Korupcija kao poticaj za iseljavanje iz Hrvatske: korelacija između korupcije, “zarobljavanja države” i iseljavanja

This paper represents an initial step in testing the correlation between corruption and state capture on the one side and emigration as a consequence on the other. The study is based on our qualitative and quantitative research conducted in Germany on a sample of 1734 recently emigrated Croatians from 2016 to 2020 and on our new research on corruption and clientelism as a push factor for emigration from Croatia. The primary hypothesis is that migration and corruption trends are correlated and that with the growth of the emigration of young workers from Croatia, the corruption rate in the country increases even more. The second part of the research was conducted on a sample of small, medium and large companies throughout Croatia. Requests to participate were sent to 2500 companies in all Croatian counties, and 178 companies responded. The questions intended to assess so-called “state capture” in Croatia according to a concept developed by Hellman et al. (2000). We measured the capture of the judiciary, the executive and the legislature in the Republic of Croatia and the perception of bribery, corruption and clientelism in companies. Results: nepotism 71%, bribery 66%, rigging public tenders 93% significantly disrupt business. Companies rate the Government, Parliament and the judiciary as the worst public services. As many as 59% of companies believe that the Croatian judiciary is corrupt. Among the measures that companies unconditionally support are the revision of transformation and privatisation (82%) and the examination of the origin of assets (76%). The study results undoubtedly show that Croatia is even more corrupt today (2022) than it was as a non-EU member. The opening of borders has certainly facilitated emigration from Croatia, but this paper shows that emigration would not be so intense if the state and the society were not “captured”.Ovaj rad predstavlja početni korak u ispitivanju korelacije između korupcije i zarobljavanja države s jedne strane i iseljavanja s druge kao posljedice. Studi- ja se temelji na našem kvalitativnom i kvantitativnom istraživanju provedenom u Njemačkoj na uzorku od 1734 nedavno iseljenih Hrvata od 2016. do 2020. te na našem novom istraživanju o korupciji i klijentelizmu kao poticajnom faktoru iseljavanja iz Hrvatske. Primarna hipoteza je da su migracijski i korupcijski trendovi povezani te da s rastom iseljavanja mladih radnika iz Hrvatske, stopa korupcije u zemlji još više raste. Drugi dio istraživanja proveden je na uzorku malih, srednjih i velikih poduzeća diljem Hrvatske. Zahtjevi za sudjelovanje upućeni su na 2500 tvrtki u svim hrvatskim županijama, a odazvalo se 178 tvrtki. Pitanja su bila namijenjena procjeni takozvanog “zarobljavanja države” u Hrvatskoj prema konceptu koji su razvili Hellman et al. (2000). Mjerili smo zarobljenost pravosuđa, izvršne i zakonodavne vlasti u Republici Hrvatskoj te percepciju mita, korupcije i klijentelizma u tvrtkama. Rezultati: Nepotizam 71 %, mito 66 %, namještanje javnih natječaja 93 % značajno remeti poslovanje. Kao najgore javne službe tvrtke ocjenjuju Vladu, Sabor i pravosuđe. Čak 59 % tvrtki smatra da je hrvatsko pravosuđe korumpirano. Među mjerama koje tvrtke bezuvjetno podržavaju su revizija pretvorbe i privatizacije (82 %) te is- pitivanje podrijetla imovine (76 %). Rezultati studije nedvojbeno pokazuju da je Hrvatska danas (2022.) još korumpiranija nego što je bila kao nečlanica EU. Otvaranje granica svakako je pospješilo iseljavanje iz Hrvatske, ali ovaj rad pokazuje da iseljavanje ne bi bilo tako intenzivno da država i društvo nisu bili “zarobljeni”

Regge description of two pseudoscalar meson production in antiproton-proton annihilation

A Regge-inspired model is used to discuss the hard exclusive two-body hadronic reactions (pbar p ----> pi+ pi-, pi0 pi0, K+ K-, Kbar0 K0) for the FAIR facility project at GSI with the Panda detector. The comparison between the differential cross sections predictions and the available data is shown to determine the values of the few parameters of the model.Comment: 9 pages, 13 figure

Communicating research with the public : evaluation of an invasive earthworm education program

Ecologists are increasingly encouraged by funding agencies and professional societies to communicate their research with the public. However, most receive relatively little training in how to do this effectively. Furthermore, evaluation of whether such an investment by ecologists actually achieves conservation objectives is rare. We created an education program, involving print, television, radio, and internet media, to increase awareness about earthworm invasions and to discourage anglers from dumping earthworm bait. Using pre- and post-surveys, we evaluated our program’s success in reaching its target audience and in changing knowledge and behavior. Few participants (4.1%) recalled seeing the program material and knowledge of the fact that earthworms are non-native in Alberta remained low (15.8% before, 15.1% after). Further, after being told about the negative effects of earthworms in forests, 46.7% of the anglers surveyed stated they would not change their bait disposal behavior in the future, with many commenting that they did not believe earthworms could be harmful. These results highlight the importance of evaluating education programs, rather than assuming they are successful. Given many participants' doubts that earthworms have negative effects, both regulations and education may be needed to reduce earthworm introductions

Between Documentary and Fiction: Authenticity and Voyeurism in the Cinema of Ulrich Seidl

The peculiarity of the films by Ulrich Seidl lies in the fact that the Austrian director combines freely the feature and documentary film techniques. This makes classifying his works not only impossible, but also pointless. Nevertheless, Seidl was perceived by critics as a documentary film director until he shot “Dog Days” in the year 2001. This film is regarded as a kind of a turning point in his career, a transition from documentary to fictional filmmaking. In fact it is hard to speak of a fundamental change in this instance. It seems more appropriate to perceive Seidl’s work as the director’s own consistently developed concept of cinema. The category of authenticity in meaning, contained in a definition formulated by the German film theoretician Manfred Hattendorf, proves to be very useful for describing the characteristic features of Seidl’s works. The techniques applied by Seidl in order to achieve the impression of authenticity by the viewer also bring to mind the voyeur’s perspective.

Adaptive Seeding for Gaussian Mixture Models

We present new initialization methods for the expectation-maximization algorithm for multivariate Gaussian mixture models. Our methods are adaptions of the well-known $K$-means++ initialization and the Gonzalez algorithm. Thereby we aim to close the gap between simple random, e.g. uniform, and complex methods, that crucially depend on the right choice of hyperparameters. Our extensive experiments indicate the usefulness of our methods compared to common techniques and methods, which e.g. apply the original $K$-means++ and Gonzalez directly, with respect to artificial as well as real-world data sets.Comment: This is a preprint of a paper that has been accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 20th Pacific Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD) 2016. The final publication is available at link.springer.com (http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-31750-2 24

Two electrons on a hypersphere: a quasi-exactly solvable model

We show that the exact wave function for two electrons, interacting through a Coulomb potential but constrained to remain on the surface of a $\mathcal{D}$-sphere ($\mathcal{D} \ge 1$), is a polynomial in the interelectronic distance $u$ for a countably infinite set of values of the radius $R$. A selection of these radii, and the associated energies, are reported for ground and excited states on the singlet and triplet manifolds. We conclude that the $\mathcal{D}=3$ model bears the greatest similarity to normal physical systems.Comment: 4 pages, 0 figur

Intra-regional Wealth-Deforestation Relationships in the Brazilian Pantanal: An Examination of the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis

This paper provides an examination of the EKC Hypothesis applied to deforestation in the Brazilian Pantanal wetland. It is hypothesized that the unsustainable subdivision of many of the larger ranches due to inheritance may result in greater deforestation pressure than a less equal distribution of land and animal resources. The analysis advances understanding in this area on several dimensions: an intra-regional rather than international approach is examined; deforestation is addressed; and land and cattle wealth serve as proxies for income and wealth among agriculturists, where income measures are notoriously poor indicators of welfare.Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Cluster Evaluation of Density Based Subspace Clustering

Clustering real world data often faced with curse of dimensionality, where real world data often consist of many dimensions. Multidimensional data clustering evaluation can be done through a density-based approach. Density approaches based on the paradigm introduced by DBSCAN clustering. In this approach, density of each object neighbours with MinPoints will be calculated. Cluster change will occur in accordance with changes in density of each object neighbours. The neighbours of each object typically determined using a distance function, for example the Euclidean distance. In this paper SUBCLU, FIRES and INSCY methods will be applied to clustering 6x1595 dimension synthetic datasets. IO Entropy, F1 Measure, coverage, accurate and time consumption used as evaluation performance parameters. Evaluation results showed SUBCLU method requires considerable time to process subspace clustering; however, its value coverage is better. Meanwhile INSCY method is better for accuracy comparing with two other methods, although consequence time calculation was longer.Comment: 6 pages, 15 figure