Discovery of Radio Emission from the Quasar SDSS J1536+0441, a Candidate Binary Black-Hole System

The radio-quiet quasar SDSS J1536+0441 shows two broad-line emission systems that Boroson & Lauer interpret as a candidate binary black-hole system with a separation of 0.1 pc (0.02 mas). From new VLA imaging at 8.5 GHz, two faint sources, separated by 0.97 arcsec (5.1 kpc), have been discovered within the quasar's optical localization region. Each radio source is unresolved, with a diameter of less than 0.37 arcsec (1.9 kpc). A double radio structure is seen in some other radio-quiet quasars, and the double may be energized here by the candidate 0.1-pc binary black-hole system. Alternatively, the radio emission may arise from a binary system of quasars with a projected separation of 5.1 kpc, and the two quasars may produce the two observed broad-line emission systems. Binary active galactic nuclei with a kpc scale separation are known from radio and X-ray observations, and a few such system are expected in the Boroson & Lauer sample based on the observed clustering of quasars down to the 10 kpc scale. Future observations designed to distinguish between the 0.1 pc and 5 kpc scales for the binary system are suggested.Comment: 5 pages; 1 figure; emulateapj.cls; to appear in ApJ

Uptake of Radionuclides by Bryophytes in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone

The “Chernobyl nuclear disaster” released huge amounts of radionuclides, which are still detectable in plants and sediments today. Bryophytes (mosses) are primitive land plants lacking roots and protective cuticles and therefore readily accumulate multiple contaminants, including metals and radionuclides. This study quantifies 137Cs and 241Am in moss samples from the cooling pond of the power plant, the surrounding woodland and the city of Prypiat. Activity concentrations of up to 297 Bq/g (137Cs) and 0.43 Bq/g (241Am) were found. 137Cs contents were significantly higher at the cooling pond, where 241Am was not detectable. Distance to the damaged reactor, amount of original fallout, presence of vascular tissue in the stem or taxonomy were of little importance. Mosses seem to absorb radionuclides rather indiscriminately, if available. More than 30 years after the disaster, 137Cs was washed out from the very top layer of the soil, where it is no more accessible for rootless mosses but possibly for higher plants. On the other hand, 137Cs still remains solved and accessible in the cooling pond. However, 241Am remained adsorbed to the topsoil, thus accessible to terrestrial mosses, but precipitated in the sapropel of the cooling pond

Infrared Spectroscopy of U Equulei's Warm Circumstellar Gas

Medium and high resolution spectroscopy of U Equulei from 1 to 4 microns during 1997-2003 has revealed information about its unusual circumstellar envelope, observed previously at optical and radio wavelengths. Strong absorption bands of H2O and of CO dominate the 1-4um spectrum. The gas has a mean temperature of 600 K and 12C/13C =< 10. The CO 2-0 line profiles and velocities imply no net ejection or infall and indicate either rapid radial gas motions being seen along a narrow continuum beam, or absorption by orbiting gas that is nearly coincident with a highly extended continuum source. The gas could be located in a disk-like structure. The observed high column densities of warm CO and H2 normally would be associated with sufficient dust to completely obscure the star at optical wavelengths. The observations thus indicate either a highly abnormal gas-to-dust ratio, consistent with the earlier optical observation of abundant refractory metal oxides in the circumstellar gas, or peculiar geometry and/or illumination.Comment: 21 pages incl. 8 postscript figures and 1 table; typos correcte

Joseph Kuhn in the clutches of OZNA

The author devoted this article to Josip Kuhn’s life story. Joseph Kuhn was a Swiss citizen, who lived in Razvanje in the years 1920/1921. After his failure as a wood merchant, he made quite a fortune in the 1930s with poultry breeding, pig farming, and other agricultural activities. In May 1945 he was arrested by OZNA and sent to a 13-months brutal arrest, for he was supposedly a Gestapo collaborator. In January 1947, after being found not guilty, he moved to Switzerland. He also took written statements on killings at St. Areh on Pohorje. In 1948, both testimonies were published in the book Schicksal über uns

The world turned on its head : was WWI really the beginning of the end of empires?

Published: 5 January 2019The Great War brought the end of some empires, while others expanded on the ruins of those that lost. Viewing WWI as the end of imperialism is too Europe-centric a concept and needs to be amended. In many historiographical circles, there was an accepted consensus, which treated WWI as the turning point that lead to the decline of great empires. This is true especially for the watershed year of 1917 when the first (Russian) empire crumbled; first with the February and later with the October revolution, which was, in fact, a coup d’état. Yet viewing WWI as the end of imperialism is too Europe-centric a concept and needs to be amended

The Yugoslav Socialist nation : idea and realization (1952-1958)

This book focuses on the Yugoslav nation building project in the 1950s. The author argues that after World War Two, the Yugoslav Communist, in compliance with Marxist-Leninist though, tried to build a Yugoslav socialist nation. This became visible especially after the Tito-Stalin split in 1948 when the Cominform countries sought to harm Yugoslavia by instigating internal national frictions. This pushed the Communist Party of Yugoslavia to speed up the project inherent in the thesis of "the merging of nations" by trying to abolish national conflicts and create a Yugoslav socialist nation. This process can be seen in several different fields: the creation of the Serbo-Croatian standard language in 1954, the attempts to define Yugoslav culture and by bringing a "Yugoslav" category into the national census of 1953. In addition, Yugoslavism was promoted in schools, literature and popular culture. With the constitutional reform of 1953, the Party downgraded the republics' role, which was accentuated by the new commune economic system of 1956. The Party also used other methods, like rewriting history, reshaping memory, building Yugoslav institutions, etc. All of this was necessary to fit Edvard Kardelj's definition of nation. Kardelj proceeded from Stalin's definition of a nation, adding social division of labor as an additional criterion. Through careful research of stenographical records of the Yugoslav and Slovene Communist Party and of printed media, the author argues that Socialist Yugoslavism had a clear national connotation and that Slovene Communists started to oppose this project by the late 1950s.Published version of MA thesis from University of Ljubljana, 201

The hidden documents of Ivan Pucelj

Published online: 21 July 2017The article presents five discovered documents that were hidden by Ivan Pucelj among the records of the Kmetijska družba (Agricultural Society) in Ljubljana. The documents were created during the Second World War and are of a significantly political nature. Based on an analysis of the documents, it is possible to deduce that Pucelj did not entirely withdraw from politics after leaving the Consulta in September 1941. He is also likely to have had a confidant in the higher positions of the Slovene People's Party

The Yugoslav national question and economic reforms in the second half of the 1960s : underdevelopment, integration and the division of the Labor’s surplus

Članek se osredotoča na jugoslovanske ekonomske reforme v drugi polovici šestdesetih let 20. stoletja s posebnim poudarkom na reševanju problema nerazvitosti, gospodarske integracije in delitve presežka dela (profita), s čimer je Zveza komunistov Jugoslavije želela rešiti tudi nacionalno vprašanje. Po začetnih uspehih ekonomske reforme (1965) je končni neuspeh jugoslovanske komuniste silil v drastično decentralizacijo in nove reforme, ki bi privedle do enotnega jugoslovanskega trga. Reforme so bile predmet razprav v zvezni Komisiji za mednacionalne in medrepubliške odnose, kjer so se dogovarjali o investicijah, delovanju Fonda za nerazvite regije, razporeditvi kapitala ter obrisih enotnega jugoslovanskega trga in razreševanju sprotnih težav, ki so se pojavljale na poti do tega cilja.The article is focusing on the Yugoslav reform in the second half of the 1960s with a particular emphasis on the solutions for the problems of underdevelopment, economic integration, and the division of the labor’s surplus (profit). With these solutions, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia wanted to resolve the national question as well. After the initial success of the economic reform (1965), the final failure of the latter forced the Yugoslav communists into radical decentralization and new reforms, that would have led to a unified Yugoslav market. The reforms were debated in the federal Commission for Interethnic and Interrepublican Relations, where they discussed investments, the activities of the Fund for the underdeveloped regions, allocation of the capital and the beginning of the integrated Yugoslav market and the solving of the contemporary problems that occurred on the way to reaching the latter goal

Words instruct, illustrations lead : the national question after the october revolution

Avtor se v članku osredotoča na razvoj marksistično-le-ninističnih pogledov na fenomen nacionalizma in razvoj narodov.Zametke ideje o socialistični narodnosti je tako moč najti že predprvo svetovno vojno. Po oktobrski revoluciji je bila stalinističnapraksa reševanja nacionalnega vprašanja zaznamovana s procesomkorenizacije, ko so boljševiki postavili narodnosti v Sovjetski zvezina prvo mesto z željo pospešitve prehoda v socializem. To politikoso med drugo svetovno vojno in nemudoma po njej uveljavljalitudi jugoslovanski komunisti.The paper focuses on the development of Marxist-Leninist views on the phenomenon of nationalism and on the evolution of nations. The germs of the idea of a socialist nationality can be found already before WWI. After the October Revolution, the Stalinist practice of solving the national question was marked by the process of Korenizatsiya: the Bolsheviks emphasised the nationalities in the Soviet Union, hoping that this would accelerate the transition to socialism. This policy was likewise adopted in Yugoslavia during and immediately after WWII