Political Violence in a Borderland. The Region of Kastoria under Italian Occupation (1941-1943)

The article investigates the history of the small province of Kastoria, Western Macedonia, during the Italian occupation between 1941 and 1943. The province of Kastoria was inhabited by an ethnically mixed population comprising Greeks, Vlachs and Slavophones. During the occupation the Italian authorities promoted the formation of militias of Slavophones to help quell the resistance. In order to explain the formation of these collaborationist units, the articles first explores the history of the region in the 1920ies and 1930ies. Then it focuses on the occupation years until the Slavophone militias were formed in 1943. It concludes that interethnic violence was neither the necessary outcome of preceding etnic cleavages, nor the result of the Italian policy of divide et impera. Interethnic strifes derived rather from socio-economic dynamics that led to the reemergence of preexisting patters of ethnicization of conflis over ressources

Crossing intergroup borders. Forms of Social Brokerage in Italian Occupied Greece (1941-43)

Adopting an approach informed by the sociology of power, this article investigates forms of intermediation between the italian authori-ties and the local population in Axis-occupied Greece during the second World War. As the italians could not rely on large communities of “eth-nic kin” in Greece –like e. g. the Germans in other european countries–, they had to largely resort to locals to govern the country both at gover-nment level and on a local scale. To conceptualize this form of interme-diation, the paper first analyses sociological approaches to occupation and colonialism, outlining the main commonalities and differences bet-ween these two settings from the point of view of the sociology of power. it then proposes to conceptualize the intermediation between occupiers and occupied with the sociological category of brokerage rather than the politically and morally charged term of collaboration. Using a wide array of sources –among others the records of the italian military tribunals in Greece that prosecuted also Greek citizens–, the paper then explores everyday interactions with a micro-analytical approach, outlining main patterns of brokerage and its effects on social stratification

Surveillance for Antimicrobial Resistance in Croatia

This study intended to verify, through microbiological techniques and TEM investigations, the killing of bacterial spores after treatment in steam autoclave, and to propose strictly morphological considerations about the target of this sterilisation process. Autoclave is the most common device for sterilising instruments in order to prevent cross infections in dental offices. The autoclave efficiency has been improved in the last years and part of this improvement is related to both a better and more correct use of the autoclave system and to the technological innovations introduced in the last generation of devices. However, associations as ADA or CDC suggest to regularly verify the process of 'autoclaving' through biological indicators (BI). The most commonly used BI are made of spores strips or suspensions of Bacillus Subtilis (pb 168) and Bacillus Stearothermophilus (ATCC 10149). They visually prove, changing colours on enzymatic base, the death of micro-organism and if the physical parameters, necessary for sterilisation, have been achieved. These two strains of endospore-forming bacteria were processed and prepared following two different techniques: Karnovsky fixed and epon embedded--phosphotungstic acid fixed for direct observation. The kind and the extent of analysed modifications are extremely various: from deep lacerations, which changed the spore structure, to little clefts which let the cytoplasm go out

The Effect of Home-Based Resistance Exercise in Overweight and Obese Adults.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine the changes in muscular strength, physical function and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) with the addition of resistance training to a 12 week behavioral weight loss intervention in overweight and obese adults. METHODS: Forty-eight overweight adults (body mass index = 33.3�3.5 kg/m2) participated in this study. Thirty-eight subjects completed the 12 week behavioral weight loss intervention consisting of weekly behavioral counseling and weekly exercise sessions. Twenty-two subjects completed the 12 week standard behavioral weight loss intervention (SBWI) and sixteen subjects completed the 12 week home-based resistance exercise program (HBRE). The following measurements were performed at baseline and again at week 12: body weight, body mass index, body composition, muscular strength (1 RM chest press and 1 RM leg extension), physical function and HRQOL. RESULTS: A repeated measures ANOVA showed that there were significant decreases from baseline to week 12 for body weight, body mass index, lean body mass, and percent body fat. Measures of physical function showed improvement in step-up time, walk test time, chair rise time, and single leg balance time. There was a significant reduction in absolute upper body muscular strength, with no significant change in absolute lower body muscular strength. There were significant improvements is subscales of HRQOL for role physical, vitality, and general health (p<0.05), with a trend towards improvement in physical functioning (p=0.07). There were no significant differences in the pattern of change in any of the outcome measures between SBWI and HBRE. However, compliance to prescribed resistance exercise was approximately 40% of prescribed exercise days for HBRE. CONCLUSION: Overall, this investigation produced positive changes from baseline to week 12 in the outcome variables of weight, body composition, physical function, and HRQOL. Resistance exercise did not further improve these outcomes compared to what was achieved with a non-resistance exercise behavioral weight loss intervention. This may have been a result of less than optimal compliance to the resistance exercise training aspect of the intervention in HBRE. These results imply that the addition of resistance training to a standard behavioral weight loss program offers no increased benefit in the variables of interest, possibly resulting from low compliance, and future studies should examine strategies to improve the compliance to resistance exercise in overweight adults undertaking a behavioral weight loss intervention

Non-Soviet perspectives on the Great Famine: a comparative analysis of British, Italian, Polish and German sources

The present contribution analyzes systematically diplomatic reports written by German, Italian, British, and Polish representatives in the Soviet Union at the time of the Great Famine. Based on both published documents and unpublished archival sources, the article examines comparatively the perception of the Great Famine in these four countries. After providing a short overview of the diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the four countries at the time of the famine, this article examines how German, Italian, British, and Polish diplomats explained three key issues for understanding the Great Famine: (1) the role of the conflicts between state and peasantry in unleashing the famine; (2) the issue of whether the Soviet government intentionally caused the famine; and (3) the role of intentions in the development of the famine and the relationship between the nationalities policy of the Soviet government and the famine

Data-driven nonlinear aeroelastic models of morphing wings for control

Accurate and efficient aeroelastic models are critically important for enabling the optimization and control of highly flexible aerospace structures, which are expected to become pervasive in future transportation and energy systems. Advanced materials and morphing wing technologies are resulting in next-generation aeroelastic systems that are characterized by highly-coupled and nonlinear interactions between the aerodynamic and structural dynamics. In this work, we leverage emerging data-driven modeling techniques to develop highly accurate and tractable reduced-order aeroelastic models that are valid over a wide range of operating conditions and are suitable for control. In particular, we develop two extensions to the recent dynamic mode decomposition with control (DMDc) algorithm to make it suitable for flexible aeroelastic systems: 1) we introduce a formulation to handle algebraic equations, and 2) we develop an interpolation scheme to smoothly connect several linear DMDc models developed in different operating regimes. Thus, the innovation lies in accurately modeling the nonlinearities of the coupled aerostructural dynamics over multiple operating regimes, not restricting the validity of the model to a narrow region around a linearization point. We demonstrate this approach on a high-fidelity, three-dimensional numerical model of an airborne wind energy (AWE) system, although the methods are generally applicable to any highly coupled aeroelastic system or dynamical system operating over multiple operating regimes. Our proposed modeling framework results in real-time prediction of nonlinear unsteady aeroelastic responses of flexible aerospace structures, and we demonstrate the enhanced model performance for model predictive control. Thus, the proposed architecture may help enable the widespread adoption of next-generation morphing wing technologies