The Agricultural University of Kraków (Polish: Uniwersytet Rolniczy im. Hugona Kołłątaja w Krakowie), located in Kraków, Poland, became a university by decree of the Council of Ministers as of 28 September 1972. Formerly, it was known as the Higher College of Agriculture, as well as other names, since its establishment in 1890.
Dynamic urbanisation processes in Poland, including land development pressure and oversupply of buildable land, pose increasing challenges in ensuring equal access to soft infrastructure for local populations. These problems are addressed in the 2023 amendment to the Act on spatial planning and development. It allows for defining municipal standards for soft infrastructure accessibility in master plans. The study diagnoses the spatial accessibility of the infrastructure in Kraków and evaluates the compliance of the existing soft infrastructure with the new statutory standards. Its novelty lies in being the first attempt at operationalising the new regulations in an empirical analysis that uses network-based GIS methodology. The analyses were performed with the QNEAT3 plugin for QGIS using the statutory distance limits. The results show that 77% and 93% of parcels in Kraków conform to school and public green spaces accessibility criteria, respectively. However, only 56% of the city area has access to both types of soft infrastructure simultaneously; eastern and peripheral parts of the city are clearly disadvantaged. Overall, Kraków is relatively well prepared to implement soft infrastructure accessibility standards, but the findings revealed an integration gap across housing, transport, and environmental policies. The evidence can serve as a reference for other municipalities in Poland and internationally, including in Eastern European countries, following the sociopolitical transformation for implementing new spatial planning tools.
Clitoria ternatea (CT) polyphenols and anthocyanins are promising functional food ingredients but require protection against degradation and premature release. This study evaluated how alginate, xanthan gum, rapeseed oil, and ginger oil affect the structure and functionality of CT-loaded microcapsules. Six formulations were prepared: oil-free alginate controls with or without xanthan gum, and W/O/W double-emulsion microcapsules containing rapeseed oil or rapeseed–ginger oil in alginate or alginate–xanthan matrices. Alginate provided the ionically crosslinked gel network, while xanthan gum modified the matrix structure and increased water uptake within each formulation group. Incorporation of the oil phase markedly improved bead formation, producing more spherical and compact microcapsules compared with oil-free controls, which fragmented after drying and showed higher swelling. Rapeseed oil acted as a hydrophobic barrier and enhanced TPC loading capacity, reaching 160.77 ± 6.60 mg GAE/g in the alginate–xanthan formulation. The addition of ginger oil introduced a functional oil phase and, when combined with the alginate–xanthan matrix, contributed to improved color retention and slower phenolic release. FTIR spectra indicated the coexistence of polysaccharides, oils, and CT bioactives without evidence of chemical degradation. Encapsulated formulations containing ginger oil showed lower immediate antibacterial activity than free actives, consistent with controlled release from the microcapsule matrix. Overall, the alginate–xanthan system containing rapeseed–ginger oil provided the best balance between structural stability, bioactive retention, and controlled release, supporting its potential as a functional food delivery system.
Excessive use of mineral fertilizers contributes to soil degradation, nutrient losses, and greenhouse gas emissions. Biological strategies that mobilize native soil nutrient pools may help reduce fertilizer inputs without compromising crop productivity. This study evaluated a defined, cell-free biofertilizer composed of siderophores and siderophore-associated metabolites (SSAM) of microbial origin as a tool to enhance soil nutrient bioavailability and reduce phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) fertilization in radish cultivation. A greenhouse experiment was conducted using Raphanus sativus L. grown under optimal and 50
Continual learning poses a fundamental challenge for neural systems, which typically suffer from catastrophic forgetting when exposed to sequential tasks. Self-Organizing Maps (SOMs), despite their inherent interpretability and efficiency, also exhibit this vulnerability. In this paper, we introduce Saturation Self-Organizing Maps (SatSOM)-an extension designed to enhance knowledge retention in continual learning scenarios. Sat-SOM incorporates a novel saturation mechanism that progressively reduces the learning rate and neighborhood radius of neurons as they accumulate information. This dynamic effectively stabilizes well-trained neurons, redirecting new learning to underutilized regions of the map. To further accommodate tasks of unknown complexity, we introduce a dynamic variant capable of adaptive grid expansion. We evaluate SatSOM on sequential versions of the FashionMNIST and KMNIST datasets, showing that it significantly outperforms existing SOM-based methods and approaches the retention capabilities of a k-nearest neighbors (kNN) baseline. Ablation studies confirm the critical role of the saturation mechanism. SatSOM offers a lightweight and interpretable solution for sequential learning and provides a foundation for implementing adaptive plasticity in complex architectures.
The review organizes current knowledge on the biofunctions, life-history strategies, and environmental responses of Chloroflexota in agricultural soils. Members of this phylum play key roles in carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycling through a high degree of metabolic versatility, including photosynthesis, redox reactions, and the degradation of complex organic compounds such as cellulose and lignin. Chloroflexota contribute to major soil processes, including nitrification, denitrification, and nitrogen fixation. In agricultural soils, the predominant classes are Anaerolineae and Ktedonobacteria, each exhibiting distinct ecological strategies. Anaerolineae members, such as Leptolinea, Bellilinea, and Anaerolinea, are often associated with nutrient-enriched conditions, suggesting copiotrophic or competitor- and ruderal-like traits. In contrast, Ktedonobacteria show negative responses to increased soil carbon and nitrogen, suggesting that its members are oligotrophic. Despite these trends, responses to soil organic carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and pH vary substantially across studies, likely due to functional heterogeneity within the phylum and insufficient taxonomic resolution in metataxonomic datasets. Emerging evidence from metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) reveals that Chloroflexota harbor genes involved in carbon fixation, nitrogen transformations, and phosphorus solubilization, highlighting their previously underestimated ecological significance. However, most Chloroflexota remain uncultured, and available genomic data are still limited. Future research integrating high-resolution taxonomic profiling, metagenomics, and cultivation-based approaches is needed to clarify the ecological roles and life-history strategies of Chloroflexota members. Such advances may ultimately establish this phylum as an important microbial indicator of soil fertility and environmental change in agricultural soils.
