University of Łódź

Escape room is a type of game in which players have to solve several puzzles to leave the room in a limited time. It is a relatively new form of recreation but thanks to the global diffusion of innovations, the game has reached all continents over the decade, gaining unprecedented popularity, especially in large cities. The article aims to identify and characterize the attributes of memorable game experiences (MGEs) of escape room customers in Budapest, Hungary (the eldest in Europe, well-established market for this entertainment). The paper attempts to define the components of MGEs innovatively, using text-mining analysis of big data. This study used mixed methods: quantitative and qualitative. The research material consisted of 6203 opinions on experiences in 29 escape rooms in Budapest posted on TripAdvisor. The main components of positive experiences of users of escape rooms are puzzles as well as the arrangement and decoration. Other key components of the experience include staff, storytelling, the value of service, ambience, and atmosphere. Memorable game experiences are strongly saturated with emotions, resulting from the players’ high involvement in the game and their full immersion in an artificially arranged problem situation. The obtained results indicate both the key areas necessary to create positive experiences and the elements resulting in the formation of negative experiences.

Although Ryszard Ordyński (1878–1953) is regarded as one of the most significant Polish theatre and film directors, his reputation was eclipsed for a considerable period by other renowned figures. Focusing on Ordyński’s migrations around Europe and the United States between 1910 and 1918, during which he collaborated with Max Reinhardt, directed performances at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and created noteworthy productions independently, this chapter argues that, despite having multiple opportunities to do so, the Polish theatre failed to make use of his artistic potential or managerial expertise because of both his migration and unfortunate and complicated political circumstances.

Although some earthworms can survive in permafrost and tolerate cold conditions, it is generally believed that most earthworms were eradicated from northern latitudes during the Last Glacial Maximum. The main goal of this study is to test this hypothesis using a cosmopolitan earthworm as model, Eiseniella tetraedra . We collected 1640 specimens in 294 localities from 19 different countries. We examined three molecular markers (COI, 16S and 28S) and their morphology. Furthermore, we investigated their potential niches through Species Distribution Models. Eleven genetic lineages were found, nested in five clades. Clade I was more prevalent in cold biogeographical regions such as the Continental, the Atlantic or even the Arctic, while clade II was prevalent in Mediterranean regions. Potential niches agreed with the distribution trends. The presence of restricted clades in the Iberian and Scandinavian peninsulas, as well as in Eastern Europe, suggests that these three regions served as refugia during the Last Glacial Maximum. Thus, nunatak and tabula rasa hypotheses were necessary to explain the actual distribution of this riparian earthworm.

Due to its course, multiple myeloma may negatively affect the functioning of patients. Different treatment methods are also associated with patients’ varying perception of their health condition. The purpose of this study is to determine the disease-specific complaints among multiple myeloma patients during selected treatment methods—chemotherapy, autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, and supportive therapy. The study group included 246 patients (98 in the chemotherapy group, of which 87 in the autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation group and 61 in the supportive therapy group). The study was conducted between August 2020 and December 2021 with the EORTC QLQ-MY20 questionnaire. According to the study results, patients treated with chemotherapy had the highest degree of disease symptom severity and side effects of treatment as well as the lowest assessment of their perspectives for the future. Patients who received supportive treatment had the lowest degree of disease symptom severity and side effects of treatment, and also assessed their body image and future perspectives the highest. Women assessed their future perspectives significantly lower than men. The severity of disease symptoms experienced by patients increases with age.

The aim of the article is to present a critical analysis of Management Commentary (issued by IASB in 2010) inthe light of contemporary paradigms of management science. In the author’s opinion, these paradigms reflect theeconomic reality in and outside of business entity and thus should be taken into account while preparing reportssuch as Management Commentary. Otherwise users of financial reporting will not be provided with relevant andreliable information.

Company liquidity management is connected to working capital, which is determined by decisions made at the level of cash, receivables, inventory, and payables. It can be assumed that the greater the liquidity, the higher the net working capital invested in a company; the higher the level of capital, the greater its cost, and thus the lower the ROE and EVA indicators. In such a case, investors monitoring company performance could interpret high liquidity as a negative signal, entailing a fall in the market prices. On the other hand, the greater the liquidity, the higher the flexibility of the company in terms of production and sales, which could provide additional income for the business. Consequently, investors could also interpret high liquidity as a positive sign, with a subsequent rise in the market prices. This paper sets out to examine the relations between the above-mentioned factors to find out how investors interpret corporate liquidity and profitability ratios on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

We introduce the function spaces used in the book. Since we assume some familiarity with functional analysis, mathematical analysis, and Lebesgue integration, the background results in this chapter are presented in some short manner. We present the function space setting with much more details.

We are concerned with differentiation of functionals and next maps in infinite-dimensional spaces. Several notions will be introduced, illustrated, related, and commented. A number of examples and exercises pertaining mainly to differentiation of integral functionals is given.

We provide infinite dimensional version of the Weierstrass Theorem together with several applications to minimization of action functionals and boundary value problems.

In this chapter we show how methods that we have indicated earlier apply in far more advanced problems roughly speaking related to the field of PDE. We fix some background about spaces, which we will consider and next proceed to counterparts of examples and of results we have given so far. We consider differentiability of relevant action functionals and solvability of the Dirichlet problem.

In this chapter we provide a general introduction to the topic of this book and outline some application of the Weierstrass Theorem in a finite dimensional setting.

Nonlinear extensions of McKendrick–von Foerster model, solvability by the linear chain trick, age-structured epidemiological model, its formulation as an infinite-dimensional dynamical systems and solvability by Picard iterations.

Building of structured models, Leslie and Markov matrices, the concept of asynchronous exponential growth, eigenvalue-eigenvector method of solving discrete and continuous linear systems, spectral decomposition of the state space, applications to the long-term dynamics of linear systems, positive linear systems and Perron-Frobenius theorem, birth-and-death models

Derivation of the McKendrick–von Foerster model from the Leslie model, solvability of the linear McKendrick–von Foerster model by Picard iterations and the long-term behaviour of its solutions.

Survey of exactly solvable ordinary differential equations, exponential, logistic, Allee and Gompertz models, relations between continuous and discrete models.

Derivation of discrete in time scalar models, exponential growth, logistic and Beverton-Holts models, their properties and some explicit solutions.

Concepts of stability for discrete and continuous time equations, applications to logistic and Allee models, periodic solutions.

Metzler matrices and their properties, application to the calculation of basic reproduction number R0 by the next generation matrix method, monotone dynamical systems and applications to epidemiological models.

Building ecological and epidemiological models in continuous time, equilibria and their stability, phase plane analysis, stability by linearization, Lyapunov function method, inverse Lyapunov theorems with application to perturbed systems and Vidyasagar theorem, Poincaré-Bendixon theory on planar dynamical systems.

Comments on the process of mathematical modelling and the relevance of mathematical models.