Verses of Faith and Devotion. Seeing, Reading, and Touching Monumental Crucifixes with Inscriptions (12th–13th century)

The paper discusses a group of monumental crucifixes from the 13th-century East Adriatic and Italy, pained or executed in low relief, that display a verse inscriptions on the transverse limb of the cross. The main scope of the paper is to examine the provenance of the text inscribed in order to yield clearer insight into their function, use and original location in the church interiors. The paper specifically aims at analyzing three monumental crucifixes from the East-Adriatic city of Zadar which, although have already been the subject of a respectable number of studies, have not attracted attention as objects of devotion. My interest, therefore, is turned towards verse inscription as their distinctive feature and, as I shall argue, a key aspect in understanding their function. Examining the nature of the text displayed, iconography and materiality of these crucifixes, my main argument is to demonstrate how these objects provoked a multi-faced response from their audience, since were experienced by seeing, hearing and touching respectively

UV active plasmons in alkali and alkaline earth intercalated graphene

The interband pi and pi+sigma plasmons in pristine graphene and the Dirac plasmon in doped graphene are not applicable, since they are broad or weak, and weakly couple to an external longitudinal or electromagnetic probe. Therefore, the ab initio Density Function Theory is used to demonstrate that the chemical doping of the graphene by the alkali or alkaline earth atoms dramatically changes the poor graphene excitation spectrum in the ultra-violet frequency range (4 - 10 eV). Four prominent modes are detected. Two of them are the intra-layer plasmons with the square-root dispersion, characteristic for the two-dimensional modes. The remaining two are the inter-layer plasmons, very strong in the long-wavelength limit but damped for larger wave-vectors. The optical absorption calculations show that the inter-layer plasmons are both optically active, which makes these materials suitable for small organic molecule sensing. This is particularly intriguing because the optically active two-dimensional plasmons have not been detected in other materials

Intending is Believing: A Defense of Strong Cognitivism

We argue that intentions are beliefs—beliefs that are held in light of, and made rational by, practical reasoning. To intend to do something is neither more nor less than to believe, on the basis of one’s practical reasoning, that one will do it. The identification of the mental state of intention with the mental state of belief is what we call strong cognitivism about intentions. It is a strong form of cognitivism because we identify intentions with beliefs, rather than maintaining that beliefs are entailed by intentions or are components of them

National vs. international journals: views of medical professionals in Croatia

Scholarly journals, especially in non-English-speaking countries, may perform very different functions depending on whether they are published for national or international audiences. Four hundred and sixty-six academic physicians and non-academic general practitioners in Croatia were surveyed on their knowledge about two Croatian medical journals: Liječnički vjesnik (published in Croatian) and Croatian Medical Journal (published in English). The physicians were also surveyed about the importance of all national and international journals published in Croatia, and the types of articles they thought should be published in these journals. More respondents rated national (n = 329, 72.6%) than international journals (n = 275, 63.5%, P < 0.001, Wilcoxon test) as very important for the medical profession. On the other hand, publishing in international journals was more often rated as important than publishing in national journals (n = 184, 42.5% vs. n = 125, 27.8%; P < 0.001, Wilcoxon test). Guidelines for clinical practice were rated as the most important publication item in national journals, and original scientific articles in international journals

Quality of time spent matters!

The paper discusses an innovative approach towards addressing and measuring quality of living environments. It introduces the model which talks about quality of living environments via quality of time spent in user’s daily routine. It examines relationships between characteristic profiles, their activities and the environments they are involved in, analysing three key parameters: time balance, financial balance and time-quality balance. Time balance shows how comfortable the time is offered to the user by his/her living environments. Economic balance is a category which represents user’s incomes and expenses for necessary and optional activities. It represents a financial frame within which the user is flexible to be able to perform its activity in a certain environment. Time-quality balance is the final measure of quality provided with the proposed model. It classifies time spent regarding the activity and the environment in which the activity is taking place as well or badly spent time. Time-quality is expressed by time-quality coefficient KTQ. The model shows whether a segment of population can live in certain area and how comfortable

Journal editors and academic medicine

Twenty years ago, the Croatian Medical Journal (CMJ) published a series of articles about academic medicine and the ways to revitalize it in the context of contemporary challenges in medicine (1,2). The articles were from all around the world (Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Republic of Macedonia, Malawi, Poland, Russia, Slovenia, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and USA) and discussed the future of academic medicine as the intersection of research, professional practice, and education (1,2). Figure 1 shows the cover page of the CMJ from 2004, when the FORUM series on academic medicine was started

Practical Value of User‐Centred Spatial Statistics for Responsive Urban Planning

This chapter addresses spatial statistics via an alternative perspective, focusing on evidence‐based people‐spatial relationships and related measures, quantifications and qualifications, and by this, it provides rather specific spatial information and spatial statistics about urban environments. It is based on time quality assessment (TQA), a time‐people‐place‐oriented approach for the analysis and simulation of the quality of living environments, backgrounded with the method of behaviour mapping. It shows that the quality of the time spent on a certain activity in a certain place indicates the quality of the living environment. It also shows that the quality of the time spent depends on what a person can afford, and it provides an evaluation of the quality of living environments with a measure of good/bad time. The practical value is in the provision of empirical knowledge to support planning guidance based on user‐centred small‐scale spatial statistics, which is able to inform top‐down and bottom‐up decision‐making processes for people‐friendly living environments

Least squares fitting the three-parameter inverse Weibull density

The inverse Weibull model was developed by Erto [10]. In practice, the unknown parameters of the appropriate inverse Weibull density are not known and must be estimated from a random sample. Estimation of its parameters has been approached in the literature by various techniques, because a standard maximum likelihood estimate does not exist. To estimate the unknown parameters of the three-parameter inverse Weibull density we will use a combination of nonparametric and parametric methods. The idea consists of using two steps: in the first step we calculate an initial nonparametric density estimate which needs to be as good as possible, and in the second step we apply the nonlinear least squares method to estimate the unknown parameters. As a main result, a theorem on the existence of the least squares estimate is obtained, as well as its generalization in the $l_p$ norm ($1leq p<infty$). Some simulations are given to show that our approach is satisfactory if the initial density is of good enough quality

Utjecaj kvalitete pripreme površine osnovnog materijala na otpornost naštrcanog sloja radijalnom i aksijalnom smiku

For the purpose of this experiment, respective surfaces of 42CrMo4 base material specimens were prepared for spraying using different technologies: turning, cutting of radial notches and cutting of axial notches. Gas aided thermal spraying of wire material was performed, laying a first layer of a nickel aluminum compound and a final Chrome Molybdenum Steel coating. Metallographic structure analysis and hardness measurement suggested that surface preparation quality does not affect hardness of the sprayed layer, but its thickness. Using a suitable tool, specimens were examined on radial and axial shear and these results were compared to previous ones. It could be determined that the notch size significantly affects both the thickness of the intermediate layer and its even distribution around the edge of the notch. A smaller radial notch allows for a higher torque momentum at radial shear, whilst best overall properties are achieved with axial notches subjected to radial loads. Testing axial shear, the cutting power proved dependant of the depth of radial notches, where low depth was inherent with low shear resistance.Na ispitnim uzorcima osnovnog materijala 42CrMo4 izvršene su različite pripreme površine: tokarenjem, narezivanjem aksijalnih i narezivanjem radijalnih utora. Izvršeno je plinsko naštrcavanje žicom: međusloj nikl- aruminid i završnog sloja Cr-Mo čelik. Metalografskim pretragama strukture i kontrolom tvrdoća utvrđeno je da kvaliteta pripreme površine ne utječe značajno na tvrdoću ali utječe na postignutu debljinu sloja. Odgovarajućim alatom izvršena su ispitivanja uzoraka na radijalni i na aksijalni smik. Međusobnom usporedbom rezultata ovih mjerenja s rezultatima kontrole tvrdoće i metalografskim pretragama strukture dolazi se do zaključka da veličina utora značajno djeluje na debljinu podsloja a pogotovo na njegovu ravnomjerno naštrcavanje po obodu utora. Sitniji radijalni utor doprinosi povećanju momenta zakretanja pri radijalnom smiku, ali se najbolja svojstva postižu u uvjetima aksijalnih utora radijalno opterećenih. Pri ispitivanju na aksijalni smik sila odreza ovisi o dubini radijalnih utora pri čemu mala dubina utora daje i malu otpornost na smik