Technology & Engineering

Management and use of chemical reagents as well as the waste recovery and disposal are regulated by numerous legal acts. Despite the factual knowledge related to dealing with chemical reagents the knowledge of the relevant regulations within that scope is firmly required. Actually, one may seek in vain for a single study that would contain the information on a full "migration" pathway of a chemical reagent viewed in the light of legally binding regulations - from purchase, through use, storage till recovery and disposal of the derived waste. Accumulation of a full knowledge of these facts is time-consuming and sometimes even hardly accomplishable due to the complexity of the problem. The present study is a committed to paper collection of experiences gained during many years of work in the aforementioned domain. It is addressed to all kinds of institutions (research, academic, schools and the like) that conduct the activities involving a contact with chemicals. A full pathway followed by a reagent from a moment of purchase, through storing, giving over, handling and using at the workplace, collecting waste, transferring to recovery and disposal has been traced taking into account the European Union and Polish legislations. For clarity this study has been divided into chapters containing an in-depth discussion of the most important questions concerning the chemical management - legal basis (regulatory acts and directives, occupational safety and health rules, fire regulations), purchase of chemical substances and preparations, storage, handling and using of chemicals at the workplace, and finally the recovery and disposal of the chemical waste.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a key technique in the medical imaging area, which allows to diagnose the organism functions and to track the tumor changes. In PET measurement the patient is injected with radiotracer, containing a large number of metastable atoms of radionuclide, that emmits positrons. As the result of positron annihilation, the two photons travelling off with nearly opposite directions are produced and registered by detection system positioned so that it surrounds the patient body. State-of-the-art PET scanners use scintillation crystals which are characterized by high detection efficiency of annihilation photons.

In this context, it is worth to mention that the Jagiellonian PET (J-PET) Collaboration developed a novel whole-body PET scanner based on plastic scintillators. They are much cheaper than crystal scintillators, which gives the opportunity to reduce the high cost of PET scanners and make them more affordable. However, plastic scintillators have much lower detection efficiency of gamma quanta compared to inorganic scintillation crystals. This can be compensated by increasing the scanner field of view and improving the time resolution in the measurement of the time of flight of gamma quanta. The J-PET scanner consists of plastic scintillator strips read out at both ends by a pair of photomultipliers and arranged axially around a cylindrical tomograph tunnel. The axial coordinate of the annihilation photon interaction point in the scintillator strip is derived from the difference of the light propagation time measured with the pair of photomultipliers.

The operational principles of the J-PET scanner are similar to conventional tomographs, except that the highly accurate time information is of paramount importance. Therefore, the J-PET scanner demands a preparation of novel methods on each step of the data processing. The goal of the work presented in this dissertation is a development of the signal and image processing algorithms taking into account uniqueness of the J-PET detector. The proposed methods include: signal recovery based on samples of a waveform registered on photomultiplier output, reconstruction of position and time of interaction of annihilation photon in the scintillator strip, classification of PET events types and image reconstruction that operates exclusively in the image space. Due to the dissimilarity from the conventional PET scanners, majority of the methods presented in this dissertation are innovative solutions in digital signal and image processing in tomography.

The monograph should be seen as an attempt to present changes affecting the category of family farm owners in Poland over the last 70 years, since the end of World War II. These changes brought significant social transformations, including the dismantling of the landowner class (who had large agricultural farms in their possession), moving the state border westward and changing the multiethnic Polish society into one close to ethnic homogeneity.

The main goal of this reflection is to recount ways in which family farms coped with various unfavorable forces and factors in order to remain in operation. One could say that the entire study can be viewed as a manifestation of the well-known phrase that served as the title of the James C. Scott book (1990): Domination and the Arts of Resistance. The monograph presented here refers to these analyses stemming from another edition of sociological research, completed within the framework of the MAESTRO project financed by the National Science Center of Poland.

The main goal of the project was to depict the functioning of agricultural family farms as the traditional sector of agriculture in Poland in the contemporary context of globalization processes. The farms were examined in terms of the principles of sustainable development as well as flexibility and resilience in reaction to various crises.

The monograph is divided into four essential parts. The first part is devoted to the theoretical issues and methodological groundwork for the entire publication. The second part of the book aims to capture the changes that took place from 1994 to 2017, which was an adequate period to encompass the changes and metamorphoses that mostly happened as a result of two things: the regime transformation which began in 1990, and Poland’s accession to the European Union on May 1, 2004. The third part deals with the crucial issues of regional variations, mostly in regard to life strategies and strategies of operating agricultural farms. Finally, there is a fourth part which places the focus on select themes, such as rural lifestyles, food safety and security, farmers’ utilization of new computer and IT resources, and the potential for socio-political mobilization.