Networks and Competitiveness in Polish Foreign-owned and Domestic Firms

In this study deepens the available knowledge about the networks of Polish manufacturing firms. Among the questions touched upon in this analysis are: Do foreign-owned companies have less developed networks of Polish suppliers than domestically owned companies? What is the role of the science and technology sector in industrial innovation? What benefits do firms derive from cooperation with various types of partners? To achieve a mix of mature and emerging industries, four manufacturing industries were selected for analysis: • electronics • auto/auto parts • pharmaceuticals •food and beverages. The introduction, briefly overviews the recent development and performance of the four industries in Poland. The second section presents case studies of eight firms – two from each of the four industries studied. These case studies were carried out in 2003. The third section, analyzes data collected from a sample of 226 companies in 2004.Networks, upgrading, Poland, manufacturing, competitiveness.

Application of Weighted Voting Taggers to Languages Described with Large Tagsets

The paper presents baseline and complex part-of-speech taggers applied to the modified corpus of Frequency Dictionary of Contemporary Polish, annotated with a large tagset. First, the paper examines accuracy of 6 baseline part-of-speech taggers. The main part of the work presents simple weighted voting and complex voting taggers. Special attention is paid to lexical voting methods and issues of ties and fallbacks. TagPair and WPDV voting methods achieve the top accuracy among all considered methods. Error reduction 10.8 % with respect to the best baseline tagger for the large tagset is comparable with other author's results for small tagsets

Polymorphism of the flap endonuclease 1 gene in keratoconus and Fuchs endothelial corneal dystrophy

Oxidative stress is implicated in the pathogenesis of many diseases, including serious ocular diseases, keratoconus (KC) and Fuchs endothelial corneal dystrophy (FECD). Flap endonuclease 1 (FEN1) plays an important role in the repair of oxidative DNA damage in the base excision repair pathway. We determined the association between two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), c.-441G>A (rs174538) and g.61564299G>T (rs4246215), in the FEN1 gene and the occurrence of KC and FECD. This study involved 279 patients with KC, 225 patients with FECD and 322 control individuals. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and length polymorphism restriction fragment analysis (RFLP) were applied. The T/T genotype of the g.61564299G>T polymorphism was associated with an increased occurrence of KC and FECD. There was no association between the c.-441G>A polymorphism and either disease. However, the GG haplotype of both polymorphisms was observed more frequently and the GT haplotype less frequently in the KC group than the control. The AG haplotype was associated with increased FECD occurrence. Our findings suggest that the g.61564299G>T and c.-441G>A polymorphisms in the FEN1 gene may modulate the risk of keratoconus and Fuchs endothelial corneal dystrophy.peer-reviewe

Study of exclusive one-pion and one-eta production using hadron and dielectron channels in pp reactions at kinetic beam energies of 1.25 GeV and 2.2 GeV with HADES

We present measurements of exclusive ensuremathπ+,0 and η production in pp reactions at 1.25GeV and 2.2GeV beam kinetic energy in hadron and dielectron channels. In the case of π+ and π0 , high-statistics invariant-mass and angular distributions are obtained within the HADES acceptance as well as acceptance-corrected distributions, which are compared to a resonance model. The sensitivity of the data to the yield and production angular distribution of Δ (1232) and higher-lying baryon resonances is shown, and an improved parameterization is proposed. The extracted cross-sections are of special interest in the case of pp → pp η , since controversial data exist at 2.0GeV; we find \ensuremathσ=0.142±0.022 mb. Using the dielectron channels, the π0 and η Dalitz decay signals are reconstructed with yields fully consistent with the hadronic channels. The electron invariant masses and acceptance-corrected helicity angle distributions are found in good agreement with model predictions

Development of treatment and clinical results in childhood acute myeloid leukemia in Poland

BACKGROUND: Since 1983 four consecutive unified regimens: acute myeloid leukemia-Polish pediatric leukemia/lymphoma study group (AML-PPLLSG) 83, AML-PPLLSG 94, AML-PPLLSG 98 and AML-BFM 2004 Interim, for AML have been conducted by the Polish Pediatric Leukemia/Lymphoma Study Group (PPLLSG). In this paper, we review four successive studies on the basis of acute myeloid leukemia-Berlin–Frankfurt–Munster (AML-BFM) protocol, in which a stepwise improvement of treatment outcome was observed. Treatment results of the last protocol AML-BFM 2004 Interim are presented in detail. METHODS: Three hundred and three patients with de novo AML were treated according to the AML-BFM 2004 Interim at 15 Polish centers from January 1, 2005 to June 30, 2011. A confrontation with previous treatment periods was based upon historical, already published data. RESULTS: In four consecutive periods, 723 children were eligible for evaluation (208, 83, 195, and 237, respectively). Complete remission rates in consecutive periods were: 71, 68, 81 and 87 %, respectively. The 5-year overall survival rates, event-free survival rates, and relapse-free survival rates were 33, 32, and 45%, respectively for AML-PPLLSG 83 regimen; 38, 36, and 53 % respectively for AML-PPLLSG 94 regimen; 53, 46, and 65 % respectively for AML-PPLLSG 98 regimen, and 63, 52, and 64 % for AML–BFM Interim 2004, respectively. Incidence of early deaths and that due to complications (mainly infections) in the first remission decreased over time from 22 to 4.6 % and from 10 to 5.9 %, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Despite continuous improvement in the treatment outcome, the number of failures still remains too high. Further progress seemed to be possible due to continued cooperation of oncology centers within large international study groups

Effect of thermal treatment on the growth, structure and luminescence of nitride-passivated silicon nanoclusters

Silicon nanoclusters (Si-ncs) embedded in silicon nitride films have been studied to determine the effects that deposition and processing parameters have on their growth, luminescent properties, and electronic structure. Luminescence was observed from Si-ncs formed in silicon-rich silicon nitride films with a broad range of compositions and grown using three different types of chemical vapour deposition systems. Photoluminescence (PL) experiments revealed broad, tunable emissions with peaks ranging from the near-infrared across the full visible spectrum. The emission energy was highly dependent on the film composition and changed only slightly with annealing temperature and time, which primarily affected the emission intensity. The PL spectra from films annealed for duration of times ranging from 2 s to 2 h at 600 and 800°C indicated a fast initial formation and growth of nanoclusters in the first few seconds of annealing followed by a slow, but steady growth as annealing time was further increased. X-ray absorption near edge structure at the Si K- and L3,2-edges exhibited composition-dependent phase separation and structural re-ordering of the Si-ncs and silicon nitride host matrix under different post-deposition annealing conditions and generally supported the trends observed in the PL spectra

Feasibility study of Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) power plant integration with Adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage (ACAES)

The paper presents the research outcome on integration of an Adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage system with a Combined Cycle Gas Turbine power plant to increase its operation flexibility. The study demonstrates the novel hybrid CCGT-ACAES plant including an extended operational load level range and increased operation flexibility which supports the power grid to allow more power generation from connected intermittent renewable energy sources. It is also shown that this new hybrid power plant will avoid the Combined Cycle plant gas turbine operating under the low load level. Lowering the minimum hybrid plant operational load level during air and Thermal Energy Storage charging process to the required minimum Heat Recovery Steam Generator load level eliminates the need for Combined Cycle Gas Turbine plant cycling operation increasing the lifetime of the plant components. Adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage plant concept is based on proved and well established direct two-tank Thermal Energy Storage technology used in Concentrated Solar Power plants. Improved hybrid plant flexibility is occupied by slight decrease (2%) in the plant efficiency. Further investigation into alternative advanced Thermal Energy Storage systems based on latent heat and chemical reaction heat would offer better hybrid plant round-trip efficiency across operational plant load level range

The role of informal sources of information in the Polish consumer market

The paper presents results of the research conducted in 2009 with the participation of 466 Internet users via an online survey. The research showed that consumers before the purchase utilize formal sources of information about the product more often than informal ones. Nevertheless, the more they refer to the formal sources, the more they refer to the informal ones. It was also proved that in the tested group the place of residence, the time spent using the Internet and the value of a product had an influence on the prevalence of formal sources