Restoring Egyptian Murals
Those magnificent murals adorning the temples, palaces and tombs of ancient Egypt were painted with dyes. Those still remaining have lost some of their hue to time and atmospheric conditions. Centuries of chemical reactions have altered the chemical composition of the dyes' pigments, leaving the colors we see today literally a pale imitation of their former selves.

A team of researchers from the Institute for Nuclear Studies in Świerk near Warsaw led by Prof. Andrzej Turos intends to fix all that. Turos and his colleagues have pressed the PIXE (Particle Induced X-Ray Emission) method into service to bring those ancient masterpieces back to life.

Samples of the dyes are exposed to an accelerated proton beam. Each charged element gives off X-Ray radiation at a particular wavelength to reveal the elemental composition of the dye. The intensity of the radiation that each charged element produces corresponds to its molecular weight in the sample and so the chemical composition of the dye can be determined.


Digging up the Past
Archeologists from the Suwałki District Museum in northeastern Poland have uncovered traces of Stone Age settlements in Szczeberka and Mazurki north of Augustów. The relics, which include axes and arrow heads made of smooth stone, came to light while laying the foundations for a beltway around the city. "We've found a lot of items of the sort typically found in hunter-gatherer communities, including implements like axes and arrow heads," says Anetta Ejdulis, an archeologist from the museum. "The numerous pieces of pottery also make the find an interesting one." Archeologists have also unearthed an item from the Period of Migrations (5th-7th c. BC) as well as ceramic fragments from the late Middle Ages. Moving right along, coins from the 19th and 20th centuries, mostly from Prussia and Russia, have also been found as have some Russian religious medallions.


New Electric Car
Paulina Stępień, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, unveiled her electric-powered car at the opening of the International Design Festival in Łódź. The small ellipsoidal vehicle has been specially designed for driving around town, large factory premises and golf courses. The frame is steel but the car has otherwise been constructed entirely from plastics and laminated materials. Several versions will be produced. The one on display at the festival was a two-seater with a trunk that can be converted into a four-seater.

Stępień says the project took her a year. The car, which has a top speed of 50 kph, can be charged overnight and ready to drive in the morning. The Zakłady Naprawcze Taboru Kolejowego rolling stock company in Radom, 100 km south of Warsaw, is putting the vehicle into production.


Miniature Robots from Rzeszów
The Department of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics at the Rzeszów University of Technology is working on the kinematics and dynamics of six-legged robots. Among other tasks, the four-member team led by Prof. Józef Giergiel is testing the prototype device using specialist software and wired and wireless communications. The robots have been designed to monitor pipelines and analyze their components although they also have teaching and research applications.

The prototype can move around inside straight or curvilinear pipes made from different materials and can be placed at any angle. The robot can monitor and analyze the technical conditions of the interiors of pipelines having an internal diameter of 20-150 mm. Larger pipes can be analyzed once longer wheel arms have been fitted. The robot's modular structure, based on robots built elsewhere, provides for easy configuration and extension. The device can walk, has 18 degrees of freedom, touch sensors and encoders to control body clearance and move the individual segments of its legs separately.

Each leg has three independent servomechanisms to give it three degrees of freedom. The Robotics and Mechatronics Department of the AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow is working on ultralight cells to replace the existing batteries.


Hearing Aids for Babies
Polish researchers have developed a contact-free hearing aid to help stimulate speech development in hearing-impaired newborns. "This will help treat hearing problems at the very beginning of a child's life," says Prof. Henryk Skarżyński, who heads the Institute of Hearing Physiology and Pathology in Kajetany near Warsaw.

Every year, some 400 babies with a serious hearing impairment are born in Poland and another 400 have medium-level hearing loss. Hearing stimulation has not so far been applied to newborns even though treatment is most effective when given during the first few days of life. At present, a child has to be old enough to have an implant or a hearing aid placed either inside or behind the ear.

"Fitting these sorts of devices during the first few days, or even weeks or months, of a child's life is virtually impossible," says Skarżyński. "They're difficult to insert into babies' ears and they may even be dangerous as there is a risk of interfering with the growth of the external ear and deforming the hearing canal." The devices may also cause rashes and bedsores. Treating hearing problems in babies has enormous significance for their future speech and intellectual development.
The new hearing aid was developed in collaboration with the Gdańsk University of Technology. It has microphones, speakers and a digital sound processor and can be installed by the crib. The device can stimulate speech in two ways. Another person can communicate with the baby via a wireless microphone connected to the device or an external sound source like an mp3 player can be hooked up so that the baby can listen to recordings of, say, fairy tales. The sound can be channeled into each ear separately in a way that counterbalances the baby's disability.


Poland Blasts Off
The last frontier has been explored for more than half a century now. "Poland has taken part in a lot of space missions and more than 70 devices built in our country have been sent into space over that time," says Prof. Zbigniew Kłos from the Polish Academy of Sciences' Space Research Center. Poland first got involved in space exploration when it built a small, rocket-propelled device to examine X-Ray radiation from the sun in 1970 as part of the Interkosmos program. Poland is currently taking part in several space projects.

Polish researchers are building a power system for Bepi Colombo, a joint effort between European and Japanese space agencies, and Poles are also involved in flying to the European module of the International Space Station. Polish researches have built an X-ray spectrometer to help their Russian counterparts explore the sun and are building a power system to examine atmospheric discharges for the French Space Agency.

Poland is also providing the theoretical modeling and preparing the software to examine neutral elements in interstellar space as part of a NASA/ESA mission.

Tadeusz Belerski