Ioannis Zarikos, Nadia Politi, Effrosyni Karakitsou
et al.
This study presents a comprehensive wildfire risk assessment framework for Rhodes Island, Greece, aimed at quantifying the impacts of climate change on hazard levels and vulnerability in a typical Mediterranean environment. The approach integrates Fire Weather Index (FWI) data, detailed fuel-type mapping, and multiple vulnerability indicators covering ecological, socioeconomic, and population factors, enabling spatially explicit estimates of current and future wildfire risk. Historically, Rhodes mostly faces moderate wildfire risk, mainly in central and northeastern regions, with localised areas of higher risk near settlements and key economic sites. Climate forecasts for 2025–2049 predict a notable increase in hazard, with areas experiencing extreme fire weather (FWI > 50) increasing from 15.19% to 66–72%, across all emission scenarios. Ecological vulnerability is particularly alarming, as 93% of the island is already highly susceptible; fire-prone forest and agricultural zones are expected to move into the highest ecological risk categories, especially in the central mountain areas. The devastating 2023 wildfire, which burned over 17,600 hectares, caused more than €5.8 million in direct damages and led to the largest evacuation in the island’s history, closely aligning with high-risk zones modelled in the framework. An important insight is the limited spatial variation in near-future risk between RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5, indicating that significant wildfire intensification is largely unavoidable by mid-century, emphasising the urgent need for quick adaptation and risk mitigation efforts for Mediterranean critical infrastructure and communities.
Studies on magistracies have emerged as a solid and important trend in the scholarship on the Roman Republic over the last quarter of a century, and have enabled important connections between institutional history, prosopography, and the exploration of political practice and culture. There are at least three recent additions to this distinguished body of work. Grégory Ioannidopoulos has written a full-scale treatment of the quaestorship, which appears a mere five years after the monograph on the same topic by F. Pina Polo and A. Díaz Fernández.1 While overlaps in coverage and argument are inevitable, there are also significant differences. Ioannidopoulos does not include a prosopography, but focuses at length on terminological issues. The whole first part is taken up by a discussion of the titulature of quaestors, and the focus then turns to the systematic treatment of the ‘institution’ (the function of the college, the rules on eligibility, the election process, and so forth) and the powers it entailed at Rome and overseas. The outcome is an impressively full and thorough treatment, which warrants as close attention as its predecessor, and will be profitably consulted side by side with it. Its central ambition is to elucidate a number of important issues of public law; the remit of the discussion is wider, though, and encompasses the contribution of the quaestorship to the development of the empire as well as issues of political practice and culture; the treatment of the bond between promagistrates and quaestors, necessitudo (pp. 633–3) is especially rewarding.
Three brilliant recent books get us to think harder about risk in ancient Rome and Roman approaches to risk-taking. They are very different from one another, both in the evidence they cover and the approaches they take, and that in itself reflects the ubiquitous, or indeed proteiform, nature of the subject matter: risk is all around, as we all know.
This is an English (annotated) translation of the German paper by Max Planck (1943) about "The history of the discovery of the physical quantum of action"
SETI is not a usual point of departure for environmental humanities. However, this paper argues that theories originating in this field have direct implications for how we think about viable inhabitation of the Earth. To demonstrate SETI's impact on environmental humanities, this paper introduces Fermi paradox as a speculative tool to probe possible trajectories of planetary history, and especially the "Sustainability Solution" proposed by Jacob Haqq-Misra and Seth Baum. This solution suggests that sustainable coupling between extraterrestrial intelligences and their planetary environments is the major factor in the possibility of their successful detection by remote observation. By positing that exponential growth is not a sustainable development pattern, this solution rules out space-faring civilizations colonizing solar systems or galaxies. This paper elaborates on Haqq-Misra's and Baum's arguments, and discusses speculative implications of the Sustainability Solution, thus rethinking three concepts in environmental humanities: technosphere, planetary history, and sustainability. The paper advocates that (1) technosphere is a transitory layer that shall fold back into biosphere; (2) planetary history must be understood in a generic perspective that abstracts from terrestrial particularities; and (3) sustainability is not sufficient vector of viable human inhabitation of the Earth, suggesting instead habitability and genesity as better candidates.
We present our personal histories with Michael Fisher. We describe how each one of us first came to Cornell University. We also discuss our many subsequent interactions and successful collaborations with him on various physics projects.
A brief history of the development of surface detectors for the study of the high-energy cosmic rays is presented. The paper is based on an invited talk given at UHECR2022 held in LAquila, October 2022. In a complementary talk, P Sokolsky discussed the development of the fluorescence technique for air-shower detection.
Free labour constitutes the largest black hole in ancient Greek economic and social history. The New Institutional Economics approaches that are currently so influential in Greek economic history focus on growth and transaction costs, but have largely ignored labour; it is not accidental that Bresson's monumental synthesis of ancient Greek economies has no chapter devoted to the issue. This is what makes the volume edited by Edmund Stewart, Edward Harris, and David Lewis on skilled labour and professionalism in ancient societies such an important contribution. The thirteen chapters explore three major issues. The first concerns the processes through which the division of labour and specialization created distinctions between unskilled and skilled labour. The second theme focuses on the major advantages that treasured skills offered to those individuals and groups that possessed them, and the ways in which individuals and states recruited and bargained with skilled labourers. The third is the extent to which it is possible to use the concept of professionalization to describe the process by which some ancient occupations came to constitute professions. The volume examines various case studies: while in some instances it is possible to describe such forms of skilled labour as professions (doctors, sculptors, musicians, actors), in other areas (athletes, soldiers) such a label is highly misleading. Particularly valuable in this respect is the exploration of the impact of various factors and processes on the extent of professionalization of different occupations.
Prediction of ``anyons'', often attributed exclusively to Wilczek, came first from Leinaas & Myrheim in 1977, and independently from Goldin, Menikoff, & Sharp in 1980-81. In 2020, experimentalists successfully created anyonic excitations. This paper discusses why the possibility of quantum particles in two-dimensional space with intermediate exchange statistics eluded physicists for so long after bosons and fermions were understood. The history suggests ideas for the preparation of future researchers. I conclude by addressing failures to attribute scientific achievements accurately. Such practices disproportionately hurt women and minorities in physics, and are harmful to science.
Leonidas Moforis, George Kontakiotis, Hammad Tariq Janjuhah
et al.
Field investigation, biostratigraphic, paleoecological, and sedimentary microfacies analyses, as well as diagenetic processes characterization, were carried out in the Epirus region (Western Ionian Basin) to define the depositional environments and further decipher the diagenetic history of the Late Cretaceous–Early Paleocene carbonate succession in western continental Greece. Planktonic foraminiferal biostratigraphy of the studied carbonates revealed that the investigated part of the Gardiki section covers the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K-Pg) transition, partly reflecting the Senonian limestone and calciturbidites formations of the Ionian zone stratigraphy. Litho-and bio-facies analyses allowed for the recognition of three distinct depositional facies: (a) the latest Maastrichtian pelagic biomicrite mudstone with in situ planktonic foraminifera, radiolarians, and filaments, (b) a pelagic biomicrite packstone with abundant planktonic foraminifera at the K-Pg boundary, and (c) an early Paleocene pelagic biomicrite wackestone with veins, micritized radiolarians, and mixed planktonic fauna in terms of in situ and reworked (aberrant or broken) planktonic foraminifera. The documented sedimentary facies characterize a relatively low to medium energy deep environment, representing the transition from the deep basin to the deep shelf and the toe of the slope crossing the K-Pg boundary. Micropaleontological and paleoecological analyses of the samples demonstrate that primary productivity collapse is a key proximate cause of this extinction event. Additional petrographic analyses showed that the petrophysical behavior and reservoir characteristics of the study deposits are controlled by the depositional environment (marine, meteoric, and burial diagenetic) and further influenced by diagenetic processes such as micritization, compaction, cementation, dissolution, and fracturing.
This is the first review of books in Greek history after a year, as the Coronavirus crisis last spring made it impossible to submit a review for the G&R volume of autumn 2020. I apologize to readers and editors for the resulting delay in reviewing two books published in 2018. The multi-volume Lexicon of Greek Personal Names has been a tremendous tool of research that one day could hopefully revolutionize the study of Greek history. The volume under review is the eighth in the series; edited by Jean-Sébastien Balzat, Richard Catling, Édouard Chiricat, and Thomas Corsten, it is devoted to inland Asia Minor, covering Pisidia, Lycaonia, Phrygia, Galatia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, Pontus, and Armenia. The onomastics of these areas are complex owing to the various historical processes in which they were enmeshed: centuries of migration, conquest, and cultural change meant that, in addition to the ‘native’ cultural traditions of inland Asia Minor, the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman empires, as well as migratory movements like that of the Celts, left a deep onomastic impact. The issue is further complicated because the majority of the evidence comes from the Roman Imperial period, making diachronic comparison more difficult. This excellent volume offers a new documentary basis for studying social, cultural, and economic processes of change in these important areas of the ancient world: the full collection of the evidence makes it easier to classify names into different linguistic groups, an issue that has bedevilled the study of onomastics in Asia Minor for a very long time; it will also be possible to study regional divergences in the onomastics of different areas.
In this paper we describe the history of the LHCb experiment over the last three decades, and its remarkable successes and achievements. LHCb was conceived primarily as a b-physics experiment, dedicated to CP violation studies and measurements of very rare b decays, however the tremendous potential for c-physics was also clear. At first data taking, the versatility of the experiment as a general-purpose detector in the forward region also became evident, with measurements achievable such as electroweak physics, jets and new particle searches in open states. These were facilitated by the excellent capability of the detector to identify muons and to reconstruct decay vertices close to the primary pp interaction region. By the end of the LHC Run 2 in 2018, before the accelerator paused for its second long shut down, LHCb had measured the CKM quark mixing matrix elements and CP violation parameters to world-leading precision in the heavy-quark systems. The experiment had also measured many rare decays of b and c quark mesons and baryons to below their Standard Model expectations, some down to branching ratios of order 10-9. In addition, world knowledge of b and c spectroscopy had improved significantly through discoveries of many new resonances already anticipated in the quark model, and also adding new exotic four and five quark states.
Cookie banners are devices implemented by websites to allow users to manage their privacy settings with respect to the use of cookies. They are part of a user's daily web browsing experience since legislation in Europe requires websites to show such notices. In this paper, we carry out a large-scale study of more than 17,000 websites including more than 7,500 cookie banners in Greece and the UK to determine compliance and tracking transparency levels. Our analysis shows that although more than 60% of websites store third-party cookies in both countries, only less than 50% show a cookie notice and hence a substantial proportion do not comply with the law even at the very basic level. We find only a small proportion of the surveyed websites providing a direct opt-out option, with an overwhelming majority either nudging users towards privacy-intrusive choices or making cookie rejection much harder than consent. Our results differ significantly in some cases from previous smaller-scale studies and hence underline the importance of large-scale studies for a better understanding of the big picture in cookie practices.
D. S. Kostopoulos, A. Sevim Erol, A. Y. Yavuz
et al.
<p>We describe here five new bovid crania from the
Çorakyerler fossil site (Tüglu Formation, Çankırı Basin,
north-central Anatolia, Turkey), the fauna of which is dated by magneto- and
biostratigraphy to the late Miocene, around the Vallesian–Turolian boundary.
The material is assigned to a new bovid taxon of medium-to-large size,
<i>Gangraia anatolica</i> gen. and sp. nov., characterized by horn cores that are long, keelless, compressed, obliquely
inserted on the frontals, transversally ridged, moderately
diverging from each other, slightly twisted homonymously, and sigmoidally curved in
lateral view with long, fairly straight tips. The horn core features, along
with the presence of a single large sinus occupying the pedicle and the base
of the horn core, a strong cranial flexion, a short braincase, the
presence of a distinct dorsal parietal boss, wide-apart temporal crests,
and a widened anteriorly basioccipital, indicate a mixture of caprine-like and
alcelaphine-like features that relate <i>Gangraia anatolica</i> gen. and sp. nov. to the
Alcelaphini–Caprini–Hippotragini clade.</p>
This section shows an overview of a recent development of the studies on great space weather events in history. Its discussion starts from the Carrington event and compare its intensity with the extreme storms within the coverage of the regular magnetic measurements. Extending its analyses back beyond their onset, this section shows several case studies of extreme storms with sunspot records in the telescopic observations and candidate auroral records in historical records. Before the onset of telescopic observations, this section shows the chronological coverages of the records of unaided-eye sunspot and candidate aurorae and several case studies on their basis.
Interest in Brownian motion was shared by different communities: this phenomenon was first observed by the botanist Robert Brown in 1827, then theorised by physicists in the 1900s, and eventually modelled by mathematicians from the 1920s, while still evolving as a physical theory. Consequently, Brownian motion now refers to the natural phenomenon but also to the theories accounting for it. There is no published work telling its entire history from its discovery until today, but rather partial histories either from 1827 to Perrin's experiments in the late 1900s, from a physicist's point of view; or from the 1920s from a mathematician's point of view. In this article, we tackle the period straddling the two `half-histories' just mentioned, in order to highlight continuity, to investigate the domain-shift from physics to mathematics, and to survey the enhancements of later physical theories. We study the works of Einstein, Smoluchowski, Langevin, Wiener, Ornstein and Uhlenbeck from 1905 to 1934 as well as experimental results, using the concept of Brownian velocity as a leading thread. We show how Brownian motion became a research topic for the mathematician Wiener in the 1920s, why his model was an idealization of physical experiments, what Ornstein and Uhlenbeck added to Einstein's results, and how Wiener, Ornstein and Uhlenbeck developed in parallel contradictory theories concerning Brownian velocity.
Mediterranean Early Iron Age chronology was mainly constructed by means of Greek Protogeometric and Geometric ceramic wares, which are widely used for chronological correlations with the Aegean. However, Greek Early Iron Age chronology that is exclusively based on historical evidence in the eastern Mediterranean as well as in the contexts of Greek colonisation in Sicily has not yet been tested by extended series of radiocarbon dates from well-dated stratified contexts in the Aegean. Due to the high chronological resolution that is only achievable by (metric-scale) stratigraphic 14C-age-depth modelling, the analysis of 21 14C-AMS dates on stratified animal bones from Sindos (northern Greece) shows results that immediately challenge the conventional Greek chronology. Based on pottery-style comparisons with other sites, the new dates for Sindos not only indicate a generally higher Aegean Early Iron Age chronology, but also imply the need for a revised understanding of the Greek periodisation system that will foreseeably have a major impact on our understanding of Greek and Mediterranean history.
Longus promotes an αἰπόλος (‘goatherd’) to bear the privileged name Daphnis, transferring his canonical role of βουκόλος (‘cowherd’) to other herdsmen—easily done, since all play the syrinx. But Longus’ Daphnis does not inherit the Theocritean αἰπόλος’ gift of mellifluous song: whereas Chloe does sing sola, Longus’ males, including Daphnis, do not, except the cowherd in the μῦθος of I.27 and Philetas at II.3.2—instead they tell μῦθοι. Perhaps Longus envisages his own, often poetic, prose achieving what song had achieved for Polyphemus, and eliminates male solo song as part of his programme of refashioning Sappho and Theocritus in prose. Of the three characters to whom (from a Daphnis) the status βουκόλος is transferred Dorcon twice saves Daphnis, but his understanding of eros does not advance the couple’s; Philetas’ does, and his wise interventions are important; Lampis’ impact, however, like Dorcon’s, is ephemeral, his person unpleasant. Despite Philetas’ positive role, Dorcon’s and Lampis’ actions hint that Theocritus was wrong to lavish so much sympathy on βουκόλοι, who in Longus can be boisterous and self-assertive, and that a society in which cowherds had free rein would be rougher than one in which standards of behaviour were set by goatherds and shepherds.
The old historical wounds of Europe are century-old wounds like the “Northern Ireland conflict”, the Russia–Finland conflict, the Poland–Germany–Russia conflict, the long-lasting conflict between Ottomans, Hungary, and later, the Habsburg and the Russian Empire, but also the thousand-year-old religious borderline between Eastern and Western culture. Moreover, the first half of the 20th century in (the Christian) Europe is characterized by wars and genocide in a terrible, hitherto unknown dimension. About 10 million people died in World War I and about 50 million in World War II. Countries all over Europe like Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine were involved in these war-related events. Many unhealed mental wounds are still deeply rooted in the hearts of individuals and peoples. Unhealed wounds also remained concerning the genocides of the 20th century, like the Armenian genocide, the Holodomor in Ukraine, the Holocaust against Jews and Gypsies, the genocide against Tatars in the Crimean region. Finally, let us remember the million fold wounds that arose from the communist dictatorships. After World War II, we have to mention the wounds inflicted by many additional European conflicts like the ones between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Georgia and Russia, Ukraine and Russia, the Bosnia–Croatia–Serbia conflict regarding the dissolution of the old state of Yugoslavia, the conflict between Greeks and Turks regarding Northern Cyprus, the Moldova–Russia conflict regarding Transdniestria etc.
“The need for healing and reconciliation in our broken world cannot be overemphasized. The pain and burden of memories of ongoing, recent and past conflicts haunt and hamper normal life and progress. The process for ‘Healing of Memories’ is designed to advocate for, develop and promote healing of memories and other healing and reconciliation processes in Churches and faith communities, so as to strengthen their role as channels of hope, healing and reconciliation in our world today.”
This was part of the final message of the WCC “European Ecumenical and Interreligious Consultation on ´Healing of Memories’ on 4th-6th May 2010”, in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. On the one hand, the Bible leads us to peace and reconciliation, like in Prov 16:7 in the Old Testament: “When a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him”, or in the new Testament, when in Cor 5:18, Paul says “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” Moreover, the European Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican, and Catholic churches avowed in the Final Document of the Second European Ecumenical Assembly in Graz 1997: “The church communities must confess that throughout history they often showed themselves as a bad example for the Christian message of reconciliation and ´religions and churches became themselves part of the problem´.” Therefore, the European churches signed in their common Charta Oecumenica in chapter 3: “In the spirit of the Gospel, we must reappraise together the history of the Christian churches, which has been marked by many beneficial experiences, but also by schisms, hostilities and even armed conflicts.” There have been several church initiatives of reconciliation in Europe, like the Stuttgart Church Confession of Guilt, the reconciliation process between the Polish Ecumenical Council and the Evangelical Church in Germany, the Czechian and German church reconciliation process, the reconciliation process between the Church of Norway and the Sámi, the reconciliation process in Northern Ireland, the process called „Reconciliation in Europe between the Churches in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and Germany”, the Anglican–Orthodox Dialog, the Porvoo process between the Anglican and the Lutheran Churches, the Pro Oriente reconciliation process regarding the schism of the “Unions of Brest and Transylvania”. The “Healing of Memories” (HoM) process – originally developed in South Africa as a counselling methodology for the healing of personal emotional wounds after the apartheid – was further developed in South Eastern Europe on behalf of CPCE, CEC, and WCC into a process between cultures and religions. Healing of Memories between cultures and religions is a methodology to help overcome frozen history and “hi-stories” by putting emphasis on voices that were not heard, ignored or not acknowledged so far. According to its methodology, HoM is a “process of the generations” that implicates the three steps of “walking together through history”, “sharing the pain of others”, and “preparing the future together”. The HoM process between cultures and religions adds to the above “three historical steps” the previous step: “Interdisciplinary researching of the history of the nations, cultures and religions and/or communities.” For these HoM processes, special training courses have been developed in Romania in order to train facilitators, which have been recognised and adopted in the meantime as master courses at the universities of Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár, Alba Iulia/Gyulafehérvár, and Sibiu/Nagyszeben.