One of the most public episodes of gatekeeping in modern science was the case of so-called 'cold fusion'. At a news conference in 1989 the electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons announced that they had found evidence of nuclear fusion in palladium electrodes loaded with deuterium. There was worldwide interest. Many groups sought to reproduce the results, most unsuccessfully. Within months, the prevailing view became strongly negative. The claims of Fleischmann and Pons came to be regarded as disreputable, as well as false. As the Caltech physicist David Goldstein put it, cold fusion became 'a pariah field, cast out by the scientific establishment' (Goldstein 1994). The case would already be interesting for students of gatekeeping if the story had ended at that point. Even more interestingly, however, the field survived and persisted. It has been enjoying a modest renaissance, with recent government funding both in the US and the EU. This piece offers an opinionated introduction to cold fusion as a case study of scientific gatekeeping, discussing both its early and recent history
Daniel Kehlmann’s novel Lichtspiel [Play of Light] reflects on the (individual) guilt of Germans in the context of the NS period, as is exemplified in the character of Jakob. He undergoes a radical change, transforming from an open-minded child to a model Nazi. Upon entering the German Reich, he is confronted with new role expectations: Non-compliance with the norms of soldierly masculinity is sanctioned. This essay examines the relations between those norms of masculinity as narrated in Lichtspiel (published in English as The Director) and the reflections of guilt in this context.
History of Austria. Liechtenstein. Hungary. Czechoslovakia
The support of the “white ethnic” population was instrumental in Richard Nixon’s landslide presidential victory in 1972. Whereas traditionally, urban, working-class Catholics had been voting mostly for Democratic candidates, in 1972, the majority of them defected to the Republican Party. One of the most important ethnic organizers was the Hungarian 1956 émigré, László Pásztor. Pásztor was the director of the Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Division of the Republican National Congress, and his work among the volunteers strongly contributed to the result. But from the perspective of the Nixon campaign, Pásztor was not the ideal ethnic—he was critical of détente and was actively promoting ethnic interests such as ethnic hirings. Whereas the Nixon campaign wanted to focus on the urban, working-class ethnic demographic referred to as the “New Majority,” Pásztor was representing the anticommunist, captive nations narrative. Pásztor was predicting that this shift was going to hurt the Republican Party electorally, as the anticommunist ethnics would feel that their interests were ignored.
Born in Auschwitz is Cseke and S. Takács’s first full-time documentary film that follows the story of Angela Orosz, who was born in Auschwitz in December 1944 and survived miraculously. The article asks how various visual representations of space are combined in the film to document Angela Orosz’s survival in the past and her relationship with her daughter in the present. The paper claims that Born in Auschwitz plays with the film lexicon of Holocaust documentary films in that it constructs visual representations of spaces related to the Holocaust by involving diverse modes of graphic spatial constructions along with traditional settings and frames. At the same time, the film also advances its female protagonists’ ability to reflect on their relationship to the Holocaust and realize the ways it is present in their daily lives 70 years later. The film not only documents but arguably also triggers an intergenerational healing process of reflection on the legacy of the Holocaust in the protagonists’ daily interactions.
Norton O. Szabo, Krisztian Sarneczky, Laszlo L. Kiss
et al.
2022 EB5, 2023 CX1 and 2024 BX1: these are the three recent imminent impactor discoveries from the Piszkéstető Mountain Station of the Konkoly Observatory. They make up about one percent of all NEO discoveries from our observatory and here we provide a detailed description of our approach and methodology that led to this noticeable observational sensitivity to these meter-sized impactors. After outlining the historical background of astronomical discoveries from Hungary, we introduce our recently upgraded survey instrumentation and outline the observational strategy and its implementation. We highlight the importance of strong feedback between analysis and ongoing data collection, maximizing the value of immediate follow-up. Finally, we discuss plans for moving forward to increase the sensitivity and the temporal coverage of our survey.
A brief history of the development of surface detectors for the study of the high-energy cosmic rays is presented. The paper is based on an invited talk given at UHECR2022 held in LAquila, October 2022. In a complementary talk, P Sokolsky discussed the development of the fluorescence technique for air-shower detection.
This study investigates the application of single and two-stage 2D-object detection algorithms like You Only Look Once (YOLO), Real-Time DEtection TRansformer (RT-DETR) algorithm for automated object detection to enhance road safety for autonomous driving on Austrian roads. The YOLO algorithm is a state-of-the-art real-time object detection system known for its efficiency and accuracy. In the context of driving, its potential to rapidly identify and track objects is crucial for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicles. The research focuses on the unique challenges posed by the road conditions and traffic scenarios in Austria. The country's diverse landscape, varying weather conditions, and specific traffic regulations necessitate a tailored approach for reliable object detection. The study utilizes a selective dataset comprising images and videos captured on Austrian roads, encompassing urban, rural, and alpine environments.
This study takes its point of departure from reports of antisemitic incidents among Hungarians in Austrian refugee camps at the end of 1956. These incidents may have been provoked by agents from Communist Hungary who had penetrated the camps and found ground for provocation among the refugees. The author argues their true significance should be sought in the contemporary history of Catholic Hungary and Austria. Special attention is given to the biography of the journalist and historian, Friedrich Heer, and the priest, Leopold Ungar, who challenged the Austrian church to greater openness. An additional analysis is provided of the confrontation with the Catholic Jewish question conducted by Fathers György Kis, John Österreicher, and Alois Eckert. The engagement of Eckert and Ungar with the Hungarian refugees emerges as a prelude to the reconciliation of the Catholic Church with Judaism in the constitution Nostra Aetate of the Second Vatican Council.
In this work, I explore the concept of quantization as a mapping from classical phase space functions to quantum operators. I discuss the early history of this notion of quantization with emphasis on the works of Schrödinger and Dirac, and how quantization fit into their overall understanding of quantum theory in the 1920's. Dirac, in particular, proposed a quantization map which should satisfy certain properties, including the property that quantum commutators should be related to classical Poisson brackets in a particular way. However, in 1946, Groenewold proved that Dirac's mapping was inconsistent, making the problem of defining a rigorous quantization map more elusive than originally expected. This result, known as the Groenewold-Van Hove theorem, is not often discussed in physics texts, but here I will give an account of the theorem and what it means for potential "corrections" to Dirac's scheme. Other proposals for quantization have arisen over the years, the first major one being that of Weyl in 1927, which was later developed by many, including Groenewold, and which has since become known as Weyl Quantization in the mathematical literature. Another, known as Geometric Quantization, formulates quantization in differential-geometric terms by appealing to the character of classical phase spaces as symplectic manifolds; this approach began with the work of Souriau, Kostant, and Kirillov in the 1960's. I will describe these proposals for quantization and comment on their relation to Dirac's original program. Along the way, the problem of operator ordering and of quantizing in curvilinear coordinates will be described, since these are natural questions that immediately present themselves when thinking about quantization.
The rapid development of technology has drastically changed the way consumers do their shopping. The volume of global online commerce has significantly been increasing partly due to the recent COVID-19 crisis that has accelerated the expansion of e-commerce. A growing number of webshops integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI), state-of-the-art technology into their stores to improve customer experience, satisfaction and loyalty. However, little research has been done to verify the process of how consumers adopt and use AI-powered webshops. Using the technology acceptance model (TAM) as a theoretical background, this study addresses the question of trust and consumer acceptance of Artificial Intelligence in online retail. An online survey in Hungary was conducted to build a database of 439 respondents for this study. To analyse data, structural equation modelling (SEM) was used. After the respecification of the initial theoretical model, a nested model, which was also based on TAM, was developed and tested. The widely used TAM was found to be a suitable theoretical model for investigating consumer acceptance of the use of Artificial Intelligence in online shopping. Trust was found to be one of the key factors influencing consumer attitudes towards Artificial Intelligence. Perceived usefulness as the other key factor in attitudes and behavioural intention was found to be more important than the perceived ease of use. These findings offer valuable implications for webshop owners to increase customer acceptance
The ionization losses -- the losses of energy by fast charged particles traveling through a matter -- have been under study for more than 100 years. The theoretical explanation of this process spans similar period. About 75 years ago, Lev Landau published a theoretical paper on the ionization losses, which drastically leveled up the research and still remains amongst the most cited in the field. The present note digests the history of theoretical development and attempts to clarify Landau's method of research and the function named after him.
The first solar neutrino experiment led by Raymond Davis Jr. showed a deficit of neutrinos relative to the solar model prediction, referred to as the "solar neutrino problem" since the 1970s. The Kamiokande experiment led by Masatoshi Koshiba successfully observed solar neutrinos, as first reported in 1989. The observed flux of solar neutrinos was almost half the prediction and confirmed the solar neutrino problem. This problem was not resolved for some time due to possible uncertainties in the solar model. In 2001, it was discovered that the solar neutrino problem is due to neutrino oscillations by comparing the Super-Kamiokande and Sudbury Neutrino Observatory results, which was the first model-independent comparison. Detailed studies of solar neutrino oscillations have since been performed, and the results of solar neutrino experiments are consistent with solar model predictions when the effect of neutrino oscillations are taken into account. In this article, the history of solar neutrino observations is reviewed with the contributions of Kamiokande and Super-Kamiokande detailed.
Abstract Specific developments in reproductive health occurred in Eastern Europe, especially in the second half of the twentieth century. During state socialism, it was experts, not social movements, who furthered the agenda of women’s health and sexuality. New analyses from the region and written mostly by authors who speak the local languages attest to the wealth of histories, highlighting different timelines of reproductive health developments, the unexpected causes behind them, and the social actors and institutions which played decisive roles.
The forecasting of local GIC effects has largely relied on the forecasting of dB/dt as a proxy and, to date, little attention has been paid to directly forecasting the geoelectric field or GICs themselves. We approach this problem with machine learning tools, specifically recurrent neural networks or LSTMs by taking solar wind observations as input and training the models to predict two different kinds of output: first, the geoelectric field components Ex and Ey; and second, the GICs in specific substations in Austria. The training is carried out on the geoelectric field and GICs modelled from 26 years of one-minute geomagnetic field measurements, and results are compared to GIC measurements from recent years. The GICs are generally predicted better by an LSTM trained on values from a specific substation, but only a fraction of the largest GICs are correctly predicted. This model had a correlation with measurements of around 0.6, and a root-mean-square error of 0.7 A. The probability of detecting mild activity in GICs is around 50%, and 15% for larger GICs.
The study examines the essential features of the so-called platform-based work, which is rapidly evolving into a major, potentially game-changing force in the labor market. From low-skilled, low-paid services (such as passenger transport) to highly skilled and high-paying project-based work (such as the development of artificial intelligence algorithms), a broad range of tasks can be carried out through a variety of digital platforms. Our paper discusses the platform-based content, working conditions, employment status, and advocacy problems. Terminological and methodological problems are dealt with in-depth in the course of the literature review, together with the 'gray areas' of work and employment regulation. To examine some of the complex dynamics of this fast-evolving arena, we focus on the unsuccessful market entry of the digital platform company Uber in Hungary 2016 and the relationship to institutional-regulatory platform-based work standards. Dilemmas relevant to the enforcement of labor law regarding platform-based work are also paid special attention to the study. Employing a digital workforce is a significant challenge not only for labor law regulation but also for stakeholder advocacy.
In a previous paper, we showed that a class of time travel paradoxes which cannot be resolved using Novikov's self-consistency conjecture can be resolved by assuming the existence of multiple histories or parallel timelines. However, our proof was obtained using a simplistic toy model, which was formulated using contrived laws of physics. In the present paper we define and analyze a new model of time travel paradoxes, which is more compatible with known physics. This model consists of a traversable Morris-Thorne wormhole time machine in 3+1 spacetime dimensions. We define the spacetime topology and geometry of the model, calculate the geodesics of objects passing through the time machine, and prove that this model inevitably leads to paradoxes which cannot be resolved using Novikov's conjecture, but can be resolved using multiple histories. An open-source simulation of our new model using Mathematica is available for download on GitHub. We also provide additional arguments against the Novikov self-consistency conjecture by considering two new paradoxes, the switch paradox and the password paradox, for which assuming self-consistency inevitably leads to counter-intuitive consequences. Our new results provide more substantial support to our claim that if time travel is possible, then multiple histories or parallel timelines must also be possible.
Motive and electrical energy has played a crucial role in human civilization. Since Ancient times, motive energy played a primary role in agricultural and industrial production as well as transportation. At that time, motive energy was provided by work of humans and draft animals. Later, work of water and wind power was harnessed. During the 19$^{\text{th}}$ century, steam power became the main source of motive energy in USA and Britain. Modern transportation and industry depend on the work of heat engines that use fossil fuel. A brief history of different sources of energy is presented in this work. The energy consumptions in pre-industrial and industrial societies are calculated. The lost opportunities for the Second Industrial Revolution (such as fast breeder reactors and thermonuclear power stations) are discussed. The case that the Solar Power will become the main source of energy by the second half of this century is presented. It is calculated that the Solar Power has the potential to bring about the new Industrial Revolution. Based on material and energy resources available in the Solar System, it is demonstrated that the Solar System Civilization supporting a population of 10 Quadrillion with a high standard of living is possible.
Norbert Gstrein’s novel Die kommenden Jahre (2018) addresses two central themes discussed in the media and public sphere of today, climate and migration. The main argument is that in the novel this occurs aesthetically in form of a rhapsodic connection between the two topics. How such a literary rhapsody works is shown in three steps: a discussion of the thematic articulation of climate and climate change by the characters (the majority of the main figures are climate researchers), an analysis of the poetic construction of rhapsodic movements on the level of the range of characters and their development, and a reading of the reciprocal relationship between climate, migration, and writing. In this novel, Gstrein develops a poetic model of narrating climate and migration.
History of Austria. Liechtenstein. Hungary. Czechoslovakia
The Magellanic Clouds were known before Magellan's voyage exactly 500 years ago, and were not given that name by Magellan himself or his chronicler Antonio Pigafetta. They were, of course, already known by local populations in South America, such as the Mapuche and Tupi-Guaranis. The Portuguese called them Clouds of the Cape, and scientific circles had long used the name of Nubecula Minor and Major. We trace how and when the name Magellanic Clouds came into common usage by following the history of exploration of the southern hemisphere and the southern sky by European explorers. While the name of Magellan was quickly associated to the Strait he discovered (within about 20 years only), the Clouds got their final scientific name only at the end of the 19th century, when scientists finally abandoned Latin as their communication language.