Environmental hazard accompanying the liquid waste storage in the mass

Although the liquid waste storage is environmentally safe, the injection process can be potentially accompanied by failures, resulting in some negative environmental impacts.This paper discusses the problem of environmental hazards related with failures of the injection installment on the surface and underground. The surface failures are most frequently related with sewage and waste pits, injection pumps, systems for physical and chemical processing of waste before injection, pumping pipelines, and wellhead in the injection well. The most common failures of the underground parts are: failures of pumping columns, sealing packer, casing and the cement layer in the angular space

Healthcare quality management in Great Britain and Czech Republic

Healthcare quality can be defined as the summary of the results achieved in prevention, diagnosis and treatment, based on findings of medical science and practice, or as the degree of excellence of the provided care in relation to a contemporary level of knowledge and technological development and in compliance with economic possibilities. Research and monitoring of the effectiveness of quality systems can be implemented in different ways: (1) measuring the quality system through the entire institution rating (self-assessment or accreditation), based on the assumption that appropriate care is the result of well-organized processes and systematic quality assurance and improvement; (2) measuring critical points in the process of care compliance of specialists with recommended practices or professional standards; (3) measuring outcomes in relation to the benefit of patients, such as clinical outcomes, client satisfaction and perceived quality of life in connection with the results of the provided care. The paper deals with monitoring the effectiveness of quality in health facilities based on customer satisfaction and compares patient satisfaction rating methodologies applied in the United Kingdom and in Czech Republic

Management crisis in health care system in COVID-19 conditions

PURPOSE: The objective of this article is to present the conditions in which the changes, aiming at improvement or facilitating the process of health care system management, improvement of treatment quality and hospitals’ finances take place.DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Analysis and method of situational assessment were used. The period of time from World War II till 2022 has been subjected to analysis, with special attention towards the time of COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis is of descriptive character, shows concepts of health care system management in particular periods of country functioning. Situational assessment has been performed to find out how health care sector functions in a particular moment. FODA method is one of situational assessment methods and refers to knowing everything about the analyzed period in particular sector.FINDINGS: The research results show that together with transforming political and economic situation, there were changes in health care system management concepts. Implemented concepts were to improve material, financial and organizational situation of health care system. The period of pandemic was a serious complication in changes implementation when all economies tried to save life and health of patients, however, with different result. The pandemics also showed weakness of countries in fighting with such a serious threat. Health care system management of the last few years has shown a return to centrally controlled economy of post war period and lack of ideas for the future. Outflow of young medical staff and ageing of still employed personnel is also a noticeable phenomenon.PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The complete results can be utilized by managers and the Minister of Health advisors for building the concept of long-term health care system management and improvement of medical services.ORIGINALITY/VALUE: Realized analysis shows management shortcomings and points to examples of wrong decisions causing the collapse of health care system. Data concerning management crisis in the period of COVID-19 pandemics deserve special attention.peer-reviewe

Evaluation of the mine gases hazard in the closed hard coal mine „Niwka-Modrzejów”

Closing of hard coal mines, especially stopping the process of mine water pumping, results in a reconstruction of the Carboniferous water-bearing horizon, leading to the intensification of gas flux to the near-surface zone („piston effect”). Stopping the fans considerably enhances the movement of mine gases towards the surface in closed mines. Stopping the fans results in an accumulation of gases in workings and old workings.The results of geochemical analyses performed in the area of the hard coal mine „Niwka-Modrzejów” are presented in the paper. The obtained results and their comparison with the existing geological-reservoir model prove that the intensification of the mine gases flow towards the surface continues through the zones of tectonic discontinuities, crackings, and loosened zones in the Upper-Carboniferous sedimentary rocks. The thickness and lithology of the onlying overburden plays a decisive role in the limitation of the mine gases migration

Value creation disclosure in CSR reports: evidence from Poland

Value creation disclosure in CSR reports: evidence from Poland Nowadays, many companies are involved in the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and they perceive it as a source of value creation. But the question arises if companies measure and report the value created via CSR engagement or whether they present mainly descriptive information concerning their actions and activities within CSR. The aim of this paper is to present what the CSR reporting prac- tices in Poland are concerning value creation measurement and disclosure. The theoretical concept of value creation via CSR activities is analyzed and confronted with a practical disclosure in all the CSR reports published by Polish companies in the years 2013-2015. To achieve the research aim, a literature review, content analysis of source documents (CSR reports), synthesis, and the deductive method were used. In the paper, the descriptive approach to accounting is applied

INTERSTICE. Training course for Education students

INTERSTICE is an Erasmus+ project developed by universities, artists and cultural settings from Catalonia, United Kingdom, Italy, and Norway to promote spaces of encounter between educators, artists, and children, to improve our learning processes and to build a pedagogy of co-creation through the arts. All University partners of INTERSTICE project designed and developed training experiences for prospective educators, with the active involvement of artists, cultural setting and schools. In this material, the four experiences and summarized, and some reflexions are offered in order to inspire more university professors

Macroevolutionary patterns of bumblebee body size: detecting the interplay between natural and sexual selection

Bumblebees and other eusocial bees offer a unique opportunity to analyze the evolution of body size differences between sexes. The workers, being sterile females, are not subject to selection for reproductive function and thus provide a natural control for parsing the effects of selection on reproductive function (i.e., sexual and fecundity selection) from other natural selection. Using a phylogenetic comparative approach, we explored the allometric relationships among queens, males, and workers in 70 species of bumblebees (Bombus sp.). We found hyperallometry in thorax width for males relative to workers, indicating greater evolutionary divergence of body size in males than in sterile females. This is consistent with the hypothesis that selection for reproductive function, most probably sexual selection, has caused divergence in male size among species. The slope for males on workers was significantly steeper than that for queens on workers and the latter did not depart from isometry, providing further evidence of greater evolutionary divergence in male size than female size, and no evidence that reproductive selection has accelerated divergence of females. We did not detect significant hyperallometry when male size was regressed directly on queen size and our results thus add the genus Bombus to the increasing list of clades that have female-larger sexual size dimorphism and do not conform to Rensch's rule when analyzed according to standard methodology. Nevertheless, by using worker size as a common control, we were able to demonstrate that bumblee species do show the evolutionary pattern underlying Rensch's rule, that being correlated evolution of body size in males and females, but with greater evolutionary divergence in males

Out of the box: how bees orient in an ambiguous environment

Dittmar L, Stürzl W, Jetzschke S, Mertes M, Boeddeker N. Out of the box: how bees orient in an ambiguous environment. Animal Behaviour. 2014;89:13-21.How do bees employ multiple visual cues for homing? They could either combine the available cues using a view-based computational mechanism or pick one cue. We tested these strategies by training honeybees, Apis mellifera carnica, and bumblebees, Bombus terrestris, to locate food in one of the four corners of a box-shaped flight arena, providing multiple and also ambiguous cues. In tests, bees confused the diagonally opposite corners, which looked the same from the inside of the box owing to its rectangular shape and because these corners carried the same local colour cues. These 'rotational errors' indicate that the bees did not use compass information inferred from the geomagnetic field under our experimental conditions. When we then swapped cues between corners, bees preferred corners that had local cues similar to the trained corner, even when the geometric relations were incorrect. Apparently, they relied on views, a finding that we corroborated by computer simulations in which we assumed that bees try to match a memorized view of the goal location with the current view when they return to the box. However, when extra visual cues outside the box were provided, bees were able to resolve the ambiguity and locate the correct corner. We show that this performance cannot be explained by view matching from inside the box. Indeed, the bees adapted their behaviour and actively acquired information by leaving the arena and flying towards the cues outside the box. From there they re-entered the arena at the correct corner, now ignoring local cues that previously dominated their choices. All individuals of both species came up with this new behavioural strategy for solving the problem provided by the local ambiguity within the box. Thus both species seemed to be solving the ambiguous task by using their route memory, which is always available during their natural foraging behaviour. (C) 2014 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved