Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Universite catholique de Louvain, 1990.

A fully quantum-mechanical description of the spontaneous emission from an excited two-level atom placed in front of a two-slit interferometer is given. Global modes of the electromagnetic field in a two slit system are derived within the Kirchhoff-Huygens diffraction approximation, serving as a base for the field quantization. The standard Fermi's golden rule, supplemented by a factor coming from the nontrivial mode structure caused by the presence of the two-slit interferometer, is used to show that interference results from the position-dependent (...) coupling between the atom and different field modes of the system. (shrink)

Sixty years that have passed since the Warsaw Uprising are meaningful on the life scale of human generations. The Uprising, planned for 2 or 3 days, lasted in fact for 63 days. That fact astounded the military experts and was even noticed by the German high command, which has to be mainly ascribed to the exceptional tension of patriotism of the soldiers and the population.The Germans suffered especially great losses on the average around 1,900 weekly, almost twice as many as (...) during the highest intensity of fighting in 1944/45. On our side the losses were estimated at 18,000 dead and about 6,500–7,000 wounded insurgents. However, the Warsaw Uprising and the whole nation counted around 150,000 dead among the civilians.During the two months of the uprising 25% of the pre-war buildings in Warsaw were destroyed, mainly due to the barbarian practice of burning the whole streets. Against the conditions of the capitulation agreement just signed, the majority of historical monuments were burned down.In Warsaw, the tradition of sacrifices and solidarity in action, bravery and the deep attachment to liberty, manifested in September 1939, was alive and brought results all the time of war through the acts of the patriotic resistance organizations. The leaders of the Warsaw Uprising belonged to the resistance fighters before World War I and during it. The battle for independence was their curriculum vitae, and the majority of the uprising participants, the youth, was educated in the independent Polish Republic, in respect for patriotic traditions of independence fights and insurrections.Jerzy Kirchmajer believes that the Warsaw Uprising was an error, as it did not suit the Soviets; Jan Ciechanowski from London—that it was against the plans of the British ally. It is said sometimes that the Uprising started without calculating the possibility of a helping hand.Faith played a major role during the Uprising. The clergy helped the community every way they could. (shrink)

Problems connected with the questions of: being-nonbeing, existence, modes of existence and alike, belong to the basic and most important in metaphysics. The article discusses some answers to the aforementioned issues, as proposed by the ancient philosophers, St Thomas Aquinas, R. Ingarden and A.N. Whitehead. In the Appendix some remarks are made on Aristotle’s and S. Thomas’ theory of act and potency.

Pali Buddhist Texts-explained to the Beginner. Rune. E. A. Johansson. Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series No. 14 Curzon Press, London, Second edition, revised and enlarged, 1977 160 pp. £4.00.

Resource loss, coping, alcohol expectancies and drinking in students The aim of the study was to find relationships between resource loss treated as a stress indicator, coping, alcohol expectancies and drinking in college students. Results of a group of 125 first and second year students showed that there was a strong relationship between alcohol consumption and expectancies connected with alcohol. Some coping forms were also related to drinking but no relationship was found for resource loss.

In this article, on the basis of questionnaire data collected for other purposes, the Authors want to show the consequences of various methods of shortening of tests and what may result from such an action for diagnosticians, researchers and examined individuals. The research aim of the work is to show the best method of shortening of the scale of questionnaires. Will shortening of a questionnaire according to different statistical techniques bring the same results? Will the quality of shortened scales be (...) comparable? Is any of statistical techniques better for shortening of the scale of a questionnaire? The obtained results suggest a poorly controlable effect of the methods of questionnaire shortening. Moreover creating a short version on the basis of the results collected with the use of the full version leads to obtaining a tool with unknown diagnostic and psychometric properties. (shrink)