Competing ideologies of Russia's civil society

Many analysts and public opinion makers in the West conflate the notions of Russia’s non-systemic liberal opposition and the country’s civil society. Indeed, despite garnering the support of a minority of Russia’s population, non-systemic liberal opposition represents a well-organized civic group with a clearly articulated agenda and the ability to take action. Yet, does Russia’s civil society end there? A closer look at the country’s politics shows that Russia has a substantial conservative-traditionalist faction that has also developed agenda for action and formulated opinions. This group is anti-liberal rather than illiberal ideologically and pro-strong state/pro a geopolitically independent Russia rather than pro-Kremlin politically. The interaction between liberal and conservative civic groups represents the battle of meanings, ideas, and ethics, and ultimately determines the future trajectory of Russia’s evolution. Thus, the analysis of Russia’s civil society must represent a rather more nuanced picture than a mere study of the liberal non-systemic opposition. This article will examine the complexity of Russia’s civil society scene with reference to the interplay between the liberal opposition and conservative majority factions. The paper will argue that such complexity stems from ideological value pluralism that falls far beyond the boundaries of the liberal consensus, often skewing our understanding of political practice in Russia

Casimir repulsion in moving media

Casimir-Lifshitz interaction emerging from relative movement of layers in stratified dielectric media (e.g., non-uniformly moving fluids) is considered. It is shown that such movement may result in a repulsive Casimir-Lifshitz force exerted on the layers, with the simplest possible structure consisting of three adjacent layers of the same dielectric medium, where the middle one is stationary and the other two are sliding along a direction parallel to the interfaces of the layers.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figure

On the role of spatial dispersion in boundary conditions for perfect non-specular reflection

Exact solutions for perfect anomalous reflection through metasurfaces have been recently developed in terms of both ideal nondispersive impenetrable boundary conditions (BCs) and penetrable BCs on top of a grounded slab. The second model is more accurate for the description of metasurfaces realized in PCB technology. Focusing on this particular class of metasurfaces, this paper investigates the connection between the two solutions, with the aim to clarify the role of spatial dispersion. It is shown that the two solutions can be related through an equivalent transmission network where transmission lines with different wavenumbers are associated to the incident and reflected waves. Finally, numerical analyses are carried out to assess the impact of neglecting spatial dispersion, as it is done in designs based on a linear phase gradient of the local reflection coefficient

Langevin Thermostat for Rigid Body Dynamics

We present a new method for isothermal rigid body simulations using the quaternion representation and Langevin dynamics. It can be combined with the traditional Langevin or gradient (Brownian) dynamics for the translational degrees of freedom to correctly sample the NVT distribution in a simulation of rigid molecules. We propose simple, quasi-symplectic second-order numerical integrators and test their performance on the TIP4P model of water. We also investigate the optimal choice of thermostat parameters.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures, 1 tabl

Analiza stabilnosti superluminalne prijenosne linije temeljene na metamaterijalu s neidalnim ne- Fosterovim negativnim kondenzatorima

Recently, it has been shown possible to go around basic dispersion energy constraints that limit bandwidth of every passive metamaterial and construct a broadband active Epsilon-Near-Zero superluminal transmission line. A basic building block of this unusual transmission line is an active ‘tank circuit’ that contains both conventional (positive) capacitor and non-Foster negative capacitor. Published theoretical studies revealed that such a ‘tank circuit’ is stable if an overall capacitance is positive. These studies assumed lossless host transmission line periodically loaded with ideal dispersionless negative capacitors. However, a possible influence of the imperfections of a realistic negative capacitor (its dispersion and loss/gain) on the stability has not been investigated so far. Here, stability analysis of realistic superluminal transmission line is performed in Laplace domain. The obtained results are in a good agreement with those obtained in recent experiments on active transmission line developed at University of Zagreb.Nedavno je pokazano da je moguće zaobići temeljne energetskodisperzijske uvjete koji ograničavaju širinu frekvencijskog pojasa svakog pasivnog metamaterijala. Također je pokazano da je moguće konstruirati širokopojasnu aktivnu superluminalnu prijenosnu liniju s približno nultom permitivnosti (ENZ). Osnovni gradivni element ove neuobičajne linije je aktivni “titrajni krug” koji se sastoji od klasičnog (pozitivnog) i ne-Fosterovog negativnog kondenzatora. Do sada objavljene teorijske studije pokazale su da je ovakav “titrajni krug” stabilan ako je ekvivalentni ukupni kapacitet pozitivan. Međutim, stvarni (neidalni) negativni kondenzator uvijek ima gubitke (ili pojačanje) i disperziju. Utjecaj ovih nesavršenosti na stabilnost superluminalne linije je nejasan i do sada nije istraživan. Stoga je u ovome članku načinjena analiza stabilnosti neidealne superluminalne prijenosne u Laplaceovoj domeni. Rezultati analize su u vrlo dobrom suglasju s nedavno objavljenim rezultatima mjerenja na aktivnoj superluminalnoj prijenosnoj liniji koja je razvijena na Sveučilištu u Zagrebu