Regional Development Based on Environmental Competitive Advantages – A Comparative Analysis of Polish Voivodships

This article presents an assessment of the environmental competitiveness of Polish regions in the years 2004 and 2012. For the purposes of analysis, 26 indices of the condition and protection of the environment and also pressures placed on the environment were selected. With respect to each index, between 1 and 16 points were attributed to each region (16 units on the NUTS 2 level are distinguished in Poland) depending on the degree of environmental impact. Then, the points allocated to the voivodships for each index were totalled and a ranking of voivodships reflecting the level of environmental competitiveness was elaborated.W artykule przedstawiono istotę, metodę badań i wyniki oceny środowiskowej konkurencyjności regionów w Polsce w 2004 i 2010 r. Dla potrzeb analizy wyselekcjonowano 26 wskaźników stanu, presji i ochrony środowiska charakteryzujących poszczególne województwa. W odniesieniu do każdego wskaźnika, regionom przypisano punkty od 1 do 16 (w Polsce wyróżniamy 16 jednostek na poziomie NUTS 2) w zależności od stopnia oddziaływania na środowisko. Następnie, sumując punkty uzyskane przez województwa w odniesieniu do poszczególnych wskaźników, otrzymano oceny końcowe, w oparciu o które opracowano ranking województw odzwierciedlający poziom środowiskowej konkurencyjności

Synthesis of unilateral radiators

A radiator is typically a parabolic mirror illuminated by an electromagnetic source, or a cylindrical transducer of resonant vibrations. Both of these devices are designed to radiate either a beam of parallel rays or a (focused) beam that converges to a point or a line. Consequently, at the worst, the radiation pattern is largely restricted to a {\it half space}, and at the best, to a cone or cylinder-like subspace of this half space. Such devices can therefore be termed unilateral radiators. This study is devoted to the synthesis of the sources that can give rise to such radiation, the underlying motivation being the removal of the material presence of the mirror or transducer casing from which waves coming from other boundaries could reflect or diffract

Three methods for the description of the temporal response to a SH plane impulsive seismic wave in a soft elastic layer overlying a hard elastic substratum

We treat the case of a flat stress-free surface (i.e., the ground in seismological applications) separating air from a homogeneous, isotropic, solid substratum overlain by a homogeneous, isotropic, solid layer (in contact with the ground) solicited by a SH plane body wave incident in the substratum. The analysis is first carried out in the frequency domain and subsequently in the time domain. The frequency domain response is {\it normal} in that no resonances are excited (a resonance is here understood to be a situation in which the response is infinite in the absence of dissipation). The translation of this in the time domain is that the scattered pulse is of relatively-short duration. The duration of the pulse is shown to be largely governed by radiation damping which shows up in the imaginary parts of the complex eigenfrequencies of the configuration. Three methods are elaborated for the computation of the time history and give rise to the same numerical solutions for a large variety of configurations of interest in the geophysical setting under the hypothesis of non-dissipative, dispersionless media. The method appealing to the complex eigenfrequency representation is shown to be the simplest and most physically-explicit way of obtaining the time history (under the same hypothesis). Moreover, it is particularly suited for the case in which modes can be excited as occurs when the incident wave is not plane or the boundary condition is not of the stress-free variety for all transverse coordinates on the ground plane

The inverse crime

The inverse crime occurs when the same (or very nearly the same) theoretical ingredients are employed to synthesize as well as to invert data in an inverse problem. This act has been qualified as trivial and therefore to be avoided by Colton and Kress

Incorporation of macroscopic heterogeneity within a porous layer to enhance its acoustic absorptance

We seek the response, in particular the spectral absorptance, of a rigidly-backed periodically-(in one horizontal~~ direction) ~inhomogeneous ~layer ~composed ~of ~alternating rigid and macroscopically-homogeneous porous portions, submitted to an airborne acoustic plane body wave. The rigorous theory of this problem is given and the means by which the latter can be numerically solved are outlined. At low frequencies, a suitable approximation derives from one linear equation in one unknown. This approximate solution is shown to be equivalent to that of the problem of the same wave incident on a homogeneous, isotropic layer. The thickness $h$ of this layer is identical to that of the inhomogeneous layer, the effective complex body wave velocity therein is identical to that of the porous portion of the inhomogeneous layer, but the complex effective mass density, whose expression is given in explicit algebraic form, is that of the reference homogeneous macroscopically-porous layer divided by the filling factor (fraction of porous material to the total material in one grating period). This difference of density is the reason why it is possible for the lowest-frequency absorptance peak to be higher than that of a reference layer. Also, it is shown how to augment the height of this peak so that it attains unity (i.e., total absorption) and how to shift it to lower frequencies, as is required in certain applications

Voting Rights

Since the U.S. Supreme Court decided that George W. Bush would be President of the United States, everyone has been talking about voting but, as with the weather, no one has done much. Voting is said to be fundamental to our nation, but until the 2000 elections we didn't seem to understand how rickety our election process is.We know that in our federal system voting is administered by states, each one having different systems of casting and counting votes. But it goes deeper, as we saw in November and December. Voting is actually administered by counties (3000 nationwide), and takes place at precincts (several hundred thousand) where it is administered by Volunteer-Managers-for-a-Day (more than a million all told). The differences we saw in Florida between how votes are cast, counted, and miscounted by voters and officials in different precincts -- let alone different counties -- are not news. They can never be eliminated entirely but in the past they have been tolerated far too much.Small wonder that in such a system ascertaining the will of the people would not be easy even if everyone were pulling for an honest deal and a fair count and if we all shared the same vision of what that meant. But of course we don't. Therefore, working to improve our election system requires two focuses: (1) streamlining the system across-the-board, and (2) making the system fair to all voters and segments of voters.The federal government has a wide role to play in all this. Its power derives from several sources, some of which are: (1) power to enforce constitutional guarantees, especially equal protection and due process; (2) plenary power over federal elections; and (3) ability to spend money and offer money to states on certain conditions. The responsibility belongs to the executive branch directly, as well as in seeking legislation, and in litigating before the judiciary