Income and consumption inequality in Poland, 1998–2008

This paper estimates a variety of inequality indices to study the evolution of income and consumption inequality in Poland between 1998 and 2008. We use robust methods to adjust for the impact of extremely large observations. We also conduct statistical tests on inequality changes using methods, which account for the complexity of the household sample design. All analyses are performed for the entire population, for rural and urban subpopulations, and for the three largest cities. The main result is that during 1998–2008 there was a statistically significant rise in economic inequalities in Poland, which depending on the inequality index, ranged from 8.7% to 19.6% in case of income distribution and from 6.5% to 12.3% in case of consumption distribution. Among the studied subpopulations, economic inequalities are both the highest and the fastest-growing in Warsaw, where consumption inequality as measured by the Gini index increased during the studied period by as much as almost 23%.income inequality, consumption inequality, Pareto model, robust estimation, statistical inference, Poland

La France en quête de confiance : la construction des émotions dans les voeux des hommes politiques pour la nouvelle année

With the development of political communication over the Internet, a growing number of the French politicians are posting online their New Year’s Messages, which have been so far a genre of political discourse reserved for the President. These speeches have a similar pattern, which apart from wishes include an evaluation of the passing year and plans for the future. This is so, because the New Year’s Messages have primarily a persuasive function, and serve the purpose of strengthening the addressees’ group identity by reminding them of common values. However, while the President’s speech is strongly ritualized and emotionally balanced – as it is addressed to the whole nation – the online speeches are not subject to certain conventions, which allows the politicians to adjust the tone of their speech to the expectations of their supporters. Therefore a whole range of feelings is applied – from the fear of France falling, to national pride – depending on the political aims which are to be achieved. This article makes an attempt at answering the question in which way these emotions are constructed within the speeches, and which persuasive function they embody. The author adopts the perspective of argument analysis in discourse (Amossy, 2000; Plantin, 2011), which perceives emotions as a rhetoric means (pathos) whose aim is to influence the addressee.With the development of political communication over the Internet, a growing number of the French politicians are posting online their New Year’s Messages, which have been so far a genre of political discourse reserved for the President. These speeches have a similar pattern, which apart from wishes include an evaluation of the passing year and plans for the future. This is so, because the New Year’s Messages have primarily a persuasive function, and serve the purpose of strengthening the addressees’ group identity by reminding them of common values. However, while the President’s speech is strongly ritualized and emotionally balanced – as it is addressed to the whole nation – the online speeches are not subject to certain conventions, which allows the politicians to adjust the tone of their speech to the expectations of their supporters. Therefore a whole range of feelings is applied – from the fear of France falling, to national pride – depending on the political aims which are to be achieved. This article makes an attempt at answering the question in which way these emotions are constructed within the speeches, and which persuasive function they embody. The author adopts the perspective of argument analysis in discourse (Amossy, 2000; Plantin, 2011), which perceives emotions as a rhetoric means (pathos) whose aim is to influence the addressee

On-Change Publishing of Database Resident Control System Data

The CERN accelerator control system is largely data driven, based on a distributed Oracle® database architecture. Many application programs depend on the latest values of key pieces of information such as beam mode and accelerator mode. Rather than taking the non-scalable approach of polling the database for the latest values, the CERN control system addresses this requirement by making use of the Oracle Advanced Queuing – an implementation based on JMS (Java Message Service) – to publish data changes throughout the control system via the CERN Controls Middleware (CMW). This paper describes the architecture of the system, the implementation choices and the experience so far

New Priorities, Familiar Challenges: Defense Trends in Budgets, Appropriations, and Contract Obligations

Symposium ProceedingThe Department of Defense (DoD) and its industry partners face an uncertain fiscal environment that includes constraints from continuing resolutions (CRs), the absence of a 2-year budget agreement, and budgetary pressure from program growth, inflation, and other cost increases. Also, administration priorities include many initiatives (such as supply chain resiliency, Made in America, diversity and inclusion, and climate actions) that can impact DoD requirements and contracting. In addition, the defense industrial base needs to invest and prepare for new ways to support its DoD customers. In this paper, the PSC Foundation describes recent trends in DoD funding and contract obligations and explores how those trends link to current challenges and new priorities. A panel of top defense experts with experience in both government and industry will then discuss the impacts of limited defense budgets and the constraints of CRs on defense acquisition of products and services and the defense industrial base. They will also discuss the impact of the Biden–Harris administration’s stated priorities on defense spending as reflected in the FY2023 President’s Budget Request and Future Years Defense Program and ways that the defense industry can plan and prepare to help address and support those priorities.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

On The Margins of Empire: An Archaeological and Historical Study of Guana Island, British Virgin Islands

The present study of Guana Island in the British Virgin Islands draws upon archaeological, archival, and architectural evidence to examine the material and spatial aspects of everyday life on the social, geographic, and economic margins of the British Empire between 1717 and 1845. Guana’s settlers were yeoman farmers, formerly indentured laborers, and fishermen displaced from other parts of the Caribbean who came to the Virgin Islands for the opportunity to seek their own fortunes in the small island territories initially forsaken by sugar planters as ill-suited for large scale sugar cultivation. Arriving with them, and with increasing frequency over time, were enslaved Africans forced into laboring in the cotton and sugar fields, on fishing boats, and as domestic servants. The present study seeks to better understand how the experience of eighteenth-century Virgin Islanders, both free and enslaved, compared to their counterparts in larger and wealthier Caribbean sugar colonies through a detailed study of households on Guana Island through time. Between the early eighteenth and mid nineteenth centuries, Guana’s households underwent substantial transformations in response to the expansion, contraction, and variation of the Virgin Islands’ plantation-based economy. Those transformations included measurable changes in settlement patterns, household composition, built environment, and household industry. at the local scale, the archaeological evidence illustrates how colonial processes are frequently tied to the economic use of the land; while at the regional scale, the archaeological evidence highlights the range experiences within the British Caribbean. The evidence presented herein also complicates long-held assumption that Guana’s colonial history was limited to the island’s occupation by Quakers. Indeed, Guana’s eighteenth century settlement occurred earlier, lasted longer, and included a greater number, and wider variety, of people than previously understood

The Participation of a Social Factor as the Implementation of the Rule of Public Nature of a Trial

The article presents the rule of transparency in criminal procedure. Especially the external aspect of this rule – the rule of public nature of a trial. The paper illustrates the constitutional and criminal regulation of the rule of publicness. It identifies the conditions under which a trial is freely accessible to a public audience and the conditions under which such openness is not possible. Th e article also shows the targets, features and aspects of the rule of publicness in terms of its [email protected] w BiałymstokuBrzozowska-Pasieka M., Olszyński M., Pasieka J., Prawo prasowe. Komentarz, Warszawa 2013.Dobrowolski P., Jawność postępowań: wszystko, co dzieje się na sali sądowej, jest wspólną sprawą, „Dziennik Gazeta Prawna” z dnia 20 stycznia 2012 r., http://prawo.gazetaprawna.pl/artykuly/586201,jawnosc-postepowan-wszystko-co-sie-dzieje-na-sali-sadowej-jest-wspolna-sprawa.html.Gil D., Kruk E. (red.), Role uczestników postępowań sądowych – wczoraj, dziś i jutro, Tom II, Lublin 2015.Hofmański P., O jawności posiedzeń sądowych, (w:) A. Marek (red.), Współczesne problemy procesu karnego i jego efektywności, Toruń 2004.Koper R., Jawność zewnętrzna postępowania karnego, (w:) W. Jasiński, K. Nowicki (red.), Jawność jako wymóg rzetelnego procesu karnego. Zagadnienia prawa polskiego i obcego, Warszawa 2013.Krzewska I., Proces podlaskich Czeczenów. Świadkowie boją się o swoje życie, „Kurier Poranny” z dnia 23 listopada 2016 r., http://www.poranny.pl/wiadomosci/bialystok/a/ proces-podlaskich-czeczenow-swiadkowie-boja-sie-o-swoje-zycie,11495169/.Nowicki K., Jawność zewnętrzna postępowania sądowego, (w:) J. Skorupka (red.), Jawność procesu karnego, Warszawa 2012.Paluszkiewicz H., Pierwszoinstancyjne wyrokowanie merytoryczne poza rozprawą w polskim procesie karnym, Warszawa 2008.Safjan M., Bosek L. (red.), Konstytucja RP, Tom I, Warszawa 2016.Skorupka J. (red.), Jawność procesu karnego, Warszawa 2012.Skorupka J. (red.), Kodeks postępowania karnego. Komentarz, wydanie 2, Warszawa 2016.Stefański R.A., Zabłocki S., Kodeks postępowania karnego. Komentarz, t. II, Warszawa 2004.Waltoś S., Domniemanie niewinności w świecie mediów, (w:) C. Kulesza (red.), System wymiaru sprawiedliwości a media, Białystok 2009.Wójcicka B., Jawność Postępowania Sądowego w polskim procesie karnym, Łódź 1989.Zimna M., Wyłączenie jawności rozprawy jako gwarancja ochrony interesów uczestników postępowania karnego, „Prokuratura i Prawo” 2016, nr 9.97-11

The Participation of a Social Factor in the Administration of Justice as the Implementation of the Rule of the Public Trial

Creation of the English-language versions of the articles published in the „Białostockie Studia Prawnicze” [Białystok Legal Studies] funded under the contract no. 548/P-DUN/2016 and 548/1/P-DUN/2016 from resources of the Minister of Science and Higher Education dedicated to the popularisation of science.The article presents the rule of transparency in criminal procedure, especially the external aspect of this rule – the rule of a public trial. The paper shows constitutional and criminal regulations of the rule of an open trial. The article presents when a trial is freely accessible for the audience and when an open trial is not possible. What is more, the article depicts targets, features and aspects of the implementation of the rule of an open [email protected] of BiałystokBrzozowska-Pasieka M., Olszyński M., Pasieka J., Prawo prasowe. Komentarz, Warszawa 2013. Dobrowolski P., Jawność postępowań: wszystko, co dzieje się na sali sądowej, jest wspólną sprawą, “Dziennik Gazeta Prawna” z dnia 20 stycznia 2012 r., http://prawo.gazetaprawna.pl/arty- kuly/586201,jawnosc-postepowan-wszystko-co-sie-dzieje-na-sali-sadowej-jest-wspolna--sprawa.html.Gil D., Kruk E. (eds.), Role uczestników postępowań sądowych – wczoraj, dziś i jutro, tom II, Lublin 2015.Hofmański P., O jawności posiedzeń sądowych, (in:) A. Marek (ed.), Współczesne problemy procesu karnego i jego efektywności, Toruń 2004.Koper R., Jawność zewnętrzna postępowania karnego, (in:) W. Jasiński, K. Nowicki (eds.), Jawność jako wymóg rzetelnego procesu karnego. Zagadnienia prawa polskiego i obcego, Warszawa 2013.Krzewska I., Proces podlaskich Czeczenów. Świadkowie boją się o swoje życie, “Kurier Poranny” of 23 November 2016, http://www.poranny.pl/wiadomosci/bialystok/a/proces-podlaskich-czeczenow-swiadkowie-boja-sie-o-swoje-zycie,11495169.Nowicki K., Jawność zewnętrzna postępowania sądowego, (in:) J. Skorupka (ed.), Jawność procesu karnego, Warszawa 2012.Paluszkiewicz H., Pierwszoinstancyjne wyrokowanie merytoryczne poza rozprawą w polskim procesie karnym, Warszawa 2008.Safian M., Bosek L. (ed.), Konstytucja RP, tom I, Warszawa 2016.Skorupka J. (ed.), Jawność procesu karnego, Warszawa 2012.Skorupka J. (ed.), Kodeks postępowania karnego. Komentarz, Warszawa 2016.Stefański R.A., Zabłocki S., Kodeks postępowania karnego. Komentarz, tom II, Warszawa 2004.Waltoś S., Domniemanie niewinności w świecie mediów, (in:) C. Kulesza (ed.), System wymiaru sprawiedliwości a media, Białystok 2009.Wójcicka B., Jawność Postępowania Sądowego w polskim procesie karnym, Łódź 1989.Zimna M., Wyłączenie jawności rozprawy jako gwarancja ochrony interesów uczestników postępowania karnego, “Prokuratura i Prawo” 2016, No. 9.21 en9310

Microstructured glazing for daylighting, glare protection, seasonal thermal control and clear view

The appropriate choice of glazing in a facade depends on many factors. They include amongst other criteria: location, orientation, climatic condition, energetic efficiency, usage of the building, required user comfort, and the architectural concept. On the south facade of high-rise buildings in particular, it is a challenge to have simultaneously large glazed area, no glare, no excessive cooling loads, a clear view and sufficient natural light flux. In Switzerland, electric lighting, heating and air conditioning account for about 74% of the total energy demand in private housing and 32% of the overall Swiss electricity usage. This energy consumption can be strongly influenced by using the most appropriate fenestration system. A software was developed during this thesis to engineer new complex fenestration system (CFS) that have a two dimensional profile. The originality of the implemented Monte Carlo ray tracing algorithm is the separation of intersection and interaction. The model also calculates an accurate bidirectional transmission distribution function that is used in combination with Radiance to obtain a rendering of the daylighting distribution in an office space or dynamic daylight metrics such as the daylight factor and daylight autonomy. Finally, to estimate the thermal performances, a simple nodal thermal model was added to simulate the temperature evolution and the thermal loads in a given office. This tool was validated. A glazing combining several functions and that can contribute to significantly reduce energy consumption in buildings was developed using this novel ray tracing approach. It was designed to obtain a strongly angular dependent transmission and a specific angular distribution of transmitted light. The engineered geometry provides elevated daylight illuminance by redirecting the incoming light towards the depth of the room. This redirection simultaneously reduces the glare risk. For an optimised usage of available solar radiation, the transmission of direct sunlight is maximised in winter and minimised in summer. Taking advantage of the changing elevation of the sun between seasons, such a seasonal variation can be created by a strongly angular dependent transmittance. A fabrication process was identified and samples of embedded micromirrors were produced to demonstrate the feasibility. The fabrication of such structures required several steps. The fabrication of a metallic mould with a high aspect ratio and mirror polished surfaces is followed by the production of an intermediate polydimethylsiloxane mould that was subsequently used to replicate the structure with a ultraviolet (UV) curable polymer. Selected facets of these samples were then coated with a thin film of reflective material. Finally, the structures were filled with the same polymer to integrated the mirrors. The blocking effect can be obtained by a combination with well placed reflective stripes, those were fabricated by lift-off lithography. The samples were characterised during the various fabrication steps using various microscopy techniques, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, profilometry and optical measurements. A setup was built for the measures of angular dependent transmittance. The final samples redirect up to 70% of the light flux and are very transparent when looking through at normal incidence

Analysis of Human Remains from Guana Island, BVI

On July 7, 2004, archaeologists from the Bermuda Maritime Museum and the College of William and Mary arrived on Guana Island in the BVI as part of the ongoing investigation of the island’s archaeological and architectural heritage sponsored by the island’s owners, Dr. Henry and Gloria Jarecki. Upon their arrival, the archaeologists were informed of the discovery of human remains on the island and subsequent recovery efforts by the Road Town Police. In the days that followed, archaeologists Mark Kostro and Dr. Marley Brown contacted the Institute for Historical Biology (IHB) at the College of William and Mary in order to notify the staff of the human remains’ discovery. Police Commissioner Barry Webb granted their request for custody of the remains for assessment and analysis pending a preliminary inventory to be carried out at the Road Town Police Station. Mark Kostro and Melissa Eaton, Anthropology graduate students from the College of William and Mary, carried out the requested preliminary inventory on July 30, 2004 with materials provided by the Institute for Historical Biology. Dr. Marley R. Brown III, research professor at William and Mary, provided additional assistance with the inventory. The inventory was carried out in the presence of a representative of the Royal British Virgin Islands Police Service, Constable Forbes Washington