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
This paper examines whether a major U.S. regulatory clarification coincided with cross-border spillovers in crypto-asset entrepreneurial finance. We study the Securities and Exchange Commission's July 2017 DAO Report, which clarified the application of U.S. securities law to many initial coin offerings, and analyze how global issuance activity adjusted across regions. Using a comprehensive global dataset of ICOs from 2014 to 2021, we construct a region-month panel and evaluate issuance dynamics around the announcement. We document a substantial and persistent reallocation of ICO activity toward Europe following the DAO Report. In panel regressions with region and month fixed effects, Europe experiences an average post-2017 increase of approximately 14 additional ICOs per region-month relative to other regions, net of global market cycles. The results are consistent with cross-border regulatory spillovers in highly mobile digital-asset markets.
This paper argues that Green Border (2023), directed by Agnieszka Holland, transforms the Polish-Belarusian border into a site of moral ritual, where sacred violence replaces humanitarian law. Using Durkheim’s theories, Eastern European memory studies, and analyses of populism and asylum policy, the paper interprets the film as a historical recurrence rather than a modern crisis. Drawing on scholars like Törnquist-Plewa, Exeler, and Krastev, the analysis reveals how Europe’s border politics ritualize exclusion and revive authoritarian patterns under democratic guise. Methods include close film analysis and engagement with secondary literature on EU identity, populism, and the symbolic politics of migration.
History of Central Europe, History of scholarship and learning. The humanities
Kamilla Waszczuk, Daniel Żychliński, Aneta Kuzioła
During research at an early medieval site located 11 km away from Poznań’s Ostrów Tumski (Cathedral Island), a set of tools for weighing bullion was found, consisting of balance scales, 10 standardised weights, and a decorative copper alloy necklace clasp. Due to the state of preservation, mechanical features and the place of uncovering, these artefacts prompted a multi-faceted analysis of the possible reasons why such valuable objects were left in one of the sites of the extensive settlement, located by the Kopel and Michałówka valley. As a result, new evidence has been obtained on the links between the main strongholds of the Polish state and the subordinate settlements, as well as on the existence of possibilities of communication between them (hitherto unconsidered) and on local variations in social stratification. At the same time, the need to carry out methodical research on archaeological sites and to exercise conservation protection over them was stressed, in the face of a threat of losing ample interpretative opportunities when the sites become victims of illegal forms of exploration
History of Eastern Europe, History of Central Europe
The aim of this study is to present the results of an analysis of selected archaeological sources from early medieval functional-stratigraphic units discovered at site No. 1 in Santok (Poland, Lubusz Region), within are No. 297 (trench II). The finds come from archaeological excavations carried out between 1958 and 1961 of a multi-stage market settlement from the late 8th and 9th centuries, transformed into a fortified settlement in the late 9th or early 10th century. A comparative analysis of the individual sets of exclusive material culture has resulted in classifying the luxury objects discovered at Santok into several distinct macro groups of finds, differentiated in terms of chronology and cultural-spatial relationships. During the operation of the three oldest ‘open’ settlements in Santok (late 8th-2nd half of the 9th century), these relations were marked by contacts with the cultural population of the Feldberg-Bardy-Kędrzyno zone and with the artisanal and trading settlement at Menzlin (Germany, Mecklenburg NE).
From the late 9th century onwards, contacts with Wolin started to prevail in Santok’s network of trans-regional links, evident in the material culture of Santok settlement No. IV. In the 10th century, it was probably extended to include relations with Szczecin. From the late 9th century onwards, in the elite culture of the Santok people relatively few exclusive objects marked their presence, typical of the culture of the Tornow-Klenica settlements, especially from the area of the middle Oder basin and the neighbouring Obra basin. On the other hand, finds from the relics of a younger castle stronghold in Santok – probably a Piast investment made after 970 on the remains of the so-called fortress No. 1 – document chronological and cultural similarities both with economically developed settlements in the Oder estuary region and with early Piast strongholds in central Wielkopolska (especially Poznań).
History of Eastern Europe, History of Central Europe
In my student years at the beginning of the 1990s at Sofia University, Bulgaria, fate led me to study with two extraordinary scholars – Prof. Dr. Miroslav Yanakiev and Prof. Dr. Encho Gerganov. Prof. Yanakiev laid the foundations of Bulgarian psycholinguistics, introducing the statistical methods in linguistics, and as his student, Prof. Gerganov continued and further developed his ideas. I had the great good fortune to learn from them and consider myself a student of them both. Actually, my scientific and academic activities were launched when I met Prof. Yanakiev, and we sought as a shared task to develop the first ABC textbook in Romani for Roma children in Bulgaria in 1993. Our extensive, strong cooperation continued until the end of Prof. Yanakiev’s life. After his death, I went on working more intensively with Prof. Gerganov, seeking to develop psycholinguistic studies, research and publications with him. Moreover, if I am known for my psycholinguist work today, I owe that in significant measure to my 33 years of collaboration with Prof. Gerganov.
This tribute is dedicated to the anniversaries of the two scholars – in 2023 was the 100th anniversary of Miroslav Yanakiev, and in 2024, we celebrate the 85th birthday of Encho Gerganov.
Miroslav Yanakiev (19.08.1923 – 09.11.1998), born in Sofia, was deservedly famous worldwide for his works on two Slavic languages: Bulgarian and Russian. In 1943, he graduated from the First Men's High School in Sofia, and the same year, he was enrolled in the Slavic Philology program at Sofia University. He graduated in 1947, and immediately after his graduation, he began work at the Faculty of History and Philology of the same university. He worked there until the end of his life in 1998, first as Assistant Professor, then as Associate Professor and then as Full Professor.
In 1963, he earned the title Associate Professor with a habilitation monograph Българско стихознание “Bulgarian Poetics”. In 1979, he was promoted to Full Professor after completing his monograph "Стилистиката и езиковото обучение"/Stylistics and Language Teaching.
After his retirement in 1988 and due to our cooperation, he began to work on child bilingualism, mainly with Roma and Turkish children and started publishing articles about the importance of minority mother tongues for the language and cognitive development of children. He was central in supporting my research in the field of Romani language and publishing schoolbooks for Turkish and Roma children.
Encho Gerganov was born on March 18, 1939, in the town of Stara Zagora in Bulgaria. He graduated in Bulgarian Philology (specializing in linguistics and mathematical linguistics) at St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia. In the period 1968-1972, he was a doctoral student at the Institute of Linguistics of the ASSR in Moscow, where in 1972, he defended a dissertation entitled "Некоторые закономерности зрительного распознавания элементов текста" / Some Regularities of the Visual Recognition of Text Elements. Prof. Gerganov began his academic career at the Institute for Foreign Students in Sofia (1967-1989), where in 1977, he was granted the title Associate Professor earned with a habilitation monograph Психометрични методи за проверка и оценка на знанията по български език (Psychometric Methods for Testing and Assessment of Knowledge in Bulgarian Language). In 1988, he was promoted to Full Professor in recognition of his monograph "Памет и смисъл"/Memory and Meaning. From 1984 to 1988, Prof. Gerganov was the Institute's Deputy Rector. From 1989-2000, he worked at the Institute of Psychology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, where from 1991 to 2000, he headed the section on cognitive psychology and research methods, and from 1991 to 1995, he was the Director of the Institute. Prof. Gerganov was Deputy Minister of Public Education (1991-1992) and Director of the National Test Center (1994-1995). Professor Encho Gerganov was one of the first professors at the New Bulgarian University (NBU) and the first head of the Cognitive Science and Psychology Department (1992–2002) there. In 2009, he was awarded the title "Doctor Honoris Causa” by the Constantine the Philosopher University, Nitra, Slovakia.
Together with Prof. Gerganov, we carried out many studies and co-authored numerous articles focused on Romani-Bulgarian and Turkish-Bulgarian bilingualism in Bulgaria. In 1999, we co-authored a monographic study: Герганов, E. и Кючуков, Хр. (1999). Oбразователни нагласи на ромите в България. София: Тилия / Gerganov, E. & Kyuchukov, H. (1999). Educational Attitudes of Roma in Bulgaria. Sofia: Tilia.
With his outstanding and pioneering work and research, I am confident that Prof. Gerganov brought the educational issues of minority children in Bulgaria to a higher scientific level. Professors Miroslav Yanakiev and Encho Gerganov deeply dedicated their academic lives to linguistics and psycholinguistics. Through their studies, research, and publications, they helped to change the lives of many in Bulgaria and Europe.
Coping with prolonged periods of low availability of wind and solar power, also referred to as renewable energy droughts or "Dunkelflaute", emerges as a key challenge for realizing decarbonized energy systems based on renewable energy sources. Here we investigate the role of long-duration electricity storage and geographical balancing in dealing with such events, combining a time series analysis of renewable availability with power sector modeling of 35 historical weather years. We find that extreme droughts define long-duration storage operation and investment. Assuming policy-relevant interconnection in our model, we find 351 TWh long-duration storage capacity or 7% of yearly electricity demand in the least-cost system that can cope with the most extreme event in Europe. While nuclear power can partially reduce storage needs, the storage-mitigating effect of fossil backup plants in combination with carbon removal is limited. Policymakers and system planners should prepare for a rapid expansion of long-duration storage to safeguard the renewable energy transition in Europe.
Caterina Morelli, Simone Boccaletti, Paolo Maranzano
et al.
The assessment of corporate sustainability performance is extremely relevant in facilitating the transition to a green and low-carbon intensity economy. However, companies located in different areas may be subject to different sustainability and environmental risks and policies. Henceforth, the main objective of this paper is to investigate the spatial and temporal pattern of the sustainability evaluations of European firms. We leverage on a large dataset containing information about companies' sustainability performances, measured by MSCI ESG ratings, and geographical coordinates of firms in Western Europe between 2013 and 2023. By means of a modified version of the Chavent et al. (2018) hierarchical algorithm, we conduct a spatial clustering analysis, combining sustainability and spatial information, and a spatiotemporal clustering analysis, which combines the time dynamics of multiple sustainability features and spatial dissimilarities, to detect groups of firms with homogeneous sustainability performance. We are able to build cross-national and cross-industry clusters with remarkable differences in terms of sustainability scores. Among other results, in the spatio-temporal analysis, we observe a high degree of geographical overlap among clusters, indicating that the temporal dynamics in sustainability assessment are relevant within a multidimensional approach. Our findings help to capture the diversity of ESG ratings across Western Europe and may assist practitioners and policymakers in evaluating companies facing different sustainability-linked risks in different areas.
A szakirodalomban már az eddigiek folyamán is számos alkotás született a munkavállalói teljesítménnyel kapcsolatosan, ám az egyre fokozódó, világméretű munkaerőhiánynak köszönhetően manapság és valószínűleg a jövőben is kulcsszerepet fog betölteni a kutatásokban. A vállalatok körében tapasztalható egyre erősödő verseny még inkább megköveteli a legmegfelelőbb alkalmazotti gárda megtalálásának szükségességét. A tanulmány általános célja, hogy feltárja milyen mértékben képesek előre jelezni a későbbi dolgozói teljesítményt a kiválasztási folyamat során alkalmazott képesség-, készség- és kompetencia-mérő tesztek. A válasz megtalálásához egy Debrecen központú, szolgáltatószektorban tevékenykedő cég munkavállalóinak (N=50) egyes kvalitásai (általános intelligencia és konfliktuskezelési stílus) kerültek felmérésre. Továbbá ugyanezen munkavállalók lettek értékelve közvetlen feletteseik által. A felhasznált módszertant az említett tesztek és kérdőívek mellett leíró statisztikák és többváltozós lineáris regresszióanalízis képezte. Az eredmények alapján megállapítást nyert, hogy várhatóan a női nem, az egyetemi végzettség, az 1-3 éves vállalatnál eltöltött időszak szignifikánsan emeli a munkavállalói kommunikációs készséget; a konfliktuskezelési teszten problémamegoldó stílust elérő dolgozók potenciális problémamegoldó készsége meghatározóan jobbnak bizonyul; az általános intelligencia növekedésével egyidejűleg nő a munkakörspecifikus készségek valószínű szintje; Office ismeretek terén nem található jelentős lineáris összefüggés.
History of Central Europe, Social sciences (General)
This paper provides an overview of the Pythagorean centrality measures, which are the arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic means. Both the evolution of their meaning through history and their geometrical interpretation are outlined. Relevant examples of use cases for each of them are introduced, spanning a variety of areas of knowledge. Their differences and similarities are explored. Finally, the issue of which mean to use in different situations in order to make advantageous predictions is addressed. Keywords: central tendency, Pythagorean means, arithmetic mean, geometric mean, harmonic mean, data selection
Jewish humour with a rich repertoire of forms is an integral part of Jewish culture. The article summarises the typical features of Jewish humour and presents an outline of its history from its beginning at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, through the times of immigrants to Palestine, from the first Aliyah (1882–1903), until the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, to the humour of modern Israel. The humour of Anna Fein – one of the important representatives of Russian-Israeli literature – is situated at the intersection of traditional Jewish humour, Israeli humour, and the mentality of a repatriate (the writer left Russia for Israel during the so-called Great Aliyah), creating an interesting Russian-Israeli version of Jewish humour. Fein’s humour fits in with the exemplary tone of archetypal Jewish humour. At the same time, referring not to the emotions, but to the recipient’s intellect, together with the assumption that humour must have pragmatic values, understood as the implementation of a utilitarian function, it brings the recipient closer to the postulates of Henri Bergson’s theory of laughter.
History of Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics, Literature (General)
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.
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.
The purpose of this dissertation is to present an overview of the operational and financial performance of airports in Europe. In benchmarking studies, airports are assessed and compared with other airports based on key indicators from a technical and an economic point of view. The interest lies primarily in the question, which key figures can best measure the perception of quality of service from the point of view of the passenger for the services at an airport.