Eucharistic theology of St. Nicolas Cabasilas

Целокупна богословска мисао Николе Хамаета - Кавасиле је литургијска и, самим тим, евхаристијска. То нам сведоче готово сва његова дела, како она важнија и знана, тако и она мање позната. Два, пак, најпознатија и најважнија Кавасилина дела Тумачење Свете Литургије и Живот у Христу можемо посматрати као јединствено двотомно дело евхаристијске анатомије духовног живота (то јест, у Светом Духу), врхунских домета, како у језичком, тако и у богословском погледу. Ако бисмо за први део могли рећи да представља својеврсну Литургијску катихезу, оличену у настојању да се кроз телетургички поредак и литургијску ерминевтику форми и символа успостави дијалог са савременим црквеним, богословским и литургичким питањима Византије 14. века, дотле други део представаља зрео плод евхаристијског опита и промишљања, који нас мистагошки и светотајински низводи великим Оцима Цркве Максиму, Дионисију, Игњатију, возглављујући Свете Тајне у Евхаристији, коју, надаље, разоткрива као Светајну Цркве. Кавасилина евхаристиологија се тако неосетно прелива у извесну светотајинску еклисиологију. Евхаристија се оваплоћује и разоткрива у Цркви, дајући јој идентитет, док се Црква, Кавасилиним речником, пројављује у Тајнама Евхаристије. Следствено томе, и његова антропологија постаје изразито еклисијална и литургијска, светотајинска. Спасења нема без Цркве, то јест Тајни Евхаристије, како он обично каже. Али, опет, и човек као еклисијална личност остаје неповредиви носилац ове евхаристијске заједнице. 5 Другим речима, оно што је Свети Григорије Палама, у истом периоду, изразио у теорији сaзерцања и контемплативног Боговиђења, Кавасила изражава у форми евхаристијског црквословља, духовне и светотајинске праксе живота у Цркви, не подразумевајући под тим напуштање света него, као и у првом случају, његов преображај. Истина је, по сведочењу оца Ј. Мајендорфа, да ову двојицу богословских великана 14. века треба читати заједно.The entire theological thought of Nicolas Hamaetos - Cabasilas is liturgical and, consequently, eucharistic. In witness to this are almost all his works, the most important and known ones, as well as those which are less known. However, the two most famous and the most important works of Cabasilas, Interpretation on the Divine Liturgy and The Life in Christ, can be viewed as a unique two-volume work about the eucharistic anatomy of spiritual life (i.e. in the Holy Spirit), an excellent work linguistically, as well as theologically. If we may say that the first part of it represent a distinctive liturgical catechesis which, through a teleturgical order and liturgical hermeneutic of forms and symbols, it endeavors to establish a dialogue with contemporary ecclesial, theological and liturgical questions of the 14th century Byzantium, hence the second part represents a mature work of eucharistic experience and reflection leading us mystagogically toward the great fathers of the Church, Maximus, Dionysius, and Ignatius, combining thus Holy Mysteries in the Eucharist, which he further reveals as the All-Encompasing Mystery of the Church. The Eucharistic theology of Cabasilas very imperceptibly overflows into a kind of sacramental ecclesiology. The Eucharist is incarnating and revealing in the Church, giving her identity, while the Church, by the Cabasilas’ vocabulary, is manifested in the Mysteries of the Eucharist. Consequently, his anthropology becomes meaningly ecclesiological and liturgical, sacramental. There is no salvation without the Church, i.e. without 7 the Eucharistic Mysteries, as he usually says. But, again, man as an ecclesiological personality, remains inviolable carrier of this Eucharistic community. In other words, what St. Gregory Palamas, at the same period, articulated in his theory of meditation and contemplative knowledge of God, Cabasilas expresses in the form of Eucharistic theology, the spiritual and sacramental practice of the life in the Church, and by that not implying at all abandonment of the world, but, as in the first case, its transfiguration. It is true, according to the testimony of Fr. John Meyendorff, that these two colossal fathers of the 14th century should be read together

Frequency Shifts and Linewidth Changes of Infrared-Active Phonons in Double-Layered High-Temperature Superconductors

We calculate frequency shifts and changes in linewidths of infrared-active phonons within a shell model for the bare phononic system coupled to an electronic double-layer structure with inter-layer charge transfer. The theoretical concept is applied to YBaCuO yielding a good description of experimental results in the normal state as well as at the transition to the superconducting state.Comment: 8 pages, LaTex, SISSA-CM-93-00

Accelerated expansion of NATO into the Balkans as a consequence of Euro-Atlantic Discord

The Balkans in general and post-Yugoslav countries in particular have been under significant geopolitical pressure of the political West since the end of the bipolar global order. From the beginning of the Yugoslav Civil War in 1991, followed by Western recognition of secessionist republics in 1992 and NATO attacks on Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994-1995 and on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, the US, NATO and EU have been actively involved in the Balkan crisis. It was in concordance with the logic of unipolarity, or the New World Order, proclaimed by George W.H. Bush, in which there is “no substitute for American leadership”.The year of 2008 marked the start of profound changes. The changes we are witnessing today are of the magnitude described by Paul Kennedy’s classic The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia crossed Russia’s red lines and exposed the latter’s ambitions to regain the superpower status; China symbolically showed the same ambition with the Olympics in Beijing; the crash of the US real-estate market triggered the global economic crisis; and the NATO-sponsored unilateral declaration of secession by Kosovo Albanians set a precedent and introduced uncertainty in international law and the entire system of United Nations. By the beginning of 2020, many problems had accumulated in the EU – against the background of the ongoing migration crisis, right-wing and nationalist movements became more active, and differences between members increased. Long before COVID-19, Brexit became a serious stress test for the economy and social structure of the European Union. Dramatic changes took place on the other side of the Atlantic too, resulting in the shocking victory of staunch anti-globalist Donald Trump. The rules established during the 1991-2008 unipolarity have thus been challenged. Subsequently, post-Cold War ideological consensus in the West has also been challenged even further by the growth of non-systemic political movements – many of them directed not only against the EU expansion, but also against the EU itself.The significance of all these events for the Balkans is somewhat surprising and paradoxical, as the mainstream forces that have been weakened in the West forcefully push for a stronger Atlantic integration of the remaining Balkan countries. At the height of the pandemic, on 27 March 2020 Northern Macedonia became the 30th member of the Alliance, having previously undergone a humiliating procedure of changing its own name for this purpose. Three years earlier, Montenegro was admitted to NATO, but its population did not have the opportunity to vote on this in a referendum. The negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina on ‘normalisation of relations’, continued pressures on the prerogatives of Republic Srpska, Croatian initiative for a new Intermarium and many other similar efforts are stages in the process of NATOisation of former Yugoslavia. Based on the analysis of a large body of narrative sources and recent literature, the article presents the main trends and possible prospects for developments in the Balkans, depending on the outcome of the ongoing ideological and political struggle within the West

Natural radionuclides in soil profiles surrounding the largest coal-fired power plant in Serbia

This study evaluates the influence of the largest Serbian coal-fired power plant on radionuclide concentrations in soil profiles up to 50 cm in depth. Thirty soil profiles were sampled from the plant surroundings (up to 10 km distance) and analyzed using standard methods for soil physicochemical properties and gamma ray spectrometry for specific activities of natural radionuclides (K-40, Ra-226 and Th-232) Spatial and vertical distribution of radionuclides was determined and analyzed to show the relations between the specific activities in the soil and soil properties and the most influential factors of natural radionuclide variability were identified. The radiological indices for surface soil were calculated and radiological risk assessment was performed. The measured specific activities were similar to values of BACKGROUND: levels for Serbia. The sampling depth did not show any significant influence on specific activities of natural radionuclides. The strongest predictor of specific activities of the investigated radionuclides was soil granulometry. All parameters of radiological risk assessment were below the recommended values and adopted limits. It appears that the coal-fired power plant does not have a significant impact on the spatial and vertical distribution of natural radionuclides in the area of interest, but technologically enhanced natural radioactivity as a consequence of the plant operations was identified within the first 1.5 km from the power plant

All-angle left-handed negative refraction in Kagome and honeycomb lattice photonic crystals

Possibilities of all-angle left-handed negative refraction in 2D honeycomb and Kagome lattices made of dielectric rods in air are discussed for the refractive indices 3.1 and 3.6. In contrast to triangular lattice photonic crystals made of rods in air, both the honeycomb and Kagome lattices show all-angle left-handed negative refraction in the case of the TM2 band for low normalized frequencies. Certain advantages of the honeycomb and Kagome structures over the triangular lattice are emphasized. This specially concerns the honeycomb lattice with its circle-like equifrequency contours where the effective indices are close to -1 for a wide range of incident angles and frequencies.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, pd

Systems of Hess-Appel'rot Type and Zhukovskii Property

We start with a review of a class of systems with invariant relations, so called {\it systems of Hess--Appel'rot type} that generalizes the classical Hess--Appel'rot rigid body case. The systems of Hess-Appel'rot type carry an interesting combination of both integrable and non-integrable properties. Further, following integrable line, we study partial reductions and systems having what we call the {\it Zhukovskii property}: these are Hamiltonian systems with invariant relations, such that partially reduced systems are completely integrable. We prove that the Zhukovskii property is a quite general characteristic of systems of Hess-Appel'rote type. The partial reduction neglects the most interesting and challenging part of the dynamics of the systems of Hess-Appel'rot type - the non-integrable part, some analysis of which may be seen as a reconstruction problem. We show that an integrable system, the magnetic pendulum on the oriented Grassmannian $Gr^+(4,2)$ has natural interpretation within Zhukovskii property and it is equivalent to a partial reduction of certain system of Hess-Appel'rot type. We perform a classical and an algebro-geometric integration of the system, as an example of an isoholomorphic system. The paper presents a lot of examples of systems of Hess-Appel'rot type, giving an additional argument in favor of further study of this class of systems.Comment: 42 page

Anisotropic impurities in anisotropic superconductors

Physical properties of anisotropic superconductors like the critical temperature and others depend sensitively on the electron mean free path. The sensitivity to impurity scattering and the resulting anomalies are considered a characteristic feature of strongly anisotropic pairing. These anomalies are usually analyzed in terms of s-wave impurity scattering which leads to universal pair breaking effects depending on only two scattering parameters, the mean free path and the impurity cross section. We investigate here corrections coming from anisotropies in the scattering cross section, and find not only quantitative but also qualitative deviations from universal s-wave isotropic pairbreaking. The properties we study are the transition temperature, the density of states, quasiparticle bound states at impurities, and pinning of flux lines by impurities.Comment: 19 page

A HIGH RESOLUTION TEMPERATURE CLIMATOLOGY FOR THE GREATER ALPINE REGION (GAR)

The Greater Alpine Region (the GAR) covering the area between 4-19°E and 43-50°N and an altitude range between 0 and more than 4000 m asl. offers a challenging climate worth to be studied in any detail. However, it is surprising that up to now no comprehensive Alpine Temperature Climatology covering the whole region is existing. To overcome this deficiency as a first step we want to produce monthly temperature maps for this region in spatial resolution as high as possible. The period under investigation will be 1961-1990. In this paper we will describe the first steps of our initiative as well as the further plans

A HIGH RESOLUTION TEMPERATURE CLIMATOLOGY FOR THE GREATER ALPINE REGION (GAR)

The Greater Alpine Region (the GAR) covering the area between 4-19°E and 43-50°N and an altitude range between 0 and more than 4000 m asl. offers a challenging climate worth to be studied in any detail. However, it is surprising that up to now no comprehensive Alpine Temperature Climatology covering the whole region is existing. To overcome this deficiency as a first step we want to produce monthly temperature maps for this region in spatial resolution as high as possible. The period under investigation will be 1961-1990. In this paper we will describe the first steps of our initiative as well as the further plans