Effect of Meteorological Conditions and Anthropogenic Factors on Air Concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 Particulates on the Examples of the City of Kielce, Poland

The paper analyzes the influence of meteorological conditions (air temperature, wind speed, humidity, visibility) and anthropogenic factors (population in cities and in rural areas, road length, number of vehicles, emission of dusts and gases, coal consumption in industrial plants, number of air purification devices installed in industrial plants) on the concentration of PM2.5 and PM10 dusts in the air in the region of Kielce city in Poland. Spearman correlation coefficient was used to evaluate the relationship between the mentioned independent variables and air quality indicators. The calculated values of the correlation coefficient showed statistically significant relationships between air quality and the amount of installed air purification equipment in industrial plants. A statistically significant effect of the population in rural settlement units on the increase in air concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 was also found, which proves the influence of the so-called low emission of pollutants on the air quality in the studied region. The analyses also revealed a statistically significant effect of road length on the decrease in PM2.5 and PM10 air content. This result indicates that a decrease in traffic intensity on particular road sections leads to an improvement in air quality. The analyses showed that despite the progressing anthropopression in the Kielce city region the air quality with respect to PM2.5 and PM10 content is improving. To verify the results obtained from statistical calculations, parametric models were also determined to predict PM2.5 and PM10 concentrations in the air, using the methods of Random Forests (RF), Boosted Trees (BT) and Support Vector Machines (SVM) for comparison purposes. The modelling results confirmed the conclusions that had been made based on previous statistical calculations

Application of logistic regression to simulate the influence of rainfall genesis on storm overflow operations: a probabilistic approach

Abstract. One of the key parameters constituting the basis for the operational assessment of stormwater systems is the annual number of storm overflows. Since uncontrolled overflows are a source of pollution washed away from the surface of the catchment area, which leads to imbalanced receiving waters, there is a need for their prognosis and potential reduction. The paper presents a probabilistic model for simulating the annual number of storm overflows. In this model, an innovative solution is to use the logistic regression method to analyze the impact of rainfall genesis on the functioning of a storm overflow (OV) in the example of a catchment located in the city of Kielce (central Poland). The developed model consists of two independent elements. The first element of the model is a synthetic precipitation generator, in which the simulation of rainfall takes into account its genesis resulting from various processes and phenomena occurring in the troposphere. This approach makes it possible to account for the stochastic nature of rainfall in relation to the annual number of events. The second element is the model of logistic regression, which can be used to model the storm overflow resulting from the occurrence of a single rainfall event. The paper confirmed that storm overflow can be modeled based on data on the total rainfall and its duration. An alternative approach was also proposed, providing the possibility of predicting storm overflow only based on the average rainfall intensity. Substantial simplification in the simulation of the phenomenon under study was achieved compared with the works published in this area to date. It is worth noting that the coefficients determined in the logit models have a physical interpretation, and the universal character of these models facilitates their easy adaptation to other examined catchment areas. The calculations made in the paper using the example of the examined catchment allowed for an assessment of the influence of rainfall characteristics (depth, intensity, and duration) of different genesis on the probability of storm overflow. Based on the obtained results, the range of the variability of the average rainfall intensity, which determines the storm overflow, and the annual number of overflows resulting from the occurrence of rain of different genesis were defined. The results are suited for the implementation in the assessment of storm overflows only based on the genetic type of rainfall. The results may be used to develop warning systems in which information about the predicted rainfall genesis is an element of the assessment of the rainwater system and its facilities. This approach is an original solution that has not yet been considered by other researchers. On the other hand, it represents an important simplification and an opportunity to reduce the amount of data to be measured

Distillation of entanglement by projection on permutationally invariant subspaces

We consider distillation of entanglement from two qubit states which are mixtures of three mutually orthogonal states: two pure entangled states and one pure product state. We distill entanglement from such states by projecting n copies of the state on permutationally invariant subspace and then applying one-way hashing protocol. We find analytical expressions for the rate of the protocol. We also generalize this method to higher dimensional systems. To get analytical expression for two qubit case, we faced a mathematical problem of diagonalizing a family of matrices enjoying some symmetries w.r.t. to symmetric group. We have solved this problem in two ways: (i) directly, by use of Schur-Weyl decomposition and Young symmetrizers (ii) showing that the problem is equivalent to a problem of diagonalizing adjacency matrices in a particular instance of a so called algebraic association scheme.Comment: 22 pages, comments welcom

The prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors and cardiovascular disease among primary care patients in Poland:results from the LIPIDOGRAM2015 study

BACKGROUND AND AIM: To estimate the prevalence of cardiovascular (CV) disease and CV risk factors among Polish patients. METHODS: A nationwide cross-sectional study, LIPIDOGRAM2015, was carried out in Poland in the 4th quarter of 2015 and 1st and 2nd quarters of 2016; 438 primary care physicians enrolled 13,724 adult patients that sought medical care in primary health care practices. RESULTS: Nearly 19% of men and approximately 12% of women had cardiovascular disease (CVD). Over 60% of the recruited patients had hypertension (HTN), >80% had dyslipidaemia and <15% of patients were diagnosed with diabetes (DM). All of these disorders were more frequent in men. In 80% of patients the waist circumference exceed norm for the European population. Less than half of the patients were current smokers or had smoked in the past. Patients with CVD had significantly higher blood pressure and glucose levels but lower low density lipoprotein-cholesterol level. CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of CVD and CV risk factors among patients in Poland is high. CVD is more common in men than in women. The most common CV risk factors are excess waist circumference, dyslipidaemia and HTN. Family physicians should conduct activities to prevent, diagnose early and treat CVD in the primary health care population

The Differences in the Prevalence of Cardiovascular Disease, Its Risk Factors, and Achievement of Therapeutic Goals among Urban and Rural Primary Care Patients in Poland: Results from the LIPIDOGRAM 2015 Study

From MDPI via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: accepted 2021-11-28, pub-electronic 2021-11-30Publication status: PublishedFunder: Valeant Pharmaceuticals; Grant(s): unrestricted educational grantA nationwide cross-sectional study, LIPIDOGRAM2015, was carried out in Poland in the years 2015 and 2016. A total of 438 primary care physicians enrolled 13,724 adult patients that sought medical care in primary health care practices. The prevalence of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidaemia, and CVD were similar in urban and rural areas (49.5 vs. 49.4%; 13.7 vs. 13.1%; 84.2 vs. 85.2%; 14.4 vs. 14.2%, respectively). The prevalence of obesity (32.3 vs. 37.5%, p 0.01) and excessive waist circumference (77.5 vs. 80.7%, p 0.01), as well as abdominal obesity (p = 43.2 vs. 46.4%, p 0.01), were higher in rural areas in both genders. Mean levels of LDL-C (128 vs. 130 mg/dL, p = 0.04) and non-HDL-C (147 vs. 148 mg/dL, p = 0.03) were slightly higher in rural populations. Altogether, 14.3% of patients with CVD from urban areas and 11.3% from rural areas reached LDL 70 mg/dL (p = 0.04). There were no important differences in the prevalence of hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidaemia, and CVD, or in mean levels of blood pressure, cholesterol fractions, glucose, and HbA1c between Polish urban and rural primary care patient populations. A high proportion of patients in cities and an even-higher proportion in rural areas did not reach the recommended targets for blood pressure, LDL-C, and HbA1c, indicating the need for novel CVD-prevention programs

Planning the monitoring systems supporting the communal water nets management

W artykule przedstawiono algorytm planowania systemu monitoringu instalowanego na sieci wodociągowej w taki sposób, aby umożliwiał realizację określonych zadań związanych z eksploatacją sieci. Do takich zadań należą np. kalibracja modelu hydraulicznego sieci wodociągowej oraz lokalizacja awarii i ukrytych wycieków wody.In the paper an algorithm for planning the monitoring systems for communal water networks is described. This special planning enables designing the monitoring systems that make possible to support the water networks management and especially the operational control and planning of water nets. The exemplary tasks that can be solved using the monitoring systems properly planed are the finding out the hidden water leaks on the water net [5] and automatic calibration of the water net hydraulic model

Analysis, Modelling and Planning the Communal Sewarage Systems

The hydraulic calculations of sewage networks are done ususally by the use of nomograms being the diagrams that show the relation between the main network parameters like pipe diameters, flow rates, hydraulic slopes and flow velocities. In traditional planning of sewage networks the appropriate hydraulic values are read mechanically from the the nomograms. Another way of calculation is the use of professional programs like the SWMM5 hydraulic model and genetic or heuristic optimization algorithms. In the paper still another way of realizing the hydraulic and planning calculations is presented in which the basic hydraulic rules and formulas describing the sewage networks and their functioning are used. The numerical solutions of nonlinear equations resulted from the formulas and describing the main phenomena of sewage flows are used in the paper to solve the tasks of hydraulic calculation and planing of the networks

Forecasting hydraulic load of urban water supply system using TSK fuzzy models

Przedstawiono możliwości prognozowania dobowego poboru wody w miejskim systemie wodociągowym. W tym celu wykorzystano modele o strukturze Takagi-Sugeno-Kanga (TSK), w których następnikiem jest klasyczny model liniowy uwzględniający dynamikę, co pozwala na określenie ich struktury jako „modeli liniowych rozmywanych strefowo”. W przeprowadzonych rozważaniach wykorzystano dane (o liczebności 974) pochodzące z sieci wodociągowej Rzeszowa obejmujące przedział czasu od 01-07-2005 do 29-02-2008. Na podstawie zarejestrowanych danych porównano tygodniowe wartości poboru wody w różnych porach roku. Kolejno przedstawiono modele TSK oraz sposób ich wyznaczania. Wykazano, że modelowanie może odbyć się w oparciu o znajomość tygodniowych zmian poboru wody, a wynikowy model pozwala prognozować wartości poboru wody w szerokim zakresie zmienności. Uzyskane wyniki przy różnych kombinacjach rozmywania i doboru struktury konkluzji modelu były porównywalne, z czego wynika, że wykorzystywana metoda wyznaczania modeli rozmytych może być stosowana do określania właściwości dynamicznych procesów, w przypadku których nie jest znany dokładny opis modelowanych zjawisk.The paper presents possibilities of daily water demand forecasting for municipal water supply system. For this purpose, Takagi-Sugeno-Kang’s (TSK) models were applied. In this type of models the conclusion is in the form of a classical linear function, which allows describing their structure as ‛fuzzified linear models’. For the purpose of this study data from the water supply network for the city of Rzeszow was used (974 samples). It covered the period from 1 July 2005 to 29 February 2008. Based on the collected data weakly water demand values were compared for different seasons. Subsequent TSK models were described together with the way they were developed. It was shown that modeling could be based on weakly water demand data and that resulting model allowed predicting water demand values over a wide range of variability. The results received for different combinations of fuzzification and model conclusion structure selection were comparable. Therefore, it could be concluded that the method used for fuzzy model development might be used to determine dynamic properties of the processes for which the exact description of modeled phenomena was unknown