Rola uczelni w mieście niemetropolitarnym w rozwijaniu inicjatyw i aktywności obywatelskiej

W artykule przedstawiono najważniejsze obszary dodatkowej działalności uczelni, która wykraczając poza statutowe ramy próbuje odgrywać rolę inspiratora aktywności studentów i obywateli miasta. Autorzy zaprezentowali kilka istotnych obszarów działań tj. aktywność studentów, imprezy kulturalno – oświatowe, przykładowo wybrane inne inicjatywy na rzecz młodzieży i środowiska lokalnego prowadzone przez WSB-NLU i Akademickie Liceum w Nowym Sączu. Wspomniane w artykule formy aktywności wpływają pośrednio i bezpośrednio na rozwój społeczeństwa obywatelskiego, a także inicjując nowe projekty, wywierają ważny wpływ nie tylko na rozwój uczelni, ale i całego regionu.The paper presents the most important areas of additional activity of a higher education institution, which going beyond statutory frames tries to be an inspiration for students` and citizens` activity. The authors presented several significant areas of activity i.e. students` activity, cultural-educational events, chosen, as an example, other initiatives for the benefit of young people and local circles implemented by National-Louis University and Academic High School in Nowy Sacz. Mentioned in the paper types of activity directly and indirectly influence the development of civil society and also by initiating new projects they influence not only the development of higher institutions but also of the whole region

Population Diversity in Ant-inspired Optimization Algorithms

Finding a balance between exploration and exploitation is very important in the case of metaheuristics optimization, especially in the systems leveraging population of individuals expressing (as in Evolutionary Algorithms, etc.) or constructing (as in Ant Colony Optimization) solutions. Premature convergence is a real problem and finding means of its automatic detection and counteracting are of great importance. Measuring diversity in Evolutionary Algorithms working in real-value search space is often computationally complex, but feasible while measuring diversity in combinatorial domain is practically impossible (cf. Closest String Problem). Nevertheless, we propose several practical and feasible diversity measurement techniques dedicated to Ant Colony Optimization algorithms, leveraging the fact that even though analysis of the search space is at least an NP problem, we can focus on the pheromone table, where the direct outcomes of the search are expressed and can be analyzed. Besides proposing the measurement techniques, we apply them to assess the diversity of several variants of ACO, and closely analyze their features for the classic ACO. The discussion of the results is the first step towards applying the proposed measurement techniques in auto-adaptation of the parameters affecting directly the exploitation and exploration features in ACO in the future

Heart Rate Variability and Accelerometry as Classification Tools for Monitoring Perceived Stress Levels—A Pilot Study on Firefighters

Chronic stress is the main cause of health problems in high-risk jobs. Wearable sensors can become an ecologically valid method of stress level assessment in real-life applications. We sought to determine a non-invasive technique for objective stress monitoring. Data were collected from firefighters during 24-h shifts using sensor belts equipped with a dry-lead electrocardiograph (ECG) and a three-axial accelerometer. Levels of stress experienced during fire incidents were evaluated via a brief self-assessment questionnaire. Types of physical activity were distinguished basing on accelerometer readings, and heart rate variability (HRV) time series were segmented accordingly into corresponding fragments. Those segments were classified as stress/no-stress conditions. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis showed true positive classification as stress condition for 15% of incidents (while maintaining almost zero False Positive Rate), which parallels the amount of truly stressful incidents reported in the questionnaires. These results show a firm correspondence between the perceived stress level and physiological data. Psychophysiological measurements are reliable indicators of stress even in ecological settings and appear promising for chronic stress monitoring in high-risk jobs, such as firefighting