THE SACRALISATION OF THE WARS OF MOSCOW WITH NOVGOROD AND LITHUANIA AT THE TURN OF THE 15TH AND 16TH CENTURY
This article examines the sacralisation of Moscow’s wars against Novg orod and Lithuania at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. The analysis of the narrative sources is divided into two parts. The first chapter deals with the ideological legitimisation of the conflicts elaborated by the Muscovite political and ecclesiastical elite. This often took the form of the dehumanisation of the enemy. The second chapter research es the religious rituals that sacralised the conduct of war. The intercession of divine powers was ensured by prayers, the foundations of the churches, and the presence of icons and crosses. Although these wars should not be labelled as holy wars, the role of the Orthodox clergy in their conduct was considerable.
History of Eastern Europe, Ethnology. Social and cultural anthropology
This paper outlines the multifaceted intellectual profile of Nina Kaucisvili (1919–2000), from her cosmopolitan education to the development of her distinguished career as a scholar and professor of Russian literature. Her research and teaching primarily focused on the works of Dostoevskij and Gogol’ from the nineteenth century, and Andrej Belyj from the twentieth, applying the theories of the Russian formalists—particularly those of Jurij Lotman—to the analysis of their writings. A significant phase of her scholarly activity centered on the philosophical and aesthetic works of Pavel Florenskij.
Thanks to her exceptional ability to identify innovative research directions and to foster opportunities for scholarly debate with leading international experts, the Slavic Department at the University of Bergamo became a major hub for Russian studies. The international academic community recognized not only her original approach to Russian-Italian cultural relations, but also her efforts to broaden cultural discourse to include twentieth-century Russian spirituality, both within Russia and in emigration.
History of Eastern Europe, Slavic languages. Baltic languages. Albanian languages
Данилов, В.А., Морозова, В.А., Растегаева, М.Н.
et al.
Современные методы машинного обучения предлагают новые возможности для повышения эффективности анализа и точности идентификации курганов. Исследование включает применение алгоритмов машинного обучения, методов математико-картографического моделирования и ГИС-технологий для анализа больших объемов данных лидарной съемки, что способствует автоматизации процесса и выявлению скрытых паттернов. Апробация метода поиска курганов была проведена на территориях археологических памятников — поселение эпохи бронзы «Станция Красавка» и курганная группа (2 насыпи) около античного поселения «Тамань-3» (объект культурного наследия федерального значения «Поселение-3» и курганная группа (2 насыпи)). Применение автоматизированных алгоритмов анализа данных позволяет сократить время на их интерпретацию, открывая новые горизонты в археологии и способствуя эффективному сохранению культурного наследия. Результатами работы стали картографические модели с указанием потенциальных мест размещения курганов на территории памятников.
Ivan O. Nekhaev, Anel A. Ishayeva, Amina M. Omarova
et al.
The dwarf pond snail Galba truncatula (O.F. Müller, 1774) is a widespread freshwater species and a key intermediate host of Fasciola spp. Despite its ecological and medical significance, the evolutionary structure of its populations remains incompletely resolved. Using 78 mitochondrial COI sequences, including newly obtained material from Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Caucasus, we reconstructed the phylogeographic pattern of Galba truncatula across Western Palearctic. Our analyses reveal the presence of three distinct phylogenetic lineages. A deeply divergent group, represented by a small number of sequences, occurs sympatrically with the main clade in Western Europe. The main clade, comprising the majority of sequences, is split into two geographically structured subclades: a western lineage (Western Europe and North Africa) and an eastern lineage (Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia). Both major lineages are represented in South America, suggesting at least two independent colonization events. We propose that the initial divergence between the eastern and western lineages likely began in the early Pleistocene, whereas their present-day distribution may have been shaped by isolation during the Last Glacial Maximum. Highlights We reconstructed the phylogeographic structure of Galba truncatula using COI sequences from Eurasia and South America. Three distinct lineages were identified, including a deeply divergent group occurring sympatrically in Western Europe. The main lineage is split into eastern and western clades, likely diverging in the early Pleistocene. Both clades are represented in South America, indicating at least two independent colonization events. Our findings challenge the hypothesis of a South American origin and highlight the role of glacial history in shaping current diversity.
We present a dataset for rainfall streamflow modeling that is fully spatially resolved with the aim of taking neural network-driven hydrological modeling beyond lumped catchments. To this end, we compiled data covering five river basins in central Europe: upper Danube, Elbe, Oder, Rhine, and Weser. The dataset contains meteorological forcings, as well as ancillary information on soil, rock, land cover, and orography. The data is harmonized to a regular 9km times 9km grid and contains daily values that span from October 1981 to September 2011. We also provide code to further combine our dataset with publicly available river discharge data for end-to-end rainfall streamflow modeling.
Thomas I. Strasser, Edmund Widl, Carlos Ayon Mac Gregor
et al.
The ongoing transformation of the European energy landscape, driven by the integration of renewable energy sources, digital technologies, and decentralized systems, requires a high degree of interoperability across diverse components and systems. Ensuring that these elements can exchange information and operate together reliably is essential for achieving a secure, flexible, and efficient energy supply infrastructure. While several initiatives have contributed to the development of smart grid testing infrastructures, they do not provide a dedicated or comprehensive focus on interoperability testing. A structured and harmonized overview of interoperability testing capabilities across Europe is therefore still missing. This work therefore presents a novel contribution by analyzing the European interoperability testing facility landscape through a structured survey of 30 facilities. It provides a categorized inventory of testing infrastructures, applied methodologies, and reference test cases, and introduces a blueprint for the development of future testing environments. The findings contribute to the establishment of a coordinated European ecosystem for interoperability testing, supporting collaboration, innovation, and alignment with the goals of the energy transition.
Currently available tools for the automated acoustic recognition of European insects in natural soundscapes are limited in scope. Large and ecologically heterogeneous acoustic datasets are currently needed for these algorithms to cross-contextually recognize the subtle and complex acoustic signatures produced by each species, thus making the availability of such datasets a key requisite for their development. Here we present ECOSoundSet (European Cicadidae and Orthoptera Sound dataSet), a dataset containing 10,653 recordings of 200 orthopteran and 24 cicada species (217 and 26 respective taxa when including subspecies) present in North, Central, and temperate Western Europe (Andorra, Belgium, Denmark, mainland France and Corsica, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Switzerland), collected partly through targeted fieldwork in South France and Catalonia and partly through contributions from various European entomologists. The dataset is composed of a combination of coarsely labeled recordings, for which we can only infer the presence, at some point, of their target species (weak labeling), and finely annotated recordings, for which we know the specific time and frequency range of each insect sound present in the recording (strong labeling). We also provide a train/validation/test split of the strongly labeled recordings, with respective approximate proportions of 0.8, 0.1 and 0.1, in order to facilitate their incorporation in the training and evaluation of deep learning algorithms. This dataset could serve as a meaningful complement to recordings already available online for the training of deep learning algorithms for the acoustic classification of orthopterans and cicadas in North, Central, and temperate Western Europe.
Language models have led to a leap forward in web automation. The current web automation approaches take the current web state, history actions, and language instruction as inputs to predict the next action, overlooking the importance of history states. However, the highly verbose nature of web page states can result in long input sequences and sparse information, hampering the effective utilization of history states. In this paper, we propose a novel web history compressor approach to turbocharge web automation using history states. Our approach employs a history compressor module that distills the most task-relevant information from each history state into a fixed-length short representation, mitigating the challenges posed by the highly verbose history states. Experiments are conducted on the Mind2Web and WebLINX datasets to evaluate the effectiveness of our approach. Results show that our approach obtains 1.2-5.4% absolute accuracy improvements compared to the baseline approach without history inputs.
Объектом изучения стал монетный клад, найденный в начале XXI в. в окрестностях Севастополя. К сожалению, значительную его часть разобрали местные жители. В кладе, судя по доступным для изучения монетам, отложились римские провинциальные тетрадрахмы, отчеканенные в III в. в провинциях Сирия и Месопотамия. Самая ранняя выпущена при Каракалле; имеются также тетрадрахмы Диодумениана и Элагабала (по 1 экз.). Большинство же монет (11) отчеканены от имени Филиппа I Араба и Филиппа II. Примечательно, что десять из них выпущены в последний год жизни этих императоров. Семь тетрадрахм отчеканены при Траяне Деции. Позднейшие монеты выпущены от имени Требониана Галла (4 экз.), причем две — в последний год его правления. Монеты, вероятно, поступили в Таврику в качестве добычи, полученной варварами в малоазийском походе вскоре после гибели Требониана Галла
Abstract Anthropogenic activities like trade facilitate increasing rates of biological invasions. Asian long-horned beetle (ALB), which is naturally distributed in eastern Asia (China, Korean peninsula), was introduced via wood packing materials (WPM) used in trade to North America (1996) and Europe (2001). We used 7810 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) derived by a genotype-by-sequencing (GBS) approach to decipher the introduction patterns into Europe. This is applied for the first time on European ALB outbreaks from Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, both from still active and already eradicated infestations. The genome-wide SNPs detected signs of small and highly structured populations within Europe, showing clear founder effects. The very high population differentiation is presumably derived from multiple independent introductions to Europe, which are spatially restricted in mating. By admixture and phylogenetic analyses, some cases of secondary dispersal were observed. Furthermore, some populations suggest admixture, which might have been originated by either multiple introductions from different sources into the new sites or recurrent introductions from an admixed source population. Our results confirmed a complex invasion history of the ALB into Europe and the usability of GBS obtained SNPs in invasion science even without source populations.
Hagit Attiya, Michael A. Bender, Martin Farach-Colton
et al.
A data structure is called history independent if its internal memory representation does not reveal the history of operations applied to it, only its current state. In this paper we study history independence for concurrent data structures, and establish foundational possibility and impossibility results. We show that a large class of concurrent objects cannot be implemented from smaller base objects in a manner that is both wait-free and history independent; but if we settle for either lock-freedom instead of wait-freedom or for a weak notion of history independence, then at least one object in the class, multi-valued single-reader single-writer registers, can be implemented from smaller base objects, binary registers. On the other hand, using large base objects, we give a strong possibility result in the form of a universal construction: an object with $s$ possible states can be implemented in a wait-free, history-independent manner from compare-and-swap base objects that each have $O(s + 2^n)$ possible memory states, where $n$ is the number of processes in the system.
Outdoor air pollution is estimated to cause a huge number of premature deaths worldwide, it catalyses many diseases on a variety of time scales, and it has a detrimental effect on the environment. In light of these impacts it is necessary to obtain a better understanding of the dynamics and statistics of measured air pollution concentrations, including temporal fluctuations of observed concentrations and spatial heterogeneities. Here we present an extensive analysis for measured data from Europe. The observed probability density functions (PDFs) of air pollution concentrations depend very much on the spatial location and on the pollutant substance. We analyse a large number of time series data from 3544 different European monitoring sites and show that the PDFs of nitric oxide ($NO$), nitrogen dioxide ($NO_{2}$) and particulate matter ($PM_{10}$ and $PM_{2.5}$) concentrations generically exhibit heavy tails. These are asymptotically well approximated by $q$-exponential distributions with a given entropic index $q$ and width parameter $λ$. We observe that the power-law parameter $q$ and the width parameter $λ$ vary widely for the different spatial locations. We present the results of our data analysis in the form of a map that shows which parameters $q$ and $λ$ are most relevant in a given region. A variety of interesting spatial patterns is observed that correlate to properties of the geographical region. We also present results on typical time scales associated with the dynamical behaviour.
The European energy system will undergo major transformations in the coming decades to implement mitigation measures and comply with the Paris Agreement. In particular, the share of weather-dependent wind generation will increase significantly in the European energy mix. The most extreme fluctuations of the production at all time scales need to be taken into account in the design of the power system. In particular, extreme long-lasting low wind energy production events constitute a specific challenge, as most flexibility solutions do not apply at time scales beyond a few days. However, the probability and amplitude of such events has to a large extent eluded quantitative study so far due to lack of sufficiently long data. In this letter, using a 1000-year climate simulation, we study rare events of wind energy production that last from a few weeks to a few months over the January-February period, at the scale of a continent (Europe) and a country (France). The results show that the fluctuations of the capacity factor over Europe exhibit nearly Gaussian statistics at all time scales. A similar result holds over France for events longer than about two weeks and return times up to a few decades. In that case, the return time curves follow a universal curve. Furthermore, a simple Gaussian process with the same covariance structure as the data gives good estimates of the amplitude of the most extreme events. This method allows to estimate return times for rare events from shorter but more accurate data sources. We demonstrate this possibility with reanalysis data.
This article examines the importance of graphic representations in the social sciences, and particularly in (medieval) history, taking as its starting point a reflection by {É}tienne-Jules Marey, a physiologist and pioneer of 19th-century photography and cinema. Marey believed that the visual should replace language in many fields. Indeed, the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw an exponential multiplication of visual media, particularly with the advent of digital technology. However, this ''graphics revolution'' has not affected all disciplines equally. Significant differences remain between scientific fields such as astrophysics, anthropology, chemistry and medieval history, despite their shared commitment to describing dynamic processes and changes of state. Yet, while historians have already digitized a large part of the cultural heritage from Antiquity to the 10th-13th centuries, exploration of this corpus using visualizations remains limited. There is therefore untapped potential in this field.This article begins by outlining a typology and quantification of the past and potential roles of visual representations in medieval history. It examines two distinct intellectual approaches: 1. the use of visuals to support a scientific discourse (majority) and 2. the construction of a historical discourse based on observations made from visual figures with the aim of modeling phenomena invisible to the naked eye. The author thus examines the use of ''images'' in medievalism, focusing on the annual volumes of the Soci{é}t{é} des historiens m{é}di{é}vistes de l'enseignement sup{é}rieur (SHMESP), up to 2006. Two other parts of the text look at the still-rare forms of visual representation in medieval history, particularly those with a ''heuristic vocation'', using iconographic objects, parchments, buildings and digitized texts. The article suggests various visualization techniques, such as network analysis, the creation of ''stemmas 2.0'' and interactive chronologies, which could benefit the discipline. These methods could potentially profoundly change our understanding of ancient societies, by showing the dynamic relationships between different aspects of these societies. One of the most important advances expected from these visual methods is a better understanding of the patterns of development in medieval Europe, which varied from region to region. The hypothesis is that the scarcity of heuristic graphics in medieval history stems from the relationship with ancient documents and the historical method based on narration and exemplarity. The article thus questions the value of ''visual modelling'' in medieval history, and highlights the challenges associated with the widespread adoption of this approach in the humanities and social sciences. Finally, the text invites us to reflect on the nature and functioning of heuristic visual devices, by comparing medieval ''images'' and contemporary scientific visuals. In both cases, the point is to materialize the invisible in order to show something that exists beyond the visual. The author suggests that this way of approaching visuals could play a growing role in the decades to come, particularly in the field of data science.
In this paper, we revisit Johanna Drucker's question, "Is there a digital art history?" -- posed exactly a decade ago -- in the light of the emergence of large-scale, transformer-based vision models. While more traditional types of neural networks have long been part of digital art history, and digital humanities projects have recently begun to use transformer models, their epistemic implications and methodological affordances have not yet been systematically analyzed. We focus our analysis on two main aspects that, together, seem to suggest a coming paradigm shift towards a "digital" art history in Drucker's sense. On the one hand, the visual-cultural repertoire newly encoded in large-scale vision models has an outsized effect on digital art history. The inclusion of significant numbers of non-photographic images allows for the extraction and automation of different forms of visual logics. Large-scale vision models have "seen" large parts of the Western visual canon mediated by Net visual culture, and they continuously solidify and concretize this canon through their already widespread application in all aspects of digital life. On the other hand, based on two technical case studies of utilizing a contemporary large-scale visual model to investigate basic questions from the fields of art history and urbanism, we suggest that such systems require a new critical methodology that takes into account the epistemic entanglement of a model and its applications. This new methodology reads its corpora through a neural model's training data, and vice versa: the visual ideologies of research datasets and training datasets become entangled.
Singaporean female employers subject their Filipina domestic workers to strict rules governing their dress and behaviour, in the name of de-sexualising them and maintaining their status as invisible servants at the employers’ beck and call. This paper suggests that the fashionable attire that Filipina domestic workers don for their day off is also a symbol of rebellion and a rejection of their employers’ desires to render them plain and unattractive. In this sense, fashion is more than just a coping strategy: it is a way of expressing a sexual self, a beautiful and feminine self that is not allowed to be exhibited during workdays. Although these fashion makeovers only last less than 24 hours, in their leisure time Filipina domestic workers transgress the weekday restrictions of their employers while marking their own personal self-transformation as ultra-modern, independent women with consumer power and cosmopolitan tastes.
History of Asia, Unlocalized maps (Asian studies only)
Teaching assistants (TAs) are heavily used in computer science courses as a way to handle high enrollment and still being able to offer students individual tutoring and detailed assessments. TAs are themselves students who take on this additional role in parallel with their own studies at the same institution. Previous research has shown that being a TA can be challenging but has mainly been conducted on TAs from a single institution or within a single course. This paper offers a multi-institutional, multi-national perspective of challenges that TAs in computer science face. This has been done by conducting a thematic analysis of 180 reflective essays written by TAs from three institutions across Europe. The thematic analysis resulted in five main challenges: becoming a professional TA, student focused challenges, assessment, defining and using best practice, and threats to best practice. In addition, these challenges were all identified within the essays from all three institutions, indicating that the identified challenges are not particularly context-dependent. Based on these findings, we also outline implications for educators involved in TA training and coordinators of computer science courses with TAs.
Cloud processes are the largest source of uncertainty in quantifying the global temperature response to carbon dioxide rise. Still, the role of precipitation efficiency (PE) -- surface rain per unit column -- integrated condensation -- is yet to be quantified. Here we use 36 limited-domain cloud resolving simulations from the Radiative-Convective Equilibrium Model Intercomparison Project to show that they strongly imply climate warming will result in increases to net precipitation efficiency. We then analyze 35 General Circulation Models (GCMs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 and find that increasing PE enhances tropical circulation slowdown and strengthens eastern equatorial Pacific warming. These changes trigger pan-tropical positive cloud feedback by causing stratiform anvil cloud reduction and stratocumulus suppression, and thereby amplify overall climate sensitivity. Quantitatively, we find that in the 24 of 35 GCMs which match the cloud-resolving models in simulating increasing PE with greenhouse warming, mean Effective Climate Sensitivity is 1 K higher than in GCMs in which PE decreases. The models simulating increasing PE also comprise all estimates of effective climate sensitivity over 4 K. Taken together, these results show that further constraining PE sensitivity to warming will reduce uncertainty over future climate change.