Winds of Change 1989: A Perspective from an Office for Religious Affairs Somewhere in Eastern Europe

Under communism, in what used to be Eastern Europe, religion was neither outlawed nor favorably regarded either. In some cases, church and state had been at latent or open war as in Poland or in the former Yugoslavia. There, church-state relations radically changed over the course of more than five decades, which is the theme of this article. Confrontations began in 1945 and spanned to 1953. Accommodations from 1966 to 1980 permitted a relatively peaceful coexistence between church and state. Thereafter the public religions and ethnic mobilizations of the 1980s escalated into the Balkan wars of the 1990s. It was during this era when the major faiths merged with the ethnic warring factions. As the Cold War ended, and communist regimes collapsed across East Central Europe, Yugoslav post-Titoist elites in the two westernmost Yugoslav republics presented reform-minded positions and images. Revising restrictive policies toward religion seemed appropriate for a start. Slovenia, soon followed by Croatia, symbolically promoted Christmas greetings and programs on state TV. In Croatia, regional and local offices for religious affairs were urged from higher state and party authorities to make religious organizations the ailing regime’s friends

Hundred Years Since Yugoslavia’s Birth: Lesson on Nationalism, Balkanization, and Religion in Europe’s Periphery

In 2018, historians were marking the one hundredth anniversary of the foundation of a nation-state in southeastern Europe remembered as Yugoslavia–the country of Southern Slavs. The multi-ethnic nation used to connect several European ethnic groups of the shared Slavonic ancestry yet were divided by three major religions and mutually exclusive ethnic nationalist ideologies. The Yugoslav national project lasted seven decades under various regime types in a sensitive balance often disturbed by wars. In the 20th century alone, the territory of the former Yugoslavia saw six major wars, three cycles of ethnic cleansing and genocide, and about fifteen various states and regimes, half of which have by now collapsed and disappeared from the map. In a wider historical perspective, this Europe’s periphery has left the lesson which world history curricula ought not to overlook: how the Southern Slavs united, rose out of obscurity and then ruined themselves. In addition to that lesson, another may be developing as the world order seems to be changing. The world today is not the same as that which was formed at the end of the Cold War. Since the state arrangements in the ex-Yugoslav space have always changed and restructured in response to major changes in international order, it is likely that the Balkans will go to war again, possibly, again, in the broader context of major regional or even world wars

Serbian Jerusalem: Religious Nationalism, Globalization and the Invention of a Holy Land in Europe\u27s Periphery, 1985-2017

According to beliefs of religious nationalism, a nation is a community of ancestors and descendants, dead and living, past and present. As such, it incorporates within its territory all past and present markers of nationhood, notably historic religious monuments as the physical evidence of the perennial existence of the religious and ethnic community that is, in the nationalist imagination, of the nation. Thus, the history of the shrines and monuments, as told in religious tales and preserved in the rituals, is the history of the nation. In many parts of the world, contesting claims to consecrated territories clash. The struggles evolve into holy wars between good and evil and angels and demons. The enmity cemented by religion does not end until demythologization of history or until one side or the other has been destroyed. At the same time, in a globalized world, narratives of ethnic and religious nationalisms are no longer isolated from each other as they used to be. In recent decades, they have observed each other and borrowed and influenced one another. The case under consideration comparatively observes the conflicts in Kosovo in the Balkan and in Israel-Palestine in order to critically examine the nationalist and religious politics behind the nationalist discourses on history and religion, the past and the present, and the sacred and the secular

Generalized Quon Statistics

Generalized quons interpolating between Bose, Fermi, para-Bose, para-Fermi, and anyonic statistics are proposed. They follow from the R-matrix approach to deformed associative algebras. It is proved that generalized quons have the same main properties as quons. A new result for the number operator is presented and some physical features of generalized quons are discussed in the limit $|q_{ij}^{2}| \rightarrow 1$.Comment: 13+i pages, Latex, preprint RBI-TH-9

Power, Corruption and Dissent: Varieties of Contemporary Croatian Political Catholicism

Two decades after the major Balkan war in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina 1991-1995, the dynamic of feuding ethnic nationalisms has shifted from the initially strongest Serbian to the currently dominant Croatian nationalism. The two strongest nationalisms of the (post)Yugoslav region are comparable to each other in many respects including the ethno-confessional nationalistic ideology amalgamated with religion and crucial roles for the churches as national institutions allied with nationalistic parties. The relative advantage for Croatian Catholicism is the outcome of several factors such as the following:..

Characterization and diversity of major histocompatibility complex class II DQB gene in brown bear (Ursus arctos)

Glavni sustav tkivne podudarnosti (engl. major histocompatibility complex, MHC) ključan je u pokretanju obrambenih mehanizama kralježnjaka, a smatra se da su neki od lokusa MHC među najpolimorfnijim u kralježnjaka. Raznolikost gena MHC utječe na sposobnost populacije da se obrani od različitih patogena. Varijabilnost lokusa MHC održava ravnotežna selekcija, koju karakterizira veći broj raznolikih alela u populaciji. Geni MHC pokazali su se kao dobar marker za proučavanje adaptivne evolucije vrsta i populacija. Mrki medvjed (Ursus arctos) pripada redu Carnivora (zvijeri), porodici Ursidae (medvjedi) i rodu Ursus. Ovo je prvo ovakvo istraživanje u Hrvatskoj. Kod 30 uzoraka tkiva medvjeda pronađeno je šest alela lokusa DQB. Od njih su tri alela bila nova: RH102_7_M13F, Urth DQB*0401var i Urth DQB*0401vv. Ostali pronađeni aleli poznati su iz prethodnih istraživanja mrkih medvjeda. U osam jedinki sam identificirala po tri alela DQB lokusa, dok sam u 22 jedinke identificirala po dva alela, što ukazuje na to da je lokus DQB dupliciran barem u dijelu jedinki populacije mrkog medvjeda iz Hrvatske.Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) plays a major role in initiating defense mechanisms of vertebrates. It is believed that some of the MHC loci are the most polymorphic invertebrates. The variability of MHC genes affects population`s ability to defend itself fromvarious pathogens.The variability of the MHC loci is maintained by the balancing selection, which is characterized by a larger number of divergent alleles in the population. MHC genes proved to be a good marker for the study of adaptive evolution of the species and populations. Brown bear (Ursus arctos) belongs to the order Carnivora (carnivores), family Ursidae (bears) and gene Ursus. From 30 samples of bear tissue I found six aleles of the gene DQB. Three alele were new: RH102_7_M13F, Urth DQB*0401var and Urth DQB*0401vv. Other three were known from the previous research. In eight individuals I identified three alleles of DQB locus, while in 22 individuals I identified two alleles, indicating that the DQB locus was duplicated at least in the part of the brown bear populations from Croatia

AGRARIAN REGIONS IN SERBIA AS NATURAL FOUNDATION AND MARKET CHANCE IN CIRCUMSTANCES OF TRANSITION

Process of transition movements in Republic of Sebia is in progress. Transition movements have not bypassed agrarian sector. Market agriculture should gain significance along this process. On this occasion we would like to emphasis two elements which affect development of Market Agriculture. Those are regionalization and specialization of agriculture. In study about agrarian regions in conditions of transition two charts are given, that pinpoint the essence of natural foundation and market opportunities in transition circumstances. Study of agro-identities starts with introspection of each reagion in respect of its natural values: plain (Vojvodina), hilly ( Sumadija), mountain-hilly (Pester). Therefore, plain region is specialized for production of stable livestocking (cattle and hogs), mountain-hilly is based on pasture (sheep and cattle) etc. Regional disposition of some types of livestocking is limited by natural conditions and structure of agricultural area. Essentially, the level of livestock farming has been determined by economic progress of the region and Market development. The certain other regions are specialized in viticulture, fruit-growing or vegetable growing (vicinity of big cities). In time of transition, i.e. transferring to Market Agriculture, issue of regional identity has become more actual than ever. This could be best illustrated on the example of forming specialized cooperatives, agricultural markets and companies (plum and apple production and other agricultural cropping) spread throughout particular areas of Serbia.Agrarian regions, Regionalization, Specialization, Agribusiness, Community/Rural/Urban Development, International Development,

The Competitiveness of Exports from Manufacturing Industries in Croatia and Slovenia to the EU-15 Market: A Dynamic Panel Analysis

It is often stated that the growth prospects of nations are closely related to patterns of competitiveness exercised by their firms and industries in the international market. Building on foundations of endogenous growth and new trade theories academics and policy-makers postulate that quality-driven competitiveness bears higher growth potential than the ability to compete in terms of prices. The transition of Central and Eastern European Countries has been characterised by movement from the latter towards the former pattern of competitiveness. This process was facilitated by the transfer of knowledge and skills through the outsourcing of production from their most important trading partners, the West European members of the European Union (EU-15 countries), which paved the way for the development of intra-industry trade. This paper explores the competitiveness of manufacturing industries from Croatia and Slovenia in the EU-15 market. Using dynamic panel analysis we find that between 2002 and 2007 producers from the two countries followed different patterns of competitiveness. While in Slovenia the quality of exports is the main determinant of EU-15 market share, the competitiveness of Croatian producers still depends on their labour costs. We also find a strong impact of intra-industry trade on the competiveness of industries from the two countries in the EU-15 market

Developing Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) Curves From Satellite-Based Precipitation: Methodology and Evaluation

Given the continuous advancement in the retrieval of precipitation from satellites, it is important to develop methods that incorporate satellite-based precipitation data sets in the design and planning of infrastructure. This is because in many regions around the world, in situ rainfall observations are sparse and have insufficient record length. A handful of studies examined the use of satellite-based precipitation to develop intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curves; however, they have mostly focused on small spatial domains and relied on combining satellite-based with ground-based precipitation data sets. In this study, we explore this issue by providing a methodological framework with the potential to be applied in ungauged regions. This framework is based on accounting for the characteristics of satellite-based precipitation products, namely, adjustment of bias and transformation of areal to point rainfall. The latter method is based on previous studies on the reverse transformation (point to areal) commonly used to obtain catchment-scale IDF curves. The paper proceeds by applying this framework to develop IDF curves over the contiguous United States (CONUS); the data set used is Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks – Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR). IDFs are then evaluated against National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Atlas 14 to provide a quantitative estimate of their accuracy. Results show that median errors are in the range of (17–22%), (6–12%), and (3–8%) for one-day, two-day and three-day IDFs, respectively, and return periods in the range (2–100) years. Furthermore, a considerable percentage of satellite-based IDFs lie within the confidence interval of NOAA Atlas 14

Toward optimal feature selection using ranking methods and classification algorithms

We presented a comparison between several feature ranking methods used on two real datasets. We considered six ranking methods that can be divided into two broad categories: statistical and entropy-based. Four supervised learning algorithms are adopted to build models, namely, IB1, Naive Bayes, C4.5 decision tree and the RBF network. We showed that the selection of ranking methods could be important for classification accuracy. In our experiments, ranking methods with different supervised learning algorithms give quite different results for balanced accuracy. Our cases confirm that, in order to be sure that a subset of features giving the highest accuracy has been selected, the use of many different indices is recommended