Abstract
When environmental activists in Serbia encountered decarbonization in form of predatory hydropower, they launched a massive campaign against an actual degrowth that plagued their ...depopulating lands. This bridging of environmental and reproductive concerns helped to create a broad ecopopulist alliance that saved the local rivers, and yet it sneaked in another quasi-universalist subject—urban, middle-aged, and male—who assumed a central role in the countryside eco-revival. As they “bring life back” to the “dying” Balkan Mountains, I argue, revivers also erase the ways of life that still thrive in their aging abodes. Such duality reveals emptiness as a problem space that is necropolitical inasmuch as it is vitalist. To direct the further flow of life means to decide who can survive—and who is anyhow destined to expire.
We review the status of, and prospects for, real-time data processing for collider experiments in experimental High Energy Physics. We discuss the historical evolution of data rates and volumes in ...the field and place them in the context of data in other scientific domains and commercial applications. We review the requirements for real-time processing of these data, and the constraints they impose on the computing architectures used for such processing. We describe the evolution of real-time processing over the past decades with a particular focus on the Large Hadron Collider experiments and their planned upgrades over the next decade. We then discuss how the scientific trends in the field and commercial trends in computing architectures may influence real-time processing over the coming decades.
We discuss Hubble tension—the disagreement in two major cosmological measurements of the expansion rate of the universe (the Hubble constant), and the foremost development in cosmology over the past ...several years. We describe the measurements of the Hubble constant from the cosmic microwave background anisotropies and those that use the distance ladder and type Ia supernovae. We briefly review the status of theoretical explanations for the Hubble tension. We finally discuss why the arguably simplest explanation—sample variance in local measurements—cannot explain the Hubble tension.
PurposeThis paper uses the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to explain entrepreneurial intentions (EIs) among students from different South-East (SE) European countries, considering various personal ...and situational variables. The authors examine how the regional cultural context affects individual perceptions and beliefs about entrepreneurship, which in turn form the basis of the cognitive antecedents of the TPB model.Design/methodology/approachUsing a sample of 850 respondents, the authors estimate a two-level model, addressing the issue of endogeneity in the relationship between attitudes and beliefs and the respondents' EI. Specifically, the authors focus on heterogeneity across nations in attitudes toward entrepreneurial behavior (ATEB), subjective norms (SN) and perceived behavioral control (PBC).FindingsThe results show that the perceived behavioral control and the attitude toward entrepreneurial behavior are the main determinants of Balkan students' EI. The authors find that the role of SE European culture in entrepreneurship intentions does not follow the Western pattern. In this particular regional environment dominated by collectivist culture, students' EIs are influenced more by cooperation, caring for others and other non-monetary benefits.Research limitations/implicationsLike any study, this study has limitations. First, all the variables were measured using a single questionnaire. Although common method bias was shown not to be an issue, in future research different variables should be measured with different methods. For instance, using the items by Liñán and Chen (2009) which were developed in the United States of America, to measure SE European students' entrepreneurial perceived behavioral control might ignore some requisite resources or abilities typical for SE European students, such as personal relational network (similar to the notion of guanxi in China (see, e.g. Hwang et al., 2009). Second, Busenitz et al. (2000) indicate that cross-national differences in entrepreneurship are best explained by a broader set of institutions, i.e. educational and governmental support agencies. In general, the empirical evidence on the relationship between national culture and entrepreneurial behavior is mixed and this is generally agreed that an important issue that needs to be considered is the interactions between cultural values, social institutions, industry characteristics and outcomes such as entrepreneurship (Hayton et al., 2002). In the future, similar studies could include respondents with a larger dispersion of prior education, age, and human, social and financial capital.Practical implicationsThe existence of support received in the family environment and the lack of individualistic and competitive aspirations create a more favorable environment for a young person to become entrepreneur. This must be taken seriously into account by educators and policy makers aiming at encouraging entrepreneurship, because in the societies studied here the motivation of prospective entrepreneurs depends on totally different drivers than those usually encountered in the Western world. Furthermore, from a gender perspective, the authors' study suggests that in societies with stronger family ties and more gender discrimination, an individual's closer social environment may not create the appropriate context for women to decide to become entrepreneurs.Social implicationsA strong hierarchical culture in a society goes against the intention of becoming an entrepreneur. That is, when people accept that social mobility is low and, thus, reversing people's relative positions in the society is unlikely, people are less prone to becoming entrepreneurs. In Western societies, where collectivism is low, the contrary holds. In the societies considered here, where family and social links are strong, entrepreneurship is considered to be a rather safer option, which is encouraged by non-individualistic values and is negatively associated with aggressive competitiveness. In those societies, formal institutions such as the government and the educational sector could play an important role to support prospective female entrepreneurs (Borges et al., 2021).Originality/valueThe motivation of prospective entrepreneurs in SE European countries depends on totally different drivers than those usually encountered in the Western world.
Abstract The collapse of institutional and state structures in Bosnia and Herzegovina has rendered the populace unprotected in financial, social, and legal terms and pushed it, under the aegis of ...local ethnocracies, into personal or local ethnic networks. The text examines identity issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the particular emphasis on ethnic divisions and the lack of civic values.
Examination of tourist behaviour during and after the crisis is of great importance for understanding and coping with the harmful effects of the crisis. The study aims to discover the impact of ...perceived risks, health status, and travel experience on proximal travel intentions during the Covid-19 outbreak. Perceived risks that coronavirus brought reshaped the collective awareness and altered typical travel habits. The research involved 1109 respondents from four Balkan countries who participated in an online survey at the first peak of the pandemic (April 2020). According to the results, perceived risk negatively influenced travel intentions. The study presumed the positive influence of previous travel experience on travel intentions and indicated its negative impact on risk perception. Results showed that subjective health condition positively affected travel intention and had no significant effect on risk perception. The profound uncertainty that the tourism sector experienced is primarily reflected in an immense impact on the travel possibilities and changes in tourist preferences. This study offers an insight into peoples' travel intentions influenced by a global health crisis, reflecting specific risk negation when it comes to the timing of after-crisis travel plans.
Diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) of particles at collisionless shocks is the major accepted paradigm about the origin of cosmic rays (CRs). As a theory, it was developed during the late 1970s in ...the so-called test-particle case. If one considers the influence of CR particles at shock structure, then we are talking about nonlinear DSA. We use semi-analytical Blasi’s model of nonlinear DSA to obtain non-thermal spectra of both protons and electrons, starting from their quasi-thermal spectra for which we assumed the
κ
-distribution, a commonly observed distribution in out-of-equilibrium space plasmas. We treated more carefully than in the previous work the jump conditions at the subshock and included electron heating, resonant and, additionally, non-resonant magnetic field instabilities produced by CRs in the precursor. Also, corrections for escaping flux of protons and synchrotron losses of electrons have been made.
Patents are used as a reliable indicator for the study of technological evolution in specific fields. Patent citation networks can further enlighten the relation between individual classes of patents ...that are used to categorize innovation. The tightening or loosening of bonds between a pair of them can point to a changing landscape in either of the two, or in both. It does, however, clearly signal one or more changes. Thus, it is important to point out pairs of classes that undergo processes of this kind, and try to provide plausible explanations for them. We use patent citation data from the European Patent Office to create the time series of all IPC classes. We then examine all pairs of patent classes for correlations, and discuss those which show the greatest increase, or decrease, over time. We identify classes which show both a significant decrease in their correlation with one class and simultaneously an increase with another. We further proceed to check the cross correlations of all pairs in order to identify pairs which show a time lag in following one another. By implementing specific criteria for the selection of the most promising pairs we distinguish some cases which exhibit strong correlation values with time lags of several months (3–10), and for which we can provide a plausible explanation.
In this review, starting with the essence of phase singularities (Sect.
1
) and continuing with the methods for the generation of singular beams of different kind (Sect.
2
), we concentrate on ...optical vortices (OVs), which are the only known purely two-dimensional dark beams carrying point phase singularities. We describe some methods to determine their topological charges (Sect.
3
) and how to convert them, e.g., in the linear process of diffraction from a hologram with an encoded OV, as well as after nonlinear processes of cascaded four-wave mixing and of the non-perturbative process of high harmonic generation (Sect.
5
). In Sect.
6
, we describe a method based on singular optics for the generation of long-range Bessel-Gaussian beams. Particular attention is paid to the suppression of the interaction of pairs of OVs and to the generation of large arrays of hundreds of OVs on a common background beam in square-shaped and hexagonal OV lattices (Sect.
7
). The rich possibilities for the controllable generation of ordered focal structures of bright peaks and the possible additional structuring of each peak with other singular beams are illustrated, as well as the mixing of such OV arrays. New experimental results, devoted to novel possibilities for generating rich structures composed by bright peaks in the artificial far field from OV lattices with high TCs, are also presented for the first time in this paper and discussed in detail in (Sect.
8
). In the last section, we describe a new method for the generation of arrays of long-range Bessel–Gaussian beams (Sects.
9
). Without any claim for completeness or comprehensiveness, we believe that this overview will present to reader at least some of the beauty of experimental singular optics in space and could serve as a valuable initial step in order to dig deeper into the field.
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