Hasil untuk "History of Central Europe"

Magdalena Mittermeier, Christian M. Grams, Urs Beyerle et al.

Omega-blocks can trigger spatially compounding heat-precipitation extremes with severe societal impacts, as seen in September 2023 when a heatwave over France coincided with devastating floods in the Iberian Peninsula and Greece. Although blocking in general has been linked to moist processes in upstream warm conveyor belts (WCBs), it has remained unexplored whether and how upstream WCB activity influences the evolution of omega-blocks and downstream flood-heat-flood impacts. Here, we show that already five days ahead, small differences in the upstream evolution - particularly in WCB outflow regions - distinguish cases that later produce extreme compound events over Europe from weaker ones, even though their large-scale anomalies initially appear similar. We illustrate the distinct evolution in remote locations by analyzing storylines simulated in a fully coupled climate model. Using ensemble boosting, we generate hundreds of physically plausible simulations of omega-prone situations. Lagrangian air parcel tracking reveals that variations in WCB outflow areas can explain differences in upstream precursors and downstream effects over Europe. Our results highlight ensemble boosting as a powerful approach to systematically track dynamical differences along model-based event storylines, important for understanding and anticipating compound extremes striking multiple regions simultaneously.

Nina Ashley O. Dela Cruz, Alyssa Cyrielle B. Villanueva, Lovely Tolin et al.

ABSTRACT Micro, small, and medium‐sized enterprises (MSMEs) account for most firms in most economies, particularly in developing nations, and are key contributors to job creation and global economic development. However, the most significant impediment to MSME development in low‐ and middle‐income countries is a lack of access to both investment and working capital financing. Due to a lack of essential track record, appropriate collateral, and credit history, MSMEs are frequently denied business loans by traditional lending institutions. In addition, MSMEs face institutional, structural, and non‐financial factors that further impede access to funding. To address this, both public and private sectors employ indirect and direct finance interventions to help MSMEs in developing and emerging economies enhance and increase their financing needs. Given the importance of MSMEs in the economy, a comprehensive overview and systematic synthesizing of the evidence of the effects of financial access interventions for MSMEs, capturing a wide variety of outcome variables, is useful. The objective of this evidence and gap map (EGM) is to describe the existing evidence on the effects of various interventions dedicated to supporting and improving MSMEs' access to credit, as well as the corresponding firm performance and/or welfare outcomes. An EGM is a systematic evidence product that displays the existing evidence relevant to a specific research question. To better understand the various interventions dedicated to supporting and improving MSMEs' access to credit, as well as their outcomes, we conducted electronic searches in databases using various search strings. This search strategy was supplemented with gray literature searches and systematic review citation tracking to ensure that the research team had identified a significant portion of relevant research works. We included studies that examined interventions aimed at enhancing MSMEs' access to finance in low‐ and middle‐income countries, targeting MSMEs including households, smallholder farmers and single person enterprise, as well as financial institutions/agencies and their staff. This EGM considered five types of interventions: (i) strategy, legislation and regulatory; (ii) financing systems and institutions; (iii) access facilitation; (iv) lending instruments or financial products; and (v) demand‐side programs for financial literacy. On the other hand, the EGM also covered outcome domains for policy environment, financial inclusion, firm performance, and welfare. Both impact evaluations and systematic reviews of relevant interventions for a previously defined target population were included in this EGM, whether they had experimental or non‐experimental designs. We considered studies that were completed or in progress. All eligible studies included a suitable comparison group for interventions. For practical reasons, studies were limited to papers written in English, with no restrictions by publication date. Before‐and‐after study designs with no suitable comparison group were excluded from the study, as well as literature reviews, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and descriptive analyses. The result of our study is outlined in this study article, as well as an interactive map drawn as a matrix of various interventions improving MSMEs' access to finance and their corresponding firm performance and/or welfare outcomes. The preliminary map was produced in March 2022 and after adding supplementary research the updated map and analysis started in April 2022. The final interactive map is available online. The EGM includes 413 studies. One hundred and forty‐seven studies featured interventions that targeted multiple firm sizes, though most (379 studies) analyzed microenterprises, such as households and smallholder farmers. One hundred and nine studies analyzed small and medium enterprises, while seven studies analyzed community groups. Lending instruments/financial products are the most common form of intervention across all firm types, with microenterprises most often receiving the said financial intervention (278 studies). This is followed by systems and organizations (138 studies) that support better access to such financial products and services. Welfare outcomes have the most evidence out of all the outcomes of interest, followed by firm performance and financial inclusion. Welfare outcomes refer to economic, food security and nutrition, health, education, housing, well‐being, and gender outcomes. Among all firm types, welfare outcomes are primarily targeted at microenterprises. With 59 studies, we can say that small businesses have a significantly large number of enterprise performance outcomes. Of the 413 studies, 243 used non‐experimental or quasi‐experimental designs (mainly propensity score matching and instrumental variable approaches), 136 used experimental methods, and 34 were systematic reviews. 175 studies (43%) provided evidence from Sub‐Saharan Africa, 142 studies (35%) from South Asia, 86 studies (21%) from East Asia and the Pacific, 66 studies (16%) from Latin America and the Caribbean, 28 studies (7%) from Europe and Central Asia, and 21 studies (5%) from the Middle East and North Africa. Most of the evidence included covers low‐income (26%) and lower‐middle income countries (66%), and to a lesser extent upper‐middle‐income countries (26%). This map depicts the existing evidence and gaps on the effects of interventions to enhance MSMEs' access to financial services in low‐ and middle‐income countries. Interventions directed at microenterprises with welfare outcomes have a significant number of research outcomes in the literature. SME evaluations have looked at firm performance, with less focus on employment and the welfare effects on owners and employees, including poverty reduction. Microcredit/loans have been the focus of a large number of research papers (238 studies), indicating the field's growing popularity. However, emerging financial interventions such as facilitating access to digital financial services are relatively understudied. Additionally, 192 studies focus on rural or remote populations, 126 studies investigate interventions to the poor and disadvantaged, and 114 papers specifically address interventions targeted to women. Most of the research is conducted in Sub‐Saharan Africa (175 studies) and South Asia (142 studies), so further research in other regions could be conducted to allow a more holistic understanding of the effects of financial inclusion interventions. Future studies should look into strategy, law, and regulation interventions, as well as interventions targeted at SMEs, and examine policy and regulatory environment outcomes, as well as welfare outcomes. Interventions on the demand side and their impact on the policy and regulatory environment, as well as facilitating access, are relatively understudied.

Ela Cosma

The study presents a legal historical comparison of various ethnic marked consuetudinary laws from Southeastern and Central Europe during the Middle Ages and early modern history. Such customary laws were enacted in proper codifications specific to the ethnic communities of the South Slavs (Zakon sudnyi ljudem, Serbian and Croatian customary laws), Germans (Sachsenspiegel, Schwabenspiegel, Magdeburgisches Stadtrecht, Ofner Stadtrecht), Transylvanian Saxons (Codex Altemberger, Eigenlandrecht der Siebenbürger Sachsen), Hungarians (Werbőczy István’s Tripartitum), Vlachs (Jus Valachicum in Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Herzegovina) and Romanians (Jus Valachicum in South Transylvania). In each of the illustrated cases we specify the emergence and features of the customary laws specific to various Southeast and Central European ethnic communities, the manuscript editions, variants and copies of the original sources, the languages in which they were written, as well as their spread, importance and influence upon the neighbouring ethnic communities. We show that, in spite of the multiethnic cohabitation in Central Europe and the Balkans, the various ethnic consuetudinary laws had a parallel development, while each of the ethnies, social categories, medieval and modern nations involved kept their own ethno-juridical peculiarities.

Roko Curić

The enlargement of the European Union towards the Western Balkans has faced significant slowdown in recent times, despite nominal support for enlargement from both the EU and the candidate countries of the region. This paper examines the factors contributing to the stagnation of the enlargement process, categorizing them into internal and external factors. Internally, the EU is facing what is dubbed “the enlargement fatigue” phenomenon, where the EU and its Member States are not fully committed and are less enthusiastic towards further EU enlargement. What further exacerbates the problem are the various internal crises the EU has faced in recent times: the 2008 financial and eurozone crisis, the migrant crisis, Brexit, and the recent COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore, the process of enlargement has become politicized in the sense that Member States use their status in the negotiation process for political leverage and gain. On the other side, externally, the region of the Western Balkans is home to foreign non-EU geopolitical influences of Russia, China, Turkey, and the Gulf states. However, more importantly, Western Balkan countries still have major problems with state capture, corruption, and the weak rule of law, which severely hamper their ascension processes. This study employs a comparative and descriptive approach, synthesizing primary EU documents and secondary academic sources to provide a comprehensive analysis of the evolving enlargement framework. The findings suggest that while EU engagement remains crucial, both the EU and Western Balkan states must undertake substantive reforms and commitments to break the current impasse and revitalize the accession process.

Irena Kossowska

This article addresses the multilayered thematic area focused on the impact of trauma, caused by war and political oppression, on the attitudes of artists who followed combat trails and migration routes to ultimately settle far from their homeland. What I consider particularly challenging in this field of study is to find an answer to the question: why did some of the forcefully displaced artists manage to integrate with the art scene of their final destination, while others preferred to attain their position on the cultural margins of the new locality? The best exemplification of these complex issues is the biography of Józef Czapski (1896-1993), a Polish writer, essayist, art critic, and painter, who fought in the ranks of the Polish army on the fronts of World War I and World War II, and, eventually, permanently settled in France. I argue that it was the wartime and the hell of migration that caused Czapski’s inability to fully assimilate in the Parisian art world, and stimulated his aversion to avant-garde progressivism and innovative experimentation. My analyses reveal that his paintings epitomise remnants of collective and individual trauma, an overwhelming sense of loss, and a ‘residue’ of painful experiences resulting from expulsion and exile.

TATEROVÁ, Eva

This study examines Czechoslovak-Egyptian political relations in the first two decades of the Cold War, with their symbolic milestone being the state visit of a delegation led by President Antonín Novotný to Egypt in November 1966. This journey not only gained significant attention from Czechoslovak and global media but also served as a public declaration of mutual friendship and support between Czechoslovakia and Egypt. These two countries, which had experienced a period of close cooperation during the Suez Crisis, underwent a significant cooling of relations in the late 1950s and early 1960s due to ideological differences. Additionally, this trip was the first visit of Czechoslovak president in Egypt since the interwar period, making it an event that transcended the usual boundaries of bilateral relations between these two states. From a propaganda standpoint, it was also considered one of the important moments in the ongoing Cold War rivalry in the Third World.

Marco Di Mauro, Salvatore Esposito, Adele Naddeo

The onset and the development of the concept of exchange force in quantum physics are historically reconstructed, starting from Heisenberg's seminal contributions in 1926 and going through the great developments in nuclear physics, which allowed the emergence of the idea of force mediating virtual quanta. Although most of such work was performed in Europe, the last and decisive effort in this long path was carried out by Japanese scientists in the 1930s. This is the main focus of the present work, which retraces the achievements of Yukawa and Tomonaga, whose results and mutual interactions are carefully analyzed and related to those of European physicists.

Enrico Schifani, Antonio Alicata, Lech Borowiec et al.

There are only two Aphaenogaster species from the subterranea group in the western Mediterranean: A. ichnusa Santschi, 1925, from south-western Europe, and A. subterranea (Latreille, 1798), also occurring in central and eastern Europe. Historically, the two species have been widely misunderstood: A. ichnusa was long considered a Sardinian endemic subspecies of A. subterranea, while its continental populations were misidentified as A. subterranea s. str. Recently, A. ichnusa was elevated to species rank and its worker caste was redescribed with that of A. subterranea, allowing for their correct identification. Yet their distribution was documented in detail only for France and Sardinia. Furthermore, no morphological characters were described to distinguish the males and queens of the two species. By investigating private and museum collections, 276 new records of A. ichnusa are provided here and 154 of A. subterranea from the western Mediterranean. Additionally, qualitative and quantitative morphological characters were combined to identify their males and queens. We present the new southernmost, easternmost, and westernmost distribution limits for A. ichnusa. Based on our results, this species is widely distributed in Italy and Catalonia (Spain), also occurring on several Mediterranean islands, avoiding areas with continental climate and high altitudes. Sicily is the only island to host the less thermophilous A. subterranea, which otherwise extends westward to Galicia (Spain). Sympatric occurrence is not rare along the contact zone. Additional natural history observations are reported regarding foraging habits, associated myrmecophiles, habitat preferences, and colony structure in the two species.

Erik de Vahl, Giulia Mattalia, Ingvar Svanberg

Masterwort, <i>Peucedanum ostruthium</i> (L.) Koch, is an Apiaceae species originally native to the mountain areas of central and southern Europe. Written sources show that it was used in northern Europe. This study explores the cultivation history of masterwort and its past use in Sweden. Although only few details are known about the history of this taxon, it represents a cultural relict plant of an intentionally introduced species known in Sweden as early as the Middle Ages. In Sweden, the masterwort was mainly used as an ethnoveterinary herbal remedy from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. However, medicinal manuals, pharmacopoeias and some ethnographical records indicate that it was once also used in remedies for humans. Today, this species remains as a living biocultural heritage in rural areas, especially on the surviving shielings, which were once used as mountain pastures in Dalecarlia, and at former crofts that were inhabited by cattle owners in the forest areas of southern Sweden.

Roberto Casalbuoni, Daniele Dominici, Massimo Mazzoni

The history of the Institute of Physics at the University of Florence is traced from the beginning of the 20th century, with the arrival of Antonio Garbasso as Director (1913), to the 1960s. Thanks to Garbasso's expertise, not only did the Institute gain new premises on Arcetri hill, where the Astronomical Observatory was already located, but it also formed a brilliant group of young physicists made up of Enrico Fermi, Franco Rasetti, Enrico Persico, Bruno Rossi, Gilberto Bernardini, Daria Bocciarelli, Lorenzo Emo Capodilista, Giuseppe Occhialini and Giulio Racah, who were engaged in the emerging fields of Quantum Mechanics and Cosmic Rays. This Arcetri School disintegrated in the late 1930s for the transfer of its protagonists to chairs in other universities, for the environment created by the fascist regime and, to some extent, for the racial laws. After the war, the legacy was taken up by some students of this school who formed research groups in the field of nuclear physics and elementary particle physics. As far as theoretical physics was concerned, after the Fermi and Persico periods these studies enjoyed a new expansion towards the end of the 1950s, with the arrival of Giacomo Morpurgo and above all, that of Raoul Gatto, who created the first real Italian school of Theoretical Physics at Arcetri.

Bohumil Melichar , Čeněk Pýcha

The text focuses on the possibilities offered by a spatial perspective for the study, teaching, and sharing of experiences with state socialism. The authors offer an insight into the concept developed during the creation of an interactive map. The map aims to visualize the Communist Party’s attempt to interpret Czechoslovak history in the public environment. The relics of its cultural policy in the current public sphere present opportunities for the use of the map in education.

Martin Dekarli

The outbreak of Schism in 1378 introduced a shift in searching for a new source of authority which could legitimise the church reform. Since the early 1390s, the conciliar tradition preferring the canon law as the leading authority for determining the Schism has been constituted and sup-ported among French or German theologians. Nevertheless, in the late 1370s, John Wyclif devel-oped another solution for church reform favouring God’s law and the ideal of a top-down refor-mation led by righteous civil lords, which Jan Hus and his followers further adopted within the early 15th Century. Conciliarism and the English model for church reform proposed by Wyclif competed in politics after 1409. Recently, new sources treating the clashes over authority issues in the Middle Ages were published, which shed new light on the problem.

Peter Keresteš

The author of this study focuses on the issue of the church topography of the city of Nitra, which has not been adequately addressed until now, as the research of the earlier history of this important Slovak city was hindered by an absence of relevant sources. The old archive of the city was destroyed by fire before 1679 and also the city and many of its sacral buildings were destroyed during the Ottoman occupation. The author focuses on the localization and patronage of key sacral objects in the privileged Lower Town (St Peter's Chapel, St Andrew's Church, the Monastery of the Virgin Mary, the Church of the Virgin Mary at Calvary and others). His conclusions allow us to correct the topographical map of the city and to draw up a new map of the topography of Nitra before the end of the 16th century, capturing definitively located sacral buildings in the privileged Lower Town.

Jaroslav Stanovský

Count Maximilian von Lamberg: a Cosmopolitan between Europe and Moravia. This paper deals with the personality and the work of the noble, writer and intellectual Maximilian count Lamberg (1729–1792) which was already examined by several Czech historians (Polišenský, Kroupa, Cerman). Firstly, the paper evaluates the current state of research to show that despite of the attention of researchers focused on this personality, there are still lot of contexts and details which remain unknown. Secondly, the paper analyses the question of the relevance and the historical value of Lamberg’s conserved works which are situated between memories, essays and autobiographical fiction. In the main part of the paper, the thesis of Jiří Kroupa, which assumes the appurtenance of Maxmilian Lamberg both to the Moravian milieu and to the European Republic of letters, is examined. Lamberg’s accessible works, not only the most famous Mémorial d’un mondain but also the other books, are used as a base of the research.

Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, Alexander Ly

The Jeffreys-Lindley paradox exposes a rift between Bayesian and frequentist hypothesis testing that strikes at the heart of statistical inference. Contrary to what most current literature suggests, the paradox was central to the Bayesian testing methodology developed by Sir Harold Jeffreys in the late 1930s. Jeffreys showed that the evidence against a point-null hypothesis $\mathcal{H}_0$ scales with $\sqrt{n}$ and repeatedly argued that it would therefore be mistaken to set a threshold for rejecting $\mathcal{H}_0$ at a constant multiple of the standard error. Here we summarize Jeffreys's early work on the paradox and clarify his reasons for including the $\sqrt{n}$ term. The prior distribution is seen to play a crucial role; by implicitly correcting for selection, small parameter values are identified as relatively surprising under $\mathcal{H}_1$. We highlight the general nature of the paradox by presenting both a fully frequentist and a fully Bayesian version. We also demonstrate that the paradox does not depend on assigning prior mass to a point hypothesis, as is commonly believed.

Udi Boker, Karoliina Lehtinen

Automata models between determinism and nondeterminism/alternations can retain some of the algorithmic properties of deterministic automata while enjoying some of the expressiveness and succinctness of nondeterminism. We study three closely related such models -- history determinism, good for gameness and determinisability by pruning -- on quantitative automata. While in the Boolean setting, history determinism and good for gameness coincide, we show that this is no longer the case in the quantitative setting: good for gameness is broader than history determinism, and coincides with a relaxed version of it, defined with respect to thresholds. We further identify criteria in which history determinism, which is generally broader than determinisability by pruning, coincides with it, which we then apply to typical quantitative automata types. As a key application of good for games and history deterministic automata is synthesis, we clarify the relationship between the two notions and various quantitative synthesis problems. We show that good-for-games automata are central for "global" (classical) synthesis, while "local" (good-enough) synthesis reduces to deciding whether a nondeterministic automaton is history deterministic.

Yael Naze

With Cyrano, Voltaire, and Verne, France provided important milestones in the history of early science fiction. However, even if the genre was not very common a few centuries ago, there were numerous additional contributions by French-speaking writers. In this paper, we review two cases of interplanetary novels written in the second half of the eighteenth century and sharing a rare particularity: their authors were female. Voyages de Milord Ceton was imagined by Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robert whereas Cornelie Wouters de Wasse conceived Le Char Volant. While their personal lives were very different, and their writing style too, both authors share in these novels a common philosophy in which equality -- between ranks but also between genders -- takes an important place. Their works thus clearly fit into the context of the Enlightenment.

P. Boursot, J. Auffray, J. Britton-davidian et al.

H. Gandomani, S. M. yousefi, M. Aghajani et al.

A rapid literature search strategy was conducted for all English language literature published before July 2017. The search was conducted using the electronic databases PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science. The search strategy included the keywords ‘colorectal cancer’, ‘epidemiology’, ‘incidence’, ‘mortality’, ‘risk factor’, and ‘world’. In 2012, the highest CRC incidence rates were observed in the Republic of Korea, Slovakia and Hungary while the lowest incidence rates were seen in Singapore, Serbia and Japan. The highest CRC mortality rates in both sexes were seen in Central and Eastern Europe and the lowest mortality rates were found in Middle Division of Africa. The main risk factors for CRC include nutritional factors, past medical history, smoking, socioeconomic status, and family medical history. According to the increasing trend of CRC incidence and mortality in the world, implementation of prevention programs such as screening programs, diet modification, and healthy lifestyle education is necessary.

Paul Brotherton, W. Haak, Jennifer E. L. Templeton et al.