Hasil untuk "History of Eastern 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.

Olga Lavrut

Метою дослідження є характеристика становища педагогині у радянському суспільстві шляхом аналізу освітнього рівня жінки; характеристики педагогині поза межами школи – як громадської діячки, учасниці господарського життя УРСР, жінки. Новизна наукової роботи полягає у тому, що охарактеризовано діяльність учительки школи УРСР зазначеного періоду з різних ракурсів – громадської діячки, жінки, особистості. Висновки. Активна позиція жіноцтва у соціумі вимагає від сучасної історичної науки переосмислення її статусу як особистості. Вивчення місця та ролі жінки у педагогічному процесі радянської доби 1940-80-х років показало, що педагогині шкіл УРСР зазначеного періоду виконували велику кількість зобов’язань і функцій, спектр яких охоплює широке коло від громадсько-політичних до особистих. Переважна більшість з них припадала на діяльність у закладах освіти. Від другої половини 1940-х рр. і до кінця 1980-х рр. освітній рівень учителів-жінок зростав, що дало можливість не лише продемонструвати державі їх підтримку, а й долучати до різних сфер і напрямків діяльності, використовуючи їх потужний фізичний, інтелектуальний і психологічний потенціал. Педагогині були депутатами місцевих рад і Верховної ради УРСР, мали звання «Заслуженого вчителя УРСР» та інші нагороди. Вони займалися пропагандистською роботою, підготовкою до виборів, були членкинями організацій і комісій. Поряд із цим сімейно-побутові клопоти також залишалися за ними. Вони, переважно, розчинялися у суспільному, забуваючи про власний світ. Держава має підтримувати жіноцтво, оскільки воно виконує потужну соціальну роль і функції та прагне реалізувати власні візії на різні питання, а тому його досвід є корисним, особливо, якщо це інтелігенція.

Sina Kalweit, Elisabeth Zeyen, Marta Victoria

Road transport is responsible for about a quarter of Europe's greenhouse gas emissions, making its transformation a crucial part of Europe's overall decarbonization goals. Current European policies promote decarbonizing the transport sector and passenger car sales show an increased adoption of electric vehicles. Full electrification of land transport will significantly increase the average electricity demand but the use of smart charging and vehicle-to-grid could provide additional flexibility to balance wind and solar generation. In this study, we find cost-optimal transition pathways of the European land transport sector embedded in the sector-coupled open energy model PyPSA-Eur. We consider fossil-fueled, hydrogen-fueled, and electric cars using a 3-hour time resolution for a full year and covering 33 interconnected European countries. We analyze a transition path from 2025 to 2050 under different carbon budgets corresponding to a 1.7°C and 2°C temperature increase. Our results show that rapid electrification of road transport reduces the total system cost, even in the absence of climate targets. We see a clear preference for rapidly decommissioning internal combustion engine vehicles and using electric vehicles in all countries and under all carbon budgets. Allowing smart charging of electric vehicles decreases the total system cost by 1.6% because it reduces the need to install stationary batteries by almost 40%.

Lukas Franken, Elisabeth Zeyen, Orestis Angelidis et al.

Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) can provide constant, reliable electricity and heat with minimal emissions, but high drilling costs and uncertain cost reductions leave their future unclear. We explore scenarios for the future adoption of EGS in a carbon-neutral, multi-sector European energy system. We find that in a net-zero system, heat (co-)generating EGS at current cost can support 20--30 GWth of capacity in Europe, primarily driven by district heating demands. When drilling costs decrease by approximately 60%, EGS becomes competitive in electricity markets, expanding its market opportunity by one order of magnitude. However, the spatially dispersed rollout of district heating contrasts with the confined overlap of high geological potential and low potential for other renewables, which conditions the competitiveness of electricity-generating EGS. This results in a challenge where the majority of EGS market potential depends on pan-European technology learning for cost reductions, emphasising coordination is crucial in stakeholders' efforts to reduce EGS cost.

Madalina Petran, Dorin Dragoș, Dorin Dragoș et al.

There is a limited number of studies focusing on ethnomedical practices in children, particularly in Eastern Europe. Romania has a rich history of using medicinal plants in ethnopediatric care, and our objective was to identify the medicinal plants currently employed in treating childhood illnesses in the southern region of the country.Material and methods Our investigation used structured interviews, focusing on respondent demographics, local names of therapeutically employed herbs, the specific plant part(s) utilized, methods of preparation and administration, and local folk indications of taxa. A total of 326 mothers with children aged 0 to 18, hospitalized in the “Grigore Alexandrescu” Children Emergency Hospital Bucharest and residing in Southern Romania, were enrolled in the study. Use Value Citation Index (UVc), Informant Consensus Factor (Fic), and Fidelity Level (FL) were calculated.Results Twenty-five plants were identified for treating children’s diseases in Southern Romania. The majority of informants resided in urban areas, and mothers primarily acquired knowledge from family members and healthcare professionals. The herbs most frequently employed were Mentha spp. (UV = 0.509) for diarrhea, Matricaria spp. (UV = 0.301) for skin infections (Fic = 0.99) and digestive diseases (Fic = 0.98), and Calendula officinalis L. (UV = 0.365) for skin diseases (Fic = 0.99). Less utilized were Raphanus raphanistrum subsp. sativus (L.) Domin in respiratory diseases, Prunus avium (L.) L. stalks in urinary tract ailments, Helianthus annuus L. in ear infections, Allium sativum L. in intestinal parasitosis, Viola tricolor L. in hives, Triticum aestivum L. in dermatitis and Allium ursinum L. as a tonic. In 184 cases herbal treatment was used in conjunction with conventional medications. Education level correlated with the number of employed plants and the variety of treated ailments, while residency (rural vs. urban) did not. Both residency and education influenced plant procurement methods: rural background and, surprisingly, higher education were linked to a preference for harvesting rather than purchasing plants.Conclusion Botanical remedies are still commonly used in the treatment of pediatric diseases in Southern Romania, although the variety of taxa seems reduced compared to the past. Further exploration is essential to unlock the maximum benefits of ethnopediatric practices.

Andrey Nepomnyashchy

Abstract. During a business trip to the Crimea in 1886, V.D. Smirnov studied the composition of the Simferopol archives. The trip of the orientalist was initiated by the St. Petersburg Archaeological Institute. In connection with the request of local scientists about the opening of the provincial scientific archival commission on the peninsula, the director of the Archaeological Institute I.E. Andreevsky appealed to the famous orientalist in the capital V.D. Smirnov with a request to conduct an expert assessment of the available documents in Taurida. The purpose of the study was to conclude on the expediency of opening a local academic archival commission. Extensive excerpts from V.D. Smirnov’s manuscript are provided, compiled based on the results of the trip. The document provides an overview of the composition of the Crimean archives and the value of the deposited archival papers.

Rubén Ruiz-Torrubiano, Sebastian Knopp, Lukas Matthias Wolf et al.

In modular educational systems, students are allowed to choose a part of their own curriculum themselves. This is typically done in the final class levels which lead to maturity for university access. The rationale behind letting students choose their courses themselves is to enhance self-responsibility, improve student motivation, and allow a focus on specific areas of interest. A central instrument for bringing these systems to fruition is the timetable. However, scheduling the timetable in such systems can be an extremely challenging and time-consuming task. In this study, we present a framework for classifying modular educational systems in Europe that reflects different degrees of freedom regarding student choices, and explore the consequences from the perspective of scheduling a timetable that satisfies all requirements from the organizational and the pedagogical perspective. For this purpose, we conducted interviews in Austria, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg and apply the framework to these educational systems, finding that among them the Finnish system shows the highest degree of modularity. After analyzing the consequences of modularity from the scheduling perspective, we assess the necessity for automated scheduling methods, which are central for realizing the potential and many benefits of modular education in practice.

Donald C. Chang

Science is about facts and truth. Yet sometimes the truth and facts are not obvious. For example, in the field of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), there has been a long-lasting debate about who were the major contributors in its development. Particularly, there was a strong dispute between the followers of two scientists, R. Damadian and P. Lauterbur. In this review, we carefully trace the major developments in applying NMR for cancer detection starting almost 50 years ago. The research records show that the truth was beyond the claims of either research camps. The development of NMR for cancer detection involved multiple research groups, who made critical contributions at different junctures.

Sarah Gruszka

Gael Kermarrec, Anna Klos, Artur Lenczuk et al.

Hydrogeodesy can benefit greatly from the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) displacements to analyse local changes in the hydrosphere, which the commonly used Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission is unable to provide due to coarse spatial resolution. Hydrosphere changes recorded by GPS are unfortunately hidden among the other signals to which the system is also sensitive so that the sensitivity of GPS to changes in the hydrosphere on temporal-scales from pluri-annual to decadal is questionable. We focus on hydrosphere signatures present on these long-term temporal-scales as observed by GPS through the vertical displacement time series (DTS) of 122 permanent stations over Europe and compare them to the DTS derived from GRACE for GPS locations. Our methodology is based on the weighted Savitzky-Golay (S-G) filter, an underestimated filter in the field of geodetic time series analysis. We show that the correspondence between GPS and GRACE on long-term temporal-scales is generally strong, but decreases for coastal regions and regions where the coarse gridding of GRACE does not capture local hydrosphere effects. Further, the negative correlation with El Niño Southern Oscillations (ENSO) is confirmed for Europe.

Uwe M. Borghoff, Lars Berger, François Fischer

In fulfilling the European security commitment, the actors of the so-called "Intelligence Community" play a central role. They provide political and military decision-makers with important analyses and information. The Intelligence College in Europe (ICE) is the first entity to offer professional intelligence training as well as postgraduate level academic education in intelligence and security studies at a pan-European level. In developing its postgraduate provision, ICE has benefited from the experience of the German Master of Intelligence and Security Studies (MISS), which is a joint effort of the University of the Bundeswehr Munich and the Department of Intelligence at the Federal University of Administrative Sciences in Berlin. As a main contribution of this paper, the module Counterterrorism (adapted from the MISS) is examined in more detail as a case study of how postgraduate modules can be modified to speak to a pan-European audience of intelligence professionals.

Kabir Mansingh Heimsath

Alan Fisher, Leilya S. Seitkhalilova, Arzy Yu. Alieva

This article is a continuation of the translation from English of the famous historian Alan Fisher’s scientific work “The Crimean Tatars”. A. Fisher was always interested in the history of the Ottoman Empire and Turkic peoples. His work “The Crimean Tatars” was published in 1978 in the USA. The second part of his work covers the following items: 1. Crimean Tatars in Imperial Russia (Russian interest in the Crimea). 2. Catherine II. 3. War of 1768–1774. 4. Russian success with Nogay Tatars. 5. Kaplan Giray. 6. Russian invasion. 7. Russian-Crimean Treaty. 8. Sahib Giray in power. 9. Second Russian invasion. 10. Şahin Giray`s policies. 11. Crimean opposition to Şahin. 13. Crimean colonization. 14. Third Russian invasion. 15. Şahin Giray`s reforms begun anew. 16. Final Russian invasion. 17. Reorganization of the Crimea. On the whole this part of work covers political and economic conditions under which Crimea came under the rule of Russia.

Aswin Sharma

This photo essay introduces readers to the two brothers Ramesh and Gopal Baraily. They live isolated, almost invisible lives, separated from their families, confined to the comfort and safety of their small home in the Darjeeling Hills, making ends meet by taking up odd, menial jobs to sustain themselves. This photo essay seeks to capture a day in the ordinary, everyday, mundane life lives of two brothers, marked by their defined physical disabilities and caste identities. Living as outcasts, shunned by family and regarded as a burden on society, these silenced realities begs us to probe deeper into how we imagine ideas of oneness, belonging and home.

Elena Varela-Álvarez, Patrick G. Meirmans, Michael D. Guiry et al.

The genus Porphyra sensu lato (Bangiaceae, Rhodophyta), an important seaweed grown in aquaculture, is the most genetically diverse group of the Class Bangiophyceae, but has poorly understood genetic variability linked to complex evolutionary processes. Genetic studies in the last decades have largely focused on resolving gene phylogenies; however, there is little information on historical population biogeography, structure and gene flow in the Bangiaceae, probably due to their cryptic nature, chimerism and polyploidy, which render analyses challenging. This study aims to understand biogeographic population structure in the two abundant Porphyra species in the Northeast Atlantic: Porphyra dioica (a dioecious annual) and Porphyra linearis (protandrous hermaphroditic winter annual), occupying distinct niches (seasonality and position on the shore). Here, we present a large-scale biogeographic genetic analysis across their distribution in the Northeast Atlantic, using 10 microsatellites and cpDNA as genetic markers and integrating chimerism and polyploidy, including simulations considering alleles derived from different ploidy levels and/or from different genotypes within the chimeric blade. For P. linearis, both markers revealed strong genetic differentiation of north-central eastern Atlantic populations (from Iceland to the Basque region of Northeast Iberia) vs. southern populations (Galicia in Northwest Iberia, and Portugal), with higher genetic diversity in the south vs. a northern homogenous low diversity. For. P. dioica, microsatellite analyses also revealed two genetic regions, but with weaker differentiation, and cpDNA revealed little structure with all the haplotypes mixed across its distribution. The southern cluster in P. linearis also included introgressed individuals with cpDNA from P. dioica and a winter form of P. dioica occurred spatially intermixed with P. linearis. This third entity had a similar morphology and seasonality as P. linearis but genomes (either nuclear or chloroplast) from P. dioica. We hypothesize a northward colonization from southern Europe (where the ancestral populations reside and host most of the gene pool of these species). In P. linearis recently established populations colonized the north resulting in homogeneous low diversity, whereas for P. dioica the signature of this colonization is not as obvious due to hypothetical higher gene flow among populations, possibly linked to its reproductive biology and annual life history.

M. Marinari

In the late nineteenth century, Italians and Eastern European Jews joined millions of migrants around the globe who left their countries to take advantage of the demand for unskilled labor in rapidly industrializing nations, including the United States. Many Americans of northern and western European ancestry regarded these newcomers as biologically and culturally inferior--unassimilable--and by 1924, the United States had instituted national origins quotas to curtail immigration from southern and eastern Europe. Weaving together political, social, and transnational history, Maddalena Marinari examines how, from 1882 to 1965, Italian and Jewish reformers profoundly influenced the country’s immigration policy as they mobilized against the immigration laws that marked them as undesirable. Strategic alliances among restrictionist legislators in Congress, a climate of anti-immigrant hysteria, and a fickle executive branch often left these immigrants with few options except to negotiate and accept political compromises. As they tested the limits of citizenship and citizen activism, however, the actors at the heart of Marinari’s story shaped the terms of debate around immigration in the United States in ways we still reckon with today.

Eva Pluhařová-Grigienė

A Socialist Realist History? Writing Art History in the Post-War Decades, edited by Krista Kodres, Kristina Jõekalda, and the late Michaela Marek, is of definitive interest to art historians and scholars of intellectual history of Europe for giving insight into the diverse ways in which art and architectural historians across socialist Central and Eastern Europe engaged with Marxism-Leninism. The wide-ranging contributions reveal that even during Stalinism the discourse on Socialist art history was never static. Slow to modernize during the ensuing Thaw, this discourse evolved in diverse ways within different academic environments. The book makes a highly valuable contribution to the study of art historiography in socialist Europe, deepening our understanding of the complexity and processuality of the discipline’s development, and underlining the need for further in-depth studies. Apart from its interest to art historians, the contributions clearly express the need for a thorough revision of how deeply contemporary art historical research has been shaped by the socialist legacy, particularly with regard to less obvious path dependencies such as methodological approaches.

Gintautas Miknevičius

Part 1 of this Article analyses campaigns of the partisans in Kaunas county and Kaunas city that took place in 1944-1945. Kaunas county geographically was a midpoint of Lithuania, it bordered the counties of Šakiai, Raseiniai, Kėdainiai, Ukmergė, Trakai (from April 1946 – Kaišiadorys), Alytus and Marijampolė. In 1944 the county consisted of 16 rural districts: Aukštoji Panemunė (164 km2), Babtai (224 km2), Čekiškė (252 km2), Garliava (152 km2), Jonava (418 km2), Kruonis (230 km2), Lapės (115 km2), Pakuonis (122 km2), Pažaislis (71 km2), Raudondvaris (103 km2), Rumšiškės (128 km2), Seredžius (83 km2), Vandžiogala (269 km2), Veliuona (134 km2), Vilkija (152 km2), Zapyškis (117 km2). The territory of this part of the county – 2734 km2. The city of Kaunas is not included, the territory of which – 130 km2. Thus, the entire territory of the county, including the city of Kaunas, occupied 2864 km2. In June 1945, Kaunas county had 24 thousand households and 107 thousand population. In the summer 1945, 86 064 inhabitants lived in Kaunas city. On June the 23rd 1944, the Soviet Army started the Strategic Offensive Operation “Bagration”. During this operation, the German group “Centro” was destroyed. At the beginning of July, Soviet forces – units of the 1st Baltic and 3rd Belorussian Front– invaded the territory of Lithuania. In Kaunas county, the divisions of the 3-rd Belorussian Front were fighting, who reached this county by the end of July. By middle-August, the entire territory of Kaunas county was occupied. The organized partisan warfare against the Soviets in Kaunas county started in November 1944. Already in December it spread throughout the entire county, and Kerinas, who was the head of Kaunas NKVD division, called this phenomenon an uprising against the Soviet authorities. Partisan platoons used to contain up to 100 people, these platoons used to join other groups of partisans. Such platoons used to occupy the centres of rural districts and fight NKVD battalions. In 1944, during campaigns of the partisans, 45 people were killed. NKVD-people, having been intimidated by partisan struggle, organized chekist-military operations, during which they managed to destroy large platoons of partisans, therefore, from the year 1945 on, the partisans changed their tactics and started to use another way of fighting – partisan platoons were divided into groups consisting of 5-10 people and then Soviet repressive bodies encountered difficulties in detecting and destroying platoons of partisans. Mostly, the partisans attacked collaborators with the Soviet authorities, and especially – their military squads. The most famous assault of the partisans in 1945 in Kaunas county, was an attack on Seredžius rural district, during which a military platoon of the collaborators was annihilated totally. In total, during the campaigns of the year 1945, the partisans killed 173 people.

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.

M. Chan

ABSTRACT Despite the prosperity and long continuity in history, the ancient Silk Road was weakened in recent centuries. Only with the end of the Cold War, there come the chances for its revival. The launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 by the Chinese coincided with the development strategy change of China, but the Initiative has just still been an initiative open to be substantiated by future policies and changes in China and overseas. The early focus has been on infrastructure investments. On the basis of existing railways, China has developed with European and Central Asian cities an ever-intensifying network of scheduled freight trains to carry out and promote long-distance trade along the old Silk Road routes. Lately, the overland routes have developed intermodal services to revive the traditional linkages between overland Silk Road and maritime Silk Road. Also, a new transport connectivity facilitated by China-funded railway investments has evolved, for example, in Eastern Europe and East Africa and China investment agreements on the development of economic corridors in Pakistan and Myanmar. There have been and could be criticisms and skepticisms about the Belt and Road Initiative. The infrastructure facilities built under the Initiative would definitely enhance local and regional connectivity of the host countries, and when combined with attempts at local industrialization, facilitated by the new opportunities of trade and exchanges, and funded by China or otherwise, it would offer the best chance for lifting the local populations out of the trap of isolation, poverty, and marginalization.