak chociażby wynalezienie żelbetu. W artykule omówiono problematykę związaną z definiowaniem i certyfikowaniem budynków zrównoważonych. Wprowadzenie jednolitego, obowiązkowego systemu oceny i certyfikacji dla budynków zrównoważonych jest prawdopodobnie kwestią najbliższych kilku lat. Obecnie najbardziej popularne są systemy BREEAM dla budynków użyteczności publicznej i CSH dla budynków mieszkalnych.

In its Judgment of 17 February 2016, the Polish Supreme Court adjudicated the case of Polish soldiers accused of crimes committed in the village of Nangar Khel in Afghanistan in 2007. Ultimately, the Supreme Court found that Polish soldiers were guilty of, inter alia, breach of Article 318 of the Polish Penal Code, which stipulates that a soldier commits a crime even when executing an order if he is aware of this crime. However, the part of the judgment devoted to the problem of unlawful orders is very limited and almost completely lacks references to international law. The Supreme Court could have referred to a number of international legal acts, starting from the beginning of 20th century and up to the more recent regulations, including those in the Rome Statute. Moreover, the Supreme Court did not use international case law. As a result, the argumentation of the Supreme Court should be assessed as limited and unconvincing.

In this paper, the different mechanical behaviors of layered rocks with different bedding angles during uniaxial compression tests are studied. Numerical simulation models of layered rock are validated based on laboratory tests, and uniaxial compression tests are conducted by using Particle Flow Code (PFC). Using these simulations, the uniaxial compressive strength, failure patterns, development of micro-cracks, and displacement of meso particles are analyzed. When the bedding angle is similar to the failure angle, the macro failure planes develop directly along the beddings, the bedding behavior dictates the behavior of the layered rock, reducing the compressive strength.

Although self-modifying code has been shyed away from due to its complexity and discouragement due to safety issues, it nevertheless provides for a very unique obfuscation method and a different perspective on the relationship between data and code. The generality of the von Neumann architecture is hardly realized by today’s processor models. A code-only model is shown where every instruction merely modifies other instructions yet achieves the ability to compute and Turing machine operation is easily possible.

On January 14, 2011, Zayn al-‘Ābidīn Bin ‘Alī resigned, left Tunisia and took refuge in Saudi Arabia following the revolts born in Sīdi Būzīd after the suicide of Bū-‘Azīzī. The Arab Spring in Tunisia was not a popular uprising perpetrated by the lower class and the unemployed young people: the committees of the lawyers and the magistrates who joined the protests, proved the active participation of the middle class. However, the Revolution did not alleviate the popular unrest, and it did not reduce the social imbalances. The diastratic varieties, already existing before the Revolution, are the linguistic reflection of the social situation. After 2011 the main actors of the protests, proceeding from the lowest and youngest class, came back to the Ḥū ma, the ghetto, in which anger and frustration flourish. The description of the life in the Ḥūma, has become the main topic of many songs written by the new generation of Tunisian artists who sing in the slang of the lower class. Despite they proceed from the upper class, they have become the spokesmen of the malaise that hovers in the poor neighborhoods. Guerrero (2012) analysed linguistically Rāyǝs lǝ-Blād, a song by the Tunisian rapper El Général, appeared on internet on February 8th, 2011, few days before the escape of Bǝn ԑAlī. Rāyǝs lǝ-Blād is an example of the artistic denunciation of the political oppression and the social degradation. The songs of artists such as Kafon, Hamzaoui Med Amin and Balti, which appeared after the Revolution instead, are not acts of protest, they just represent the ordinary life of the ūlād ǝl-Ḥūma in the ghetto. What linguistic dynamics are put in place by these singers? After a historical-etymological reconstruction related to the word Ḥūma, it will be shown how this group of artists practiced, on the one hand, the divergence with respect to the prestigious variety of the capital, on the other, the convergence towards the language of the tunisian poorest class.

The Polish language in Lithuania, Belorussia and Ukraine has been researched from many points of view, but it needs further studying. New material is required: records, letters, diaries, treatises, especially for researching standard Polish of the 20th century in its regional variant spoken by magnats, middle nobility, petty nobility living in villages, and by inteligentsia of cities and small towns. Also there are needed new methodological approaches to studying essential features of Polish mentioned above, which will take into account the frequent (common) traits as well as relict ones. The examination of these features will create a good base for distinguishing separate areas of the Polish language in Lithuania and Belorussia. The characteristic of vocabulary requests confrontation of words among others in synonymic pairs: native and foreign ones in register and in text, preferably based on computer text corps. To ascertain code mixing (also to find the homogenous/mixed character of the texts) it is necessary to apply both a panchronic approach (which regards all foreign elements), and a synchronic one (leaving out those foreign elements, which entered the grammatical or lexical systems of Polish). The paper proposes some ways for solving these problems

The presented article contains an analysis resulting from 10 years’ experience in the implementation of the POLVAL Code to mineral assets valuations carried out by Competent Valuators. It had been based on data of more than 100 performed valuations. First and foremost, challenges resulting from preferences given by various relevant regulations to the application of a market-based approach were identified. It was underlined that they prompt Valuators to compromise the quality of the database containing reference transactions. In the case of an income based approach, issues resulting from the adoption of estimates and subjective assumptions were discussed. It was indicated that this fact alone cannot create a valid argument to reject the results of such a valuation providing that they have been implemented in a coherent manner and uncertainty was reflected in the value of the applied discount rate. Separately recommended changes to the present version of the POLVAL Code were presented. In conclusion, a significant, positive role of the introduction of the POLVAL Code for the structuring processes of mineral asset valuation was indicated.

Local development, based on the use of endogenous potentials, requires the cooperation of muni-cipalities in urban functional areas (agglomerations). However, conducting joint activities in the area of building and running local development policy is a serious challenge. On the one hand, there is a shortage of experience in this area (not counting the short period of functio-ning municipal unions in the years 1920-1939 and intentional inter-communal relations after 1990). In addition, there are still no legal solutions needed (in addition to the act passed in 2017 for the metropolis of Silesia and Zagłębie). In recent years, however, projects of integra-ted territorial investments and other project partnerships have been implemented under the European Union and the Norwegian Financial Mechanism Programs, which result in prac-tical conclusions and legislative recommendations. The most important of them concern the introduction of a new form of partner cooperation and the adoption of a new urban code. Their quick implementation will enable more eff ective cooperation for development.

In order to design a stable and reliable voice communication system, it is essential to know how many resources are necessary for conveying quality content. These parameters may include objective quality of service (QoS) metrics, such as: available bandwidth, bit error rate (BER), delay, latency as well as subjective quality of experience (QoE) related to user expectations. QoE is expressed as clarity of speech and the ability to interpret voice commands with adequate mean opinion score (MOS) grades. This paper describes a quality evaluation study of a two-way speech transmission system via bandwidth over power line – power line communication (BPL-PLC) technology in an operating underground mine. We investigate how different features of the available wired medium can affect end-user quality. The results of the described study include: two types of coupling (capacitive and inductive), two transmission modes (mode 1 and 11), and four language sets of speech samples (American English, British English, German, and Polish) encoded at three different bit rates (8, 16, and 24 kbps). Our findings can aid both researchers working on low-bit rate coding and compression, signal processing and speech perception, as well as professionals active in the mining and oil industry.

In the early days, consumption of multimedia content related with audio signals was only possible in a stationary manner. The music player was located at home, with a necessary physical drive. An alternative way for an individual was to attend a live performance at a concert hall or host a private concert at home. To sum up, audio-visual effects were only reserved for a narrow group of recipients. Today, thanks to portable players, vision and sound is at last available for everyone. Finally, thanks to multimedia streaming platforms, every music piece or video, e.g. from one’s favourite artist or band, can be viewed anytime and everywhere. The background or status of an individual is no longer an issue. Each person who is connected to the global network can have access to the same resources. This paper is focused on the consumption of multimedia content using mobile devices. It describes a year to year user case study carried out between 2015 and 2019, and describes the development of current trends related with the expectations of modern users. The goal of this study is to aid policymakers, as well as providers, when it comes to designing and evaluating systems and services.

Simplifications used in simulation program codes require the use of substitute parameters in the material databases (also called apparent or substitutive). On the one hand, they formally fit into the records used in the heat flow model, porosity, properties etc. and on the other hand they should be determined in conditions most similar to the real casting-mould system.

The article presents results of a research on thermophysical parameters of gypsum mould used for precision casting moulds. Experiments were carried out on a cylindrical mould made of Plasticast gypsum, in which the heat source was a cylinder filled with liquid aluminium alloy of the temperature of 655°C. Energetic validation was carried out by using the NovaFlow&Solid ver. 6.3 simulation code. As a result of validation tests, substitute thermophysical parameters of gypsum were determined. For determined parameters, best-fit of solidification time from the experiment and simulation was obtained and the curves of gypsum mass heating were satisfactorily recreate.