![Main Changes in the Black Sea Trade and Navigation, 12th–15th Centuries](/api/image/getbookcoverimage?id=document_cover-page-image_472000.jpg)
Keywords: Czechoslovakia; Communist rule; Rome; Vatican radio; Czech section; Catholic Church; broadcast changes; prosecution;
In October 1940 Cardinal Domenico Tardini noted an observation from discussions with foreign diplomats regarding the activities of Vatican Radio: Even when broadcasts are blocked in one country, they can be heard in others. It is enough when they reach one place for them to then reach everywhere.
More...Keywords: cold war; detente; Helsinki process
There are several interpretations of détente, but the prevailing idea in mainstream scholarship is that it was the period between 1969 and 1975 when the relaxation of tension in East-West relations produced spectacular results. This included the settlement of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the Soviet Bloc states; U.S.-Soviet agreements on arms limitation and bilateral cooperation; and the convening of a pan-European conference on security and cooperation, eventually culminating in the signing of the Helsinki Final Act.
More...Keywords: Cold war;US-Soviet relashions;Socialist International;Security
This chapter has presented general survey of common perspectives influencing the security thinking and security policies of a number of European Social Democratic parties in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A more comprehensive analysis of developments within Social Democratic security thinking will need to focus on the influence of security policy think tanks and the antinuclear weapons movement of the late 1970s and early1980s, in particular the END (European Nuclear Disarmament) movement.99Also, a comprehensive investigation should focus on the security thinking among liberal conservative parties, not only in Europe but also in the United States.
More...Keywords: Cardinal; Miloslav Vlk; StB; communist regime; dictatorship;
How could it happen that a priest took the role of StB collaborator? Cardinal Miloslav Vlk sees the failure of some clergymen in the lack of personal loyalty and personal relationship to Christ: If you have a “looser” character, you always somehow justify it: this is still acceptable, there could be someone even worse instead of me, and a thousand similar justifications. If you don’t choose God and the will of God radically and you mix it with what is human, it ends up like this. [...] They wanted to save the Church for the Lord, none of them did it as something evil; when making decisions, everyone looked for the positive things that such cooperation might bring, accentuated that too much, and put the negative aside. Those who think soberly see it differently. Those who are not faithful to the path of God may lose their way. [...] Unfortunately, this shows that ordination is not enough and that life based on this sacrament is also necessary.
More...Keywords: Czechoslovakia; SOE; Reinhard Heydrich; assassination; Josef Gabčík; Jan Kubiš; Operation Anthropoid;
On Wednesday, 27 May 1942, at 10:35 AM, Warrant Officers Josef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, sent from the UK, carried out the assassination of the acting Reich Protector, SS-Obergruppenführer and Police General Reinhard Heydrich, who was travelling from his home in Panenské Břežany to Prague. We are at present marking the seven decades that have elapsed since this important historical moment (it really was a moment – about twenty seconds long). What role in the whole operation was played by the Special Operations Executive (SOE)?
More...Keywords: Czechoslovakia; Allen Ginsberg; US; Cuba; Prague; 1965; state security; socialism; King of May; communist party;
The U.S. poet Allen Ginsberg flew to Prague for the first time on 18 February 1965, from Cuba. Despite turning up in Czechoslovakia completely unplanned, he made a very deep impression.
More...Keywords: asexuality
Aseksualność, rozumiana jako orientacja lub tożsamość seksualna, stała się przedmiotem zainteresowania mediów i obiektem badań na początku XXI wieku, kiedy to, początkowo na forach internetowych, a stopniowo także poza Internetem, zaczęła się formować społeczność osób identyfikujących się jako nowa mniejszość seksualna. W 2001 roku powstała największa strona internetowa mająca na celu informowanie o aseksualności – The Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN – Sieć Widzialności i Edukacji Aseksualnej), dostępna obecnie w 13 (poza angielską) wersjach językowych. Zarówno AVEN, jak i inne strony internetowe poświęcone tej tematyce powstawały na początku przede wszystkim w języku angielskim i pozostają zasadniczo osadzone w kontekście kultury północnoamerykańskiej i zachodnioeuropejskiej. Taka sytuacja wynika z tego, że na tych właśnie obszarach organizacje zrzeszające osoby aseksualne są najsilniejsze, co z kolei bezpośrednio wpływa na to, w jaki sposób i na jaki temat prowadzi się badania naukowe nad aseksualnością.
More...Keywords: Centre for Advanced Study Sofia
Articles, pictures and interviews can be reprinted only with the consent of the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia
More...Keywords: Radu Jude; The Dead Nation; Aferim!;
More...Keywords: overweight; obesity; students; prevention; recommendations;
Obesity is a serious worldwide multi-factorial medical condition which is associated with a wide range of debilitating, chronic and life-threatening conditions affecting people of all age groups. The aim of this study is to determine the prevalence of obesity among university students at Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice. Moreover, we aim to explore the differences between male and female and the differences between two university faculties. Finally, we make a comparison of the results obtained with those from other studies and propose the recommendations in prevention of obesity. The research sample consisted of 287 college students of medical and non-medical fields aged range 20–28 years. In our research we used the questionnaire method. Processing the data obtained, we used statistical program Microsoft Excel. Males have higher average value body mass index than females. It has been confirmed that there is no statistical differences between group of students of Faculty of Law and group of students of Faculty of Medicine regarding four classes of body mass index. It has been confirmed that there is statistical difference between group of females and group of males regarding four classes of body mass index. Obesity should become a major target for prevention since its consequences are clearly the development of cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes mellitus, musculoskeletal disorders, gallbladder diseases, respiratory diseases, digestive disorders, certain types of cancer (breast, uterine, colon) and some other diseases. Research on dietary composition, physical activity and gut microflora plays an important role for future prevention and treatment of overweight and obesity.
More...Keywords: water regime; zonal landscape; trafficability; river;
The main goal of the army is defence of the state, the fulfilment of which requires state-of-the-art technologies. Terrain analyses are one of the basics. The landscape affects almost everything and the water is its important element. From the military point of view, watercourses are considered as significant operational obstacles. The characteristics of watercourses, especially the water regime, are dependent on latitude and altitude, but also on the climatic conditions of the areas through which the rivers flow. On the basis of a publicly available database with hydrological data, an analysis was made of the river characteristics in different types of zonal landscapes. The water regime should develop very similarly over the course of the year. This hypothesis was partially verified using the statistical methods. The main goal is approximate prediction of the water regime in different seasons of the given type of zonal landscape.
More...Keywords: 3Dgeovisualization; interaction primitives; virtual reality;
Virtual reality (VR) offers wide range of possibilities regarding not only representation of real world phenomena, but also their dynamic modification and customization. A typical representation of the geographical space is geovisualization, which is widely used in practice, namely in education and teaching, but also in such an area as scientific research for revealing human cognitive processes. Interaction with such VR products consists of many specific types of action, however currently there is no uniform taxonomy for the basic units of interaction. With the growing number of VR products we need to summarize existing taxonomies to better understand and design next generations of geovisualizations. The concept of interaction primitives can offer basic framework for understanding dynamic interaction with virtual cartographic products. In this paper, we outline an issue of interaction primitives with respect to interactive 3D geovisualizations and suggest their specific application in the VR research and development.
More...Keywords: Healthcare; public hospital; service quality; SERVPERF;
Patient's outlook and opinions need to be taken increasingly into consideration, because they are the ones who consume the services and are therefore provided with more valuable information on the manner and quality of the services being offered. For this reason, the assessment of patient opinion on the general aspects of hospital care, collected during hospital stay, could provide an opportunity to identify potential areas where patients are satisfied or dissatisfied, as well as to present a general picture regarding the quality of services provided by the hospital, in order to take appropriate action to improve them. The aim of this paper is to present a set of perceptions about the quality of health services that patients receive during their hospitalization in public hospitals in Albania, focusing particularly on two research questions or topics, general satisfaction with hospital services and the rating of hospital health services though patient perceptions. Methodologically, this paper is initially based on primary research, most notably through the SERVPERF method, where the quality of hospital services is evaluated through measuring 5 component dimensions: Tangible, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, and Empathy. The instrument used was a questionnaire, answered by 115 patients hospitalized at the regional hospital in Durres City, one of the largest hospitals in Albania. The data collected were processed and aggregated to conclude in the overall assessment of the quality of hospital services from the patient point of view with regard to responsiveness (best evaluated), followed by assurance, reliability, empathy and tangible elements.
More...Keywords: Folk architecture; styles influences; Czech history; history of ethnology;
The relation between the folk and the stylish culture was solved by both ethnography (ethnology) and history of arts. Primarily, these issues were monitored on folk art and in relation of folk and style architecture. At the beginning, the ethnography focused on the timbered house that was considered an expression of autochthon folk architecture. In the inter-war period, it was art historians (Z. Wirth, V. Mencl) who devoted themselves to this theme. They overrated the influence of historical styles and considered the rural house to be an unoriginal rusticated form inspired by high culture. The representatives of Czech functionalism and structuralism (K. Šourek, K. Honzík) took a more complex opinion. After the war, the research was aimed at the documentation of surviving masonry buildings with the terrain echoes of styles as well as at the analysis of decorative elements and their authors (V. Bělík, L. Štěpánek, I. Minář). These issues were extensively monitored in Southern Bohemia, where one speaks even about ”Rustic Baroque”. Based on architectural development, source archives materials and planned documentation, the above issues are solved by M. Ebel and J. Škabrada.
More...Keywords: Mongolian Buddhism; Second sTong ‘khor Qutuγtu; Third Dalai Lama; Buddhist conversion narrative; dGe lugs pa; bKa’ brgyud pa
This contribution offers a glimpse into the life of the second sTong ‘khor Qutuɣtu Yon tan rgya mtsho (1556–1587), who arrived in Mongolia in the entourage of the Third Dalai Lama bSod nams rgya mtsho (1543–1588) and stayed on in the country for five years before returning to his native Tibet. Drawing on Mongolian historical sources and his Tibetan rnam thar, I provide, among other aspects, information about his ritual preferences, including the choice of protective deities he propagated among his Mongolian audience. The sources confirm the now familiar picture of the conversion techniques used by the dGe lugs pa in the Mongolian religious field. Furthermore, they point to a rather close connection of the dGe lugs pa with the bKa’ brgyud pa during the early conversion period.
More...Keywords: Colonial Prejudice; Hunting; Woman; Southern/West Cameroon
Colonialism lived a negative indelible scar that pursues the rights of the African girl and woman till date. After the defeat of the Germans in Cameroon in 1916, the British and the French partitioned Cameroon. Britain later further divided its portion into British Southern and British Northern Cameroons and administered them as parts of Nigeria. From then on, women in this territory were marginalized by the British colonial administration. One would have expected a change after independence in 1961. Yet, that was not the case. This paper seeks to uncover some of the injustices perpetrated on the woman in West Cameroon during the British rule (1916-1961) and thereafter (1961-2022) despite her sacrifices. With the use of qualitative method, drown from a combination of primary (oral and archival) and secondary sources, it was observed that colonial tasks assigned to the woman and her treatment by the colonial authorities was not din. Their rights to social security were usurped. Even the breakdown of this territory into many slices sowed the seed of the Anglophone crisis that has lived the woman and the girl child perplex between the gun of government militia and that of secessionists. Today, many of them live with precarious situations as refugees in neighbouring countries or as internally displaced within Cameroon. This paper however recommends an effective decentralization in the absence of a federation as a long lasting solution to the problems of the girl child and mother in West Cameroon.
More...Keywords: emerging technologies; Artificial Intelligence; machine learning; humanoid robots/androids; Multi-Domain Operations;
The international competition on emerging technologies rises a new and very dangerous threat for global and regional security because of the easy access to the procurement of very high-tech and sensitive defence material. The race for who will control some domains from the future operating environment is between the United States, Russia and China, but several other state and non-state actors have reconsidered their high-tech strategies, already. It is about India, Iran, Japan, Israel and the European Union as a whole, as well as transnational terrorist and organised crime organisations or multinational companies. At the same time, the last technological developments have created a huge discrepancy in the Resolution in Military Affairs (RMA), especially because of letting far behind doctrines and the organisation of military structures for combat. This anacronism is evolving with the intent of gradually replacing regular fighters and current formations in the modern battlefield with robots/androids and joint human-machines teams. As a result, it has become imperative to develop new concepts/strategies for future conflicts that brings together all elements of advanced technologies and coordinates their joint actions on any potential adversary, in order to achieve a total and quick victory. This material will analyse the US Army’s concept of Multidimensional Operatios and how it is understood at the Allied level.
More...Keywords: healthcare services; healthy life years; income elasticity; demand; luxury good; necessity good;
The aim of presented research is to analyse, whether healthcare services are luxury or necessity goods, taking into account several differences (income, healthcare’s financing system) between European countries. We have posed the following hypotheses: (H1): the character of healthcare services is affected by the level of national income; (H2): the character of healthcare services is affected by the model of healthcare financing. We have employed data coming from 28 European countries, covering the years 2004-2014. Data were obtained from Eurostat Database and OECD Health Data. Using the LS and WLS methods, we can conclude that: (1) in richer Europeans countries healthcare services are luxury goods; (2) in poorer European countries healthcare services are necessity goods; (3) in countries, where healthcare services are finance based on Beveridge system, healthcare benefits are necessity goods, while (4) in countries, where Bismarck system is employed – healthcare services are luxury goods. We have also found, that both in “poor countries” and “Beveridge countries” subgroup, the reduction of income inequalities, as well as the lowering of the ratio of people at risk of poverty, decrease the level of healthcare spending, while in the subgroup of “rich countries”, as well as in “Bismarck countries” this influence is entirely opposite.
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