THE POLITICAL and intellectual leaders of Eastern Europe's revolution of 1989 describe their aim as a "return to Europe." Their overwhelming judgment is that the postwar division of Europe into East and West was artificially imposed by the Soviet Union, at enormous human and economic cost. They underscore the artificiality of the division by referring to their region as East Central Europe (or Middle Europe), rather than Eastern Europe, thereby stressing their countries' place in the mainstream of European history, politics, arts, and economy. The policy dimension of the return to Europe is the creation of political and economic institutions in the style of Western Europe. I In this spirit, these countries are directed toward the creation of multiparty parliamentary democracies and market economies with large private sectors.2
This study provides a comparative analysis of the teaching workload of physical education and sport (PES) teachers in 17 countries across Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe: Romania, Hungary, Poland, Czechia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Serbia, Greece, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The research highlights significant differences between countries with sustainable educational policies (Estonia, Slovenia, Greece, Czechia, Croatia) and those where teachers are overburdened and poorly supported (Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina). The results show that teaching workload varies between 16 and 21 hours per week, directly impacting teaching quality, teacher health, and the social prestige of the discipline. Positive models are characterized by reduced workloads (16–17 hours), official recognition of extracurricular activities, and investments in modern infrastructure. In contrast, high workloads (19–21 hours), combined with the lack of recognition of invisible work, lead to professional fatigue, demotivation, and lower quality of education.
Article history: Received 2025 November 10; Revised 2025 December 30; Accepted 2026 January 05;
Available online 2026 January 30; Available print 2025 January 30
The Holy Year of 1925, proclaimed by Pope Pius XI, was a milestone in 20th-century church history, influencing not only Italy but also Central Europe, including Czechoslovakia. It sought to inspire spiritual renewal and reconciliation in a post-war world struggling with economic crises and political instability. This study examines the impact of the Holy Year on the Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia, focusing on its role in religious discourse and its relationship with political power. Using Czech and Vatican sources, contemporary newspapers, and ecclesiastical documents, it explores the impact of this event on Catholic identity in interwar Czechoslovakia. Despite political and economic challenges, the Holy Year saw peaceful expressions of faith, with 582 000 pilgrims travelling to Rome. Although Czechoslovak participation was limited, it still demonstrated the commitment of local Catholics to their faith. The event also underscored the Church’s broader international role, as Pope Pius XI strengthened Catholicism’s global presence in both religious and social spheres. For Czechoslovakia, the Holy Year provided an opportunity to strengthen Catholic influence nationally while fostering solidarity with the wider Catholic world.
Erik Skovbjerg Rasmussen, Karen Dybkjær, Jørgen Christian Toft
et al.
The Neogene of the Danish North Sea is more than 1200 m thick. Despite being penetrated by numerous wells, formal lithostratigraphic subdivision of this succession has previously been restricted to the lowermost part. This monograph presents a comprehensive lithostratigraphy of the offshore Neogene of Denmark, in part extending recognised onshore units into the offshore realm. The mainly Lower Miocene deltaic deposits are referred to the Ribe Group, which is subdivided into six formations: the Klintinghoved, Bastrup, Arnum, Odderup, Dany (new) and Nora (new) Formations. The lowermost Miocene Vejle Fjord and Billund Formations known from the onshore lithostratigraphy are absent in the offshore wells. The dominantly fully marine Middle and Upper Miocene sediments are referred to the Måde Group, subdivided into the Hodde, Ørnhøj, Gram, Marbæk and Luna (new) Formations; the Luna Formation includes the Lille John Member (new). The Pliocene deltaic deposits are referred to the Eridanos Group (new), which is subdivided into the Vagn (new), Emma (new) and Elin (new) Formations.The depositional history of the Neogene of the Danish North Sea sector is presented based on a detailed reconstruction of subsurface morphology by the mapping of stratigraphical surfaces dated by biostratigraphy. During the Early Miocene, deposition in the Danish North Sea was dominated by progradation from Scandinavia; large deltas built out into the Danish onshore area from the north and north-east. West of the main deltas, muddy contourites periodically accumulated on the slope, accentuating shelf progradation. The Middle and Late Miocene period was mostly characterised by fully marine conditions and deposition of mud. By the end of the Miocene, progradation of delta systems from Scandinavia into the North Sea resumed, and the shoreline reached the westernmost part of the Danish North Sea sector. During the Pliocene, new source areas in central and eastern Europe, such as the Carpathian Mountains, were activated and a huge delta system, the so-called Eridanos Delta, began to fill the North Sea Basin from the east and the south-east. Due to increased subsidence of the basin associated with the loading of sediments of the Eridanos Delta, the northern systems were flooded. Although the Danish North Sea thus mainly received sediments from central Europe during the Pliocene, progradation from Scandinavia resumed at the end of the Pliocene.
U ovom radu opisan je antropomorfni predmet izrađen od gline (terakote) s otoka Raba. Predmet je slučajno otkriven pri iskopu zemlje u mjestu Banjol na otoku Rabu. Iznesene su okolnosti nalaza, opis te mogući proces izrade. Pokušalo se pronaći komparativne primjere na istočnoj obali Jadrana, međutim u nedostatku istih izneseni su primjeri iz središnje i sjeverozapadne Europe te razlozi širenja popularnosti pojedinih vrsta glinenih, tj. terakotnih predmeta. U zaključku autorica donosi prijedloge za dataciju predmeta.
Language and Literature, History of Central Europe
We apply Nancy Cartwright's distinction between theories and basic models to explore the history of rival approaches to modeling a notion of chance for an ideal uniform physical process known as a fair spinner. This process admits both Archimedean and non-Archimedean models. Advocates of Archimedean models maintain that the fair spinner should satisfy hypotheses such as invariance with respect to rotations by an arbitrary real angle, and assume that the optimal mathematical tool in this context is the Lebesgue measure. Others argue that invariance with respect to all real rotations does not constitute an essential feature of the underlying physical process, and could be relaxed in favor of regularity. We show that, working in ZFC, no subset of the commonly assumed hypotheses determines a unique model, suggesting that physically based intuitions alone are insufficient to pin down a unique mathematical model. We provide a rebuttal of recent criticisms of non-Archimedean models by Parker and Pruss.
Beomseok Lee, Marcely Zanon Boito, Laurent Besacier
et al.
In this paper we describe NAVER LABS Europe submission to the instruction-following speech processing short track at IWSLT 2025. We participate in the constrained settings, developing systems that can simultaneously perform ASR, ST, and SQA tasks from English speech input into the following target languages: Chinese, Italian, and German. Our solution leverages two pretrained modules: (1) a speech-to-LLM embedding projector trained using representations from the SeamlessM4T-v2-large speech encoder; and (2) LoRA adapters trained on text data on top of a Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct. These modules are jointly loaded and further instruction-tuned for 1K steps on multilingual and multimodal data to form our final system submitted for evaluation.
While the series of events that shaped the transition between foraging societies and food producers are well described for Central and Southern Europe, genetic evidence from Northern Europe surrounding the Baltic Sea is still sparse. Here, we report genome-wide DNA data from 38 ancient North Europeans ranging from ~9500 to 2200 years before present. Our analysis provides genetic evidence that hunter-gatherers settled Scandinavia via two routes. We reveal that the first Scandinavian farmers derive their ancestry from Anatolia 1000 years earlier than previously demonstrated. The range of Mesolithic Western hunter-gatherers extended to the east of the Baltic Sea, where these populations persisted without gene-flow from Central European farmers during the Early and Middle Neolithic. The arrival of steppe pastoralists in the Late Neolithic introduced a major shift in economy and mediated the spread of a new ancestry associated with the Corded Ware Complex in Northern Europe. The population history of Europe is complex and its very north has not yet been comprehensively studied at a genetic level. Here, Mittnik et al. report genome-wide data from 38 ancient individuals from the Eastern Baltic, Russia and Scandinavia to analyse gene flow throughout the Mesolithic and Bronze Age.
BackgroundPear (Pyrus) is a globally grown fruit, with thousands of cultivars in five domesticated species and dozens of wild species. However, little is known about the evolutionary history of these pear species and what has contributed to the distinct phenotypic traits between Asian pears and European pears.ResultsWe report the genome resequencing of 113 pear accessions from worldwide collections, representing both cultivated and wild pear species. Based on 18,302,883 identified SNPs, we conduct phylogenetics, population structure, gene flow, and selective sweep analyses. Furthermore, we propose a model for the divergence, dissemination, and independent domestication of Asian and European pears in which pear, after originating in southwest China and then being disseminated throughout central Asia, has eventually spread to western Asia, and then on to Europe. We find evidence for rapid evolution and balancing selection for S-RNase genes that have contributed to the maintenance of self-incompatibility, thus promoting outcrossing and accounting for pear genome diversity across the Eurasian continent. In addition, separate selective sweep signatures between Asian pears and European pears, combined with co-localized QTLs and differentially expressed genes, underline distinct phenotypic fruit traits, including flesh texture, sugar, acidity, aroma, and stone cells.ConclusionsThis study provides further clarification of the evolutionary history of pear along with independent domestication of Asian and European pears. Furthermore, it provides substantive and valuable genomic resources that will significantly advance pear improvement and molecular breeding efforts.
This research shows the photogrammetric survey and graphic documentation of the cloister of the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and San Frutos in the city of Segovia, Spain.<br />The building consists of a series of architectural elements dating back to the Renaissance period. Segovia Cathedral, dedicated to Our Lady of the Assumption and San Frutos, is a masterpiece of Gothic and Renaissance architecture. It represents an icon of the Christian faith and a cultural-historical point in Spanish history.<br />The building was erected in the 16th century (1525–1577), when Renaissance architecture was flourishing in much of Europe. The research analyzes the context through the methodology of architectural drawing in order to propose knowledge and paths of fruition and enhancement. In the stages of the research, it was considered useful to divide the monumental building from the cloister in order to expand the possibilities of a more direct knowledge of the open layout towards the central courtyard. Particularly interesting is the system of vaults and buttresses that characterize the ceilings of the Cloister.<br />The results achieved highlight an understanding of the vaulted system in relation to the planimetric space, completely divorced from the city and able to allow the passage of the religious in moments of solitude and prayer.
NOWE TENDENCJE W ROZWOJU WSPÓŁCZESNEJ LINGWISTYKI W SERBII
W zależności od teorii pochodzenia Rusinów/Rusnaków oraz ich języka w Baczce, baczko-sremski wariant rusińskiego był traktowany jako dialekt języka rosyjskiego, dialekt języka słowackiego, dialekt języka ukraińskiego lub jako odrębny język rusiński.
W pierwszej części artykułu autor przedstawia przegląd dotychczasowych badań nad językiem rusińskim, natomiast w drugiej części zaprezentowane są współczesne badania, których przeprowadzenie możliwe było dzięki nadaniu kodu ISO (RSK). W wyniku uzyskania tego kodu stworzono warunki do przypisania językowi rusińskiemu kodu numerycznego, na podstawie którego bibliotekarze w kraju i za granicą będą klasyfikować książki w języku baczko-sremskich Rusinów. Havrijil Koljesar poświęcił się dostarczeniu niezbędnej liczby haseł do Wikipedii w języku rusińskim, a Mihajlo Fejsa zajmował się tworzeniem niezbędnej literatury leksykograficznej do tłumaczenia z angielskiego na rusiński i z rusińskiego na angielski. Na podstawie swojej dysertacji, w której porównał struktury czasownikowe w języku angielskim i rusińskim (Фејса 2005), Fejsa opublikował wyniki porównania konstrukcji zdań w języku angielskim i rusińskim (Fejsa 2015в), spełniając pierwszy warunek realizacji tłumaczenia maszynowego między językiem angielskim a rusińskim. Publikując Słownik angielsko-rusiński (Фейса, Шлемендер, Чельовски 2022), spełniono drugi z trzech niezbędnych warunków. Trzecim warunkiem jest publikacja „Słownika rusińsko-
-angielskiego”.
The Bohr and von Neumann views on the measurement process in quantum mechanics have been interpreted for a long time in somewhat controversial terms, often leading to misconceptions. On the basis of some textual analysis, I would like to show that, contrary to a widespread opinion, their views should be taken less inconsistent, and much closer to each other, than usually thought. As a consequence, I claim that Bohr and von Neumann are conceptually on the same side on the issue of the universality of quantum mechanics: hopefully, this might contribute to a more accurate history of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics.
Emily F. Kerrison, Ron D. Ekers, John Morgan
et al.
Recent observations of interplanetary scintillation (IPS) at radio frequencies have proved to be a powerful tool for probing the solar environment from the ground. But how far back does this tradition really extend? Our survey of the literature to date has revealed a long history of scintillating observations, beginning with the oral traditions of Indigenous peoples from around the globe, encompassing the works of the Ancient Greeks and Renaissance scholars, and continuing right through into modern optics, astronomy and space science. We outline here the major steps that humanity has taken along this journey, using scintillation as a tool for predicting first terrestrial, and then space weather without ever having to leave the ground.
Lars Berger, Uwe M. Borghoff, Gerhard Conrad
et al.
Global conflicts and trouble spots have thrown the world into turmoil. Intelligence services have never been as necessary as they are today when it comes to providing political decision-makers with concrete, accurate, and up-to-date decision-making knowledge. This requires a common co-operation, a common working language and a common understanding of each other. The best way to create this "intelligence community" is through a harmonized intelligence education. In this paper, we show how joint intelligence education can succeed. We draw on the experience of Germany, where all intelligence services and the Bundeswehr are academically educated together in a single degree program that lays the foundations for a common working language. We also show how these experiences have been successfully transferred to a European level, namely to ICE, the Intelligence College in Europe. Our experience has shown that three aspects are particularly important: firstly, interdisciplinarity or better, transdisciplinarity, secondly, the integration of IT knowhow and thirdly, the development and learning of methodological skills. Using the example of the cyber intelligence module with a special focus on data-driven decision support, additionally with its many points of reference to numerous other academic modules, we show how the specific analytic methodology presented is embedded in our specific European teaching context.
This work successfully generates an uncertainty-aware surrogate model of the EuroPED plasma pedestal model using the Bayesian neural network with noise contrastive prior (BNN-NCP) technique. This model is trained using data from the JET-ILW pedestal database and subsequent model evaluations, conforming to EuroPED-NN. The BNN-NCP technique has been proven to be a suitable method for generating uncertainty-aware surrogate models. It matches the output results of a regular neural network while providing confidence estimates for predictions as uncertainties. Additionally, it highlights out-of-distribution (OOD) regions using surrogate model uncertainties. This provides critical insights into model robustness and reliability. EuroPED-NN has been physically validated, first, analyzing electron density $n_e\!\left(ψ_{\text{pol}}=0.94\right)$ with respect to increasing plasma current, $I_p$, and second, validating the $Δ-β_{p,ped}$ relation associated with the EuroPED model. This affirms the robustness of the underlying physics learned by the surrogate model. On top of that, the method was used to develop a EuroPED-like model fed with experimental data, i.e. an uncertainty aware experimental model, which is functional in JET database. Both models have been also tested in $\sim 50$ AUG shots.
The focus of this paper is an ecocritical examination of Ádám Bodor’s The Birds of Verhovina. The study begins with an introduction to Hubert Zapf ’s theory of sustainable texts and the ecocritical concept of Greg Garrard’s Ecocriticism, and concludes with an interpretation of the chosen work along ecocritical tropes. The paper starts from the premise that Ádám Bodor’s work employs the rhetoric of ecocriticism, thereby closely linking literature to a wider web of discourses on nature and the environment. The hypothesis of the study is that the relationship between human and nature, nature and culture, and power and the individual are emphasised in the work. The inhabitants of Verhovina live in harmony with nature; wild and untamed nature not only provides the community with raw materials, but also creeps into the consciousness of the characters, determining their behaviour, their attitudes towards each other, as well as their way of thinking about life. However, the various signs of this shift of power suggest that a rupture has occurred in the hitherto harmonious relationship between the community and nature, the individual and nature.
History of Central Europe, Language and Literature