Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands

Bloodlands or a Bloody Nose to History? Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands Long ago, the study of the Soviet and Nazi enterprises turned into a cottage industry, and numerous monographs, articles, memoirs, diaries and collections of documents continue to emerge. With so much written, separately and in tandem, one wonders if there is a room for yet another study of the so-called totalitarian twins. Certainly so, argues Timothy Snyder. Snyder takes to task the entire body of literature that preceded h..

Sensation and perception - theoretical aspects od unconscious perception

Podaci koji s jedne strane upućuju na slučajeve nesvjesnog registriranja podražaja iz vanjskog svijeta (poslijehipnotičko ili poslijeanestetičko zapamćivanje), a s druge strane na slučajeve lažnog opažanja, tj. stvaranja lažnog svjesnog dojma da je nešto zamijećeno (halucinacije), upućuju na postojanje dvostruke disocijacije između senzacije definirane kao objektivne registracije vanjskih podražaja i percepcije - svjesne predodžbe stvarnih opažaja ili njihovih iznutra stvorenih nadomjestaka. Središnji problem koji proizlazi iz predložene razdvojbe dotiče se pamćenja. Kakva je razlika između sječanja s vanjskim odnosno unutarnjim izvorištem, kako su razlike senzacije i percepcije tumačene u prošlosti, koliko je od spremljenog materijala dostupno, koliko nesvjesno uskladišteni elementi mogu utjecati na naše ponašanje, samo su neki od filozofskih i neuropsihologijskih aspekata vezanih uz nesvjesnu registraciju o kojima se u članku raspravlja

Efficient LZ78 factorization of grammar compressed text

We present an efficient algorithm for computing the LZ78 factorization of a text, where the text is represented as a straight line program (SLP), which is a context free grammar in the Chomsky normal form that generates a single string. Given an SLP of size $n$ representing a text $S$ of length $N$, our algorithm computes the LZ78 factorization of $T$ in $O(n\sqrt{N}+m\log N)$ time and $O(n\sqrt{N}+m)$ space, where $m$ is the number of resulting LZ78 factors. We also show how to improve the algorithm so that the $n\sqrt{N}$ term in the time and space complexities becomes either $nL$, where $L$ is the length of the longest LZ78 factor, or $(N - \alpha)$ where $\alpha \geq 0$ is a quantity which depends on the amount of redundancy that the SLP captures with respect to substrings of $S$ of a certain length. Since $m = O(N/\log_\sigma N)$ where $\sigma$ is the alphabet size, the latter is asymptotically at least as fast as a linear time algorithm which runs on the uncompressed string when $\sigma$ is constant, and can be more efficient when the text is compressible, i.e. when $m$ and $n$ are small.Comment: SPIRE 201

Chikungunya: A Potentially Emerging Epidemic?

Chikungunya virus is a mosquito-borne emerging pathogen that has a major health impact in humans and causes fever disease, headache, rash, nausea, vomiting, myalgia, and arthralgia. Indigenous to tropical Africa, recent large outbreaks have been reported in parts of South East Asia and several of its neighboring islands in 2005–07 and in Europe in 2007. Furthermore, positive cases have been confirmed in the United States in travelers returning from known outbreak areas. Currently, there is no vaccine or antiviral treatment. With the threat of an emerging global pandemic, the peculiar problems associated with the more immediate and seasonal epidemics warrant the development of an effective vaccine. In this review, we summarize the evidence supporting these concepts

Defying De-Stalinization: Albania’s 1956

Drawing on recently declassified Albanian, Soviet, East German, and Western archival sources, as well as a rich historiography on Nikita Khrushchev\u27s secret speech and the Hungarian revolution of 1956, this article investigates the little-known events of 1956 in Albania. Rejecting de-Stalinization, the Albanian Communist leader Enver Hoxha was able to vindicate his position against Yugoslavia\u27s brand of socialism abroad, fortify his rule at home, and claim more aid from Moscow, Beijing, and the Soviet bloc. This article discusses the Tirana Party Conference of April 1956, treating the Albanian Party of Labor (the Communist party) as an “information society.” The article assesses deliberations over security and ideology at the highest levels and demonstrates how tiny Albania came to embody, in exaggerated form, both the promises and the perils of socialist exchange, in addition to mirroring the profound inconsistencies of Khrushchev\u27s de-Stalinization campaign