The primary objective of the Jewish Press in the Lublin Region research project, carried out in 2012-2015 under the framework of the grant awarded by the National Science Centre, was to reconstruct the history and contents of Jewish periodicals published in the area from the end of the 19th century until the outbreak of WWII. The enormous legacy of Lublin Jews, encompassing more than 120 titles, had not previously attracted broader attention from Polish or foreign scholars. The chief obstacle to the study of the subject was the language barrier, since the vast majority of periodicals in question (as many as 90%) were published in Hebrew and Yiddish. Wide-scale research, primarily in different archives and libraries in Poland, Israel and the United States, allowed us to collect ample material in the form of more than twelve thousand issues of individual titles, which required the appropriate selection and translation into Polish of hundreds of press articles, culminating in their critical analysis.

The main research products include more than ten academic and popular articles and an extensive monograph entitled Wos hert zich in der prowinc? Prasa żydowska na Lubelszczyźnie i jej największy dziennik “Lubliner Tugblat” [Wos her zich in der prowinc? Jewish Press in the Lublin Region and Its Largest Daily “Lubliner Tugblat”] (pp. 613, Lublin 2015). The original premises had to be considerably expanded during the project: the detailed analysis of Jewish periodicals in the Lublin region (part one of the monograph) was supplemented by an outline of the largest and the most widely read Jewish daily (part two and three).

The monograph Wos hert zich in der prowinc? Prasa żydowska na Lubelszczyźnie i jej największy dziennik “Lubliner Tugblat” furnished the basis for the habilitation procedure of the principal investigator, who was awarded the title of habilitated doctor in 2015. The monograph also received a distinction from the Rector of the University of Warsaw in the “Academia 2015” competition for the best academic publication in the field of the humanities and social sciences, and also the Individual Award of the Minister of Science and Higher Education for outstanding academic achievement in 2015.

The project entitled “Homo ludens” in a medieval town - archaeological evidence of an amusement was carried out in 2011-2013 with the objective of collecting archaeological data necessary to describe the forms of entertainment observed in the towns of the southern Baltic coast in the Late Middle Ages. In order to do so, it was necessary to conduct archival research in institutions that had organised excavations in the region. Within the framework of the project, the team visited Vilnius, Klaipeda, Riga and Tallin, which allowed us to build an extensive database of artefacts kept at local museums and historical institutes. The image that emerged was of a unified nature of entertainment in the towns of the southern Baltic coast. The frequently repeated thesis about the cultural unity of the region in the late Middle Ages was thus shown to be corroborated also by evidence related to play.

Since play and toys are inextricably linked to children, the next stage of the project was designed to involve archaeological experiments with their participation. Three such events were organised in the summer of 2012: one in Szczecin (Szczecin Incubator for Culture), one in Wolin during the Experimental Archaeology Workshops, and one in Police-Jasienica during the Augustinian Fair. Altogether, more than a hundred children aged 2 to 12 took part and their role was to play with replicas of medieval toys. Owing to the observations carried out during these experiments, the team was able to confirm or debunk several hypotheses concerning the use of individual objects in play found in literature.

The results of archival research and experimental observations were presented and discussed during the Workshop of Childhood Archaeology organised in November 2012 in Małkocin (in the commune of Stargard Szczeciński) and attended by participants from Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania and Latvia. During the two-day meeting, young researchers and experienced scholars exchanged their insights on the way children lived in the past. A tangible product of the meeting was a book published in 2013, entitled Child and Childhood in the Light of Archaeology, entirely devoted to the subject of children, with chapters written by workshop participants.

Okładka książki wydanej w ramach projektu All these steps were intended to bring the principal investigator closer to the primary objective of the project, i.e. using the results of archival research, experiments and debates for the purposes of a doctoral thesis entitled “Ludic Culture in the Towns of the Southern Baltic Coast in the Late Middle Ages. An Archaeological Study”.

The realm of medieval play and entertainment continues to strike us as somewhat enigmatic today. This is mainly due to the scarcity of information available in written sources. Combining archaeological artefacts and experiments designed to study the actions and behaviours of actual children in contact with specific toy items helped shed more light on that world. The use of experiment to explain behaviour in archaeology is a completely novel approach. What follows from the analysis of collected artefacts is that the towns of the region resembled one another also in terms of toys and play, which lends further support to the claim about the cultural unity of the region in the late Middle Ages. The project is also of great social importance in that it places an emphasis on the features we share with our ancestors – and play is no doubt one of them.

Many living organisms have a symmetrical structure, but their symmetry is usually not perfect and individual specimens may deviate from it to varying degrees. On account of its distinct bilateral body symmetry and easy access to a large number of individuals of known origin, the honey bee is an ideal species to study the phenomenon.

Bee colonies normally comprise tens of thousands of worker bees with kinship ties that can be easily discovered and controlled. Importantly, bees have many symmetrical organs, such as two pairs of membranous wings, which lend themselves to simple measurement because of their flat surfaces and easily discernible vein patterns. In honey bees, right wings and left wings are never ideally symmetrical in terms of shape and size. Even though the differences between them are relatively small, precise studies on large groups have confirmed that the right wing tends to be larger than the left. This kind of asymmetry, similar to right-handedness in humans, is known as directional asymmetry as opposed to fluctuating asymmetry, where the differences between the two sides are random and result in the same average size. Asymmetry may grow owing to the detrimental impact of the environment during larval development; for this reason, it is a good indicator of environmental quality. Knowing this may prove particularly useful today, when the mortality of bee colonies is on the rise. Unlike fluctuating asymmetry, directional asymmetry has not yet been extensively studied. It may be surprising to observe it in the wings of the honey bee, since simple intuition suggests that symmetrical wings should be much better for flying. There are two possible explanations. One holds that while bees would indeed fly more efficiently with symmetrical wings, detrimental conditions during development make ideal symmetry difficult to achieve. The other interprets wing asymmetry as an adaptation to the very exigencies of flight.

The research team has developed a new automatic wing measurement method that relies on computer image analysis to measure a wide range of traits in a large group of bees. In general, larger bees have been shown to be less asymmetrical. Currently, the team is investigating wing asymmetry in specimens raised in optimal and stressful conditions to determine the impact of pesticides, low temperatures, inbreeding, and a number of other factors. Preliminary findings suggest that wing asymmetry is found in honey bees independent of the presence of environmental stressors. Further research should provide additional evidence concerning the influence of asymmetry on flight.

Brewing is one of the oldest biotechnological food processing methods in the world. Because of the popularity of beer as a product, the brewing industry ranks among the most vibrant branches of the food sector. As science advances and consumer awareness grows, the issue of using new raw materials and optimising individual processes becomes increasingly important.

Photo by Michał Łepecki The efficiency of the processes used in breweries depends primarily on the selection of raw materials and various technological parameters. To ensure the final product’s highest possible quality, it is necessary to develop new technologies and devices, as well as employ new raw materials or accessories. In particular, this applies to new recipes for obtaining wort. Large-scale technology trials should be preceded by lab experiments, which allow many variants to be compared and contrasted, while keeping the conditions of wort production stable and constant. As the market becomes more and more saturated with beer products, craft beers and sophisticated recipes progressively increase their market share. And it’s not only craft breweries – large industrial breweries are also interested in innovative raw materials and technologies. Introducing malt substitutes or unique raw materials into recipes often involves changing the basic physico-chemical properties of wort (such as pH, extract, colour, turbidity or mineral content). Experiments have also been carried out to completely replace barley malt with non-malted substitutes (e.g. barley, spelt, wheat, corn). Such modifications are introduced for economic reasons (cheaper resources) and/or questions of taste and health (achieving new, better features of the final product).

Innovative lautering solutions aim to improve current methods of separating hot precipitates. Most breweries in the world are equipped with a special tank, usually referred to as a whirlpool vat. A commonly-used solution, whirlpool vats are energy-saving and efficient. Hence the attempts to further increase their efficiency by slightly tweaking their structure. Wort is poured into the vat through a hole tangential to its wall, which makes a cone of hot precipitate form at the bottom, a process assisted by whirling. The phenomenon occurs naturally and spontaneously, and is known as the “tea cup effect”, first described by Albert Einstein in 1926. Cutting-edge computer image simulation and analysis methods allow us to understand it better.

More recently, experimental studies of liquid flow in whirlpool vats have been conducted on a broader scale, using state-of-the-art measurement methods, such as particle image velocimetry (PIV). PIV is especially useful for the analysis of the flow velocity field where a measurement sensor cannot be inserted into the tank. Measurement relies on particles that disperse laser light, allowing the motion of individual particles to be detected.

The idea to analyse the technological aspects of lautering and introduce structural changes was borne out of projects conducted with entrepreneurs, research centres (in Poland and abroad) and breweries (craft and industrial). Considering the current state of knowledge in the field, the research topic is highly innovative and its solutions and conclusions will facilitate the production of clear wort, regardless of the raw materials employed.

Photo by Michał Łepecki Experiments conducted within the framework of the project allowed us to show that using a non-malted substitute (barley or spelt) extends saccharification and mash filtration times, reduces wort volume, and simplifies filtration efficiency, as compared with 100% barley malt samples. Adding non-malted spelt (more than 15% batch content) considerably increases the colour intensity of congress wort. On the other hand, the chemical composition of water (deionized or process water) and a greater percentage share of non-malted grain (barley or spelt) in the batch (to 30%) considerably increases the mass of the hot precipitate and the concentration of Mn2+ ions both in malted worts and those with a 30% barley content; the concentration of these ions drops significantly in hot precipitates. Using a partition as a structural modification in a whirlpool vat reduces the time for which primary flow can be observed, with occurs at a higher velocity, closer to the centre of the bottom of the vat. A partition shaped like an isosceles triangle is the most effective at improving whirling conditions in a tangentially filled vat when placed near the bottom at a 270° angle with respect to the inlet. The most advantageous structural solution contributes to improving the conditions of wort lautering (separating the hot precipitate) and allows a more compact precipitate cone to be obtained in the centre the bottom of the vat.

Slags left over from metallurgical processes may seem to hold little appeal as a research topic: they do not contain any precious elements such as gold, platinum or REEs; usually have a cryptocrystalline structure; and cannot help us reconstruct the history of the Earth. On close inspection, however, they can be shown to provide an inexhaustible source of research material that encompasses a number of important aspects. On account of their unique chemical and petrographic composition, as well as their crystallisation conditions, slags constitute a large-scale geochemical and petrographic experiment; they contain extremely rare minerals; their weathering affects the surrounding environment, including soil, water, and organic matter; and they can serve as a basis for reconstructing the history of the smelting process.

Comparing the phase composition of original metallurgical slags and their synthetic equivalents after high-temperature experiments with a controlled cooling time. This is where the issue of crystallisation temperature comes into play. Temperature is vital to the extent that one cannot exhaustively describe slags without its precise measurement. Temperature affects the physical parameters of the material, its phase composition, chemical content and the speciation of elements between individual phases. If the temperature of an alloy is not known, it is impossible to describe the reactions that occur between the alloy and the phases or the separation of elements into the alloy and the solids. Trying to reconstruct the smelting process without it also lacks a solid basis. This is why it is essential to develop a precise and accurate method of temperature measurement. The techniques in popular use today often overestimate the results due to the slag’s complex composition or have important limitations that make them impossible to apply in practice.

The experimental method proposed by the project provides an answer to these limitations and allows the temperature of slag crystallisation to be estimated with the greatest possible accuracy. The approach is based on a multivariate analysis of similarities between slags produced experimentally in furnaces and those sampled from the environment. The analysis takes account of their phase composition, the morphological features of crystals and the speciation of elements between the phases and the glaze. By properly programming the furnace, it is possible to heat the alloy to nearly 1600°C, and also to simulate different storage conditions, such as fast, slow or mixed alloy cooling.

It is also worth noting that the methodology in question does not apply exclusively to slags, but can equally well be applied to natural rocks that crystallise under high temperature and low pressure conditions, i.e. most volcanic rocks.

By using an experimental approach, we were able to arrive at a precise qualitative and quantitative reconstruction of parageneses based on melilites, pseudowollastonites/wollastonites, plagioclases and glass in tested slags. Our comparative analyses of the different temperature conditions, phase composition, chemical content, and mineral chemistry show that the data for slags highly correlates with those for natural rocks, and especially the melilitolites from Colle Fabbri (Italy). Our experiments also provided key data on the crystallisation process. For the tested material, crystallisation was observed to begin in the 1250-1300°C temperature range; the impact of the thermal gradient on phase differentiation was limited, but played an important role in the disappearance of the original glass. At the same time, less than 84 hours were required for a well-differentiated mineral complex to develop, with crystals of up to several millimetres.

Our study also demonstrated the importance of reactions between the alloy and the refractories during zinc smelting. These reactions enrich refractories with lead, sodium, potassium, zinc and arsenic, while pushing out iron, magnesium and calcium. As a result, temperature relationships and gravitational separation lead to the emergence of zones rich in lead and arsenic, which lower the solidus in the system and cause the corrosion of the refractories. The elements released from the latter, notably silicon and aluminium, combined with lead, arsenic and other incompatible elements to create a glaze with a high potential for the emission of potentially toxic elements.

The experimental study also found its application in archaeology, allowing the lead smelting process in the 12th-century metalworks in Łosień and the 16th-17th-century metalworks in Sławków to be reconstructed, as well as the gold foundry of Złoty Stok, dating back to the 15th-17th centuries.