Σχέσεις Κύπρου και ΕΣΣΔ 1960-1965, η στρατηγική προσέγγισης της Μόσχας, από την κυβέρνηση Μακαρίου, υπό το πρίσμα της θεωρίας ανάλυσης εξωτερικής πολιτικής

Η ανάλυση της εξωτερικής πολιτικής της πρώιμης Κυπριακής Δημοκρατίας και της στάσης διεθνών παραγόντων όπως της ΕΣΣΔ είναι απαραίτητη για την κατανόηση της εξέλιξης του κυπριακού ζητήματος. Το θεωρητικό υπόβαθρο για την μελέτη της εξωτερικής πολιτικής έχει ως βάση το υπόδειγμα του ορθολογικού δρώντα (Rational Actor Model). Σύμφωνα με το υπόδειγμα αυτό, οι βασικός δρώντες της εξωτερικής πολιτικής είναι τα κράτη και πιο συγκεκριμένα η κυβέρνηση ενός κράτους, η οποία λειτουργεί ορθολογικά ως μία ενοποιημένη μονάδα παραγωγής πολιτικής, θέτοντας και εξυπηρετώντας στόχους οι οποίοι βελτιστοποιούν το συμφέρον της, λειτουργώντας ορθολογικά επί τη βάσει ανάλυσης κόστους – οφέλους. Ο Αρχιεπίσκοπος Μακάριος αποτέλεσε την ηγετική φυσιογνωμία της πρώιμης Κυπριακής Δημοκρατίας και επιδίωξε την εξασφάλιση της ανεξαρτησίας του νέου κράτους, ασκώντας αδέσμευτη εξωτερική πολιτική, ακροβατώντας στο μέσο των δύο «κόσμων» του Ψυχρού πολέμου. Η προσέγγιση του με την Μόσχα η οποία εκδηλώθηκε με εναργέστερο τρόπο έπειτα από την εκδήλωση της σοβαρής διακοινοτικής κρίσης του 1963-1964, αποτέλεσε ένα μέσο για την ισχυροποίηση της θέσης του νέου κράτους στο διεθνές στερέωμα, συμβάλλοντας στην προστασία της ακεραιότητας της Κυπριακής Δημοκρατίας έναντι των τουρκικών επιθετικών ενεργειών και ενισχύοντας την θέση της κυπριακής κυβέρνησης, ώστε να αποτρέψει την υλοποίηση σχεδίων επίλυσης του Κυπριακού στο πλαίσιο της συμμαχίας του ΝΑΤΟ. Η επαναπροσέγγιση Μόσχας και Άγκυρας κατά τα τέλη του 1964 στέρησε τον Αρχιεπίσκοπο από μία σημαντική εστία διεθνούς υποστήριξης και συνέβαλλε στην προετοιμασία του πεδίου για την μελλοντική ικανοποίηση των τουρκικών επιδιώξεων στο Κυπριακό.The analysis of the foreign policy of the early Republic of Cyprus and the attitude of international actors such as the USSR is necessary for understanding the development of the Cyprus dispute. The theoretical background for the study of foreign policy of the Republic of Cyprus, in this study, is based on the Rational Actor Model. According to which the main actor of foreign policy is the government of a state, which functions as a rational unitary actor of policy production, setting and serving objectives that optimize its interest, based on a cost-benefit analysis. Archbishop Makarios was the president and the leading figure of the early Republic of Cyprus and sought to ensure the independence of the new state, exercising a non-aligned foreign policy, walking in the middle of the two “worlds” of the Cold War. His approach with Moscow, which manifested itself more clearly after the outbreak of the serious intercommunal crisis of 1963-1964, is a mean of strengthening the position of the new state in the international scene, contributing to the protection of the integrity of the Republic of Cyprus against Turkish aggression and strengthening the position of the Cypriot government in order to prevent the implementation of resolution plans within the framework of the NATO alliance. The rapprochement between Moscow and Ankara at the end of 1964 deprived the Αrchbishop of an important source of international support and contributed to the preparation of the field for the future satisfaction of Turkish aspirations on the Cyprus dispute

The Legacy of Leaded Gasoline in Bottom Sediment of Small Rural Reservoirs

The historical and ongoing lead (Pb) contamination caused by the 20th-century use of leaded gasoline was investigated by an analysis of bottom sediment in eight small rural reservoirs in eastern Kansas, USA. For the reservoirs that were completed before or during the period of maximum Pb emissions from vehicles (i.e., the 1940s through the early 1980s) and that had a major highway in the basin, increased Pb concentrations reflected the pattern of historical leaded gasoline use. For at least some of these reservoirs, residual Pb is still being delivered from the basins. There was no evidence of increased Pb deposition for the reservoirs completed after the period of peak Pb emissions and (or) located in relatively remote areas with little or no highway traffic. Results indicated that several factors affected the magnitude and variability of Pb concentrations in reservoir sediment including traffic volume, reservoir age, and basin size. The increased Pb concentrations at four reservoirs exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency threshold-effects level (30.2 mg kg-1) and frequently exceeded a consensus-based threshold-effects concentration (35.8 mg kg-1) for possible adverse biological effects. For two reservoirs it was estimated that it will take at least 20 to 70 yr for Pb in the newly deposited sediment to return to baseline (pre-1920s) concentrations (30 mg kg-1) following the phase out of leaded gasoline. The buried sediment with elevated Pb concentrations may pose a future environmental concern if the reservoirs are dredged, the dams are removed, or the dams fail

Sediment geochemistry of streams draining abandoned lead / zinc mines in central Wales: the Afon Twymyn

Purpose Despite the decline of metal mining in the UK during the early 20th century, a substantial legacy of heavy metal contamination persists in river channel and floodplain sediments. Poor sediment quality is likely to impede the achievement of ’good’ chemical and ecological status for surface waters under the European Union Water Framework Directive. This paper examines the environmental legacy of the Dylife lead/zinc mine in the central Wales mining district. Leachable heavy metal concentrations in the bed sediments of the Afon Twymyn are established and the geochemical partitioning, potential mobility and bioavailability of sediment-associated heavy metals are established. Materials and methods Sediment samples were collected from the river bed and dry-sieved into two size fractions (<63 μm and 64–2,000 μm). The fractionated samples were then subjected to a sequential extraction procedure to isolate heavy metals (Pb, Zn, Cu, Cd, Fe, Mn) in three different geochemical phases. Sediment samples were then analysed for heavy metals using ICP-AES. Results and discussion The bed sediment of the Afon Twymyn is grossly polluted with heavy metals. Within the vicinity of the former mine, Pb concentrations are up to 100 times greater than levels reported to have deleterious impacts on aquatic ecology. Most heavy metals exist in the most mobile easily exchangeable and carbonate-bound geochemical phases, potentially posing serious threats to ecological integrity and constituting a significant, secondary, diffuse source of pollution. Metal concentrations decrease sharply downstream of the former mine, although there is a gradual increase in the proportion of readily extractable Zn and Cd. Conclusions Implementation of sediment quality guidelines is important in order to achieve the aims of the Water Framework Directive. Assessments of sediment quality should include measurements of background metal concentrations, river water physico-chemistry and, most importantly, metal mobility and potential bioavailability. Uniformity of sediment guidelines throughout Europe and flexibility of targets with regard to the most heavily contaminated mine sites are recommended

Quantifying system disturbance and recovery from historical mining-derived metal contamination at Brotherswater, northwest England

The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-016-9907-1Metal ore extraction in historical times has left a legacy of severe contamination in aquatic ecosystems around the world. In the UK, there are ongoing nationwide surveys of present-day pollution discharged from abandoned mines but few assessments of the magnitude of contamination and impacts that arose during historical metal mining have been made. We report one of the first multi-centennial records of lead (Pb), zinc (Zn) and copper (Cu) fluxes into a lake (Brotherswater, northwest England) from point-sources in its catchment (Hartsop Hall Mine and Hogget Gill processing plant) and calculate basin-scale inventories of those metals. The pre-mining baseline for metal contamination has been established using sediment cores spanning the past 1,500 years and contemporary material obtained through sediment trapping. These data enabled the impact of 250 years of local, small-scale mining (1696 – 1942) to be quantified and an assessment of the trajectory towards system recovery to be made. The geochemical stratigraphy displayed in twelve sediment cores show strong correspondence to the documented history of metal mining and processing in the catchment. The initial onset in 1696 was detected, peak Pb concentrations (>10,000 µg g-1) and flux (39.4 g m-2 y-1) corresponded to the most intensive mining episode (1863-1871) and 20th century technological enhancements were reflected as a more muted sedimentary imprint. After careful evaluation, we used these markers to augment a Bayesian age-depth model of the independent geochronology obtained using radioisotope dating (14C, 210Pb, 137Cs and 241Am). Total inventories of Pb, Zn and Cu for the lake basin during the period of active mining were 15,415 kg, 5,897 kg and 363 kg, respectively. The post-mining trajectories for Pb and Zn project a return to pre-mining levels within 54-128 years for Pb and 75-187 years for Zn, although future remobilisation of metal-enriched catchment soils and floodplain sediments could perturb this recovery. We present a transferable paleolimnological approach that highlights flux-based assessments are vital to accurately establish the baseline, impact and trajectory of mining-derived contamination for a lake catchment

Developing efficient heuristic approaches to cluster editing, inspired by other clustering problems

Cluster editing attempts to find the minimum number of edge additions and removals on an undirected graph, that will transform the graph to one consisting of only disconnected cliques. In this paper, we propose three heuristic approaches to this problem, based on algorithms used to solve different clustering problems. The algorithms were based on agglomerative, divisive and k-means clustering algorithms. Experimental results show that all three algorithms are able to find results close to the minimum number of edits, but in particular, the k-means algorithm has a lower time complexity compared to the other two algorithms, while producing on average, the lowest number of edits.CSE3000 Research ProjectComputer Science and Engineerin

How can the behaviour of specialized heuristic solvers assist constraint solvers for optimization problems: A lookahead approach for Chuffed that emulates the behaviour of heuristic solvers

Constraint programming solvers provide a generalizable approach to finding solutions for optimization problems. However, when comparing the performance of constraint programming solvers to the performance of a heuristic solver for an optimization problem such as cluster editing, the heuristic solver is able to find near-optimal and optimal solutions much faster. The goal of this research is to understand how the behaviour of such a heuristic solver can assist the performance of constraint programming solvers in optimization problems. In order to achieve this, first Chuffed, a state-of-the-art constraint programming solver was combined with a heuristic approach to cluster editing, with the goal of emulating the performance of the heuristic algorithm, in particular, being able to find near-optimal solutions faster. Continuing, the goal was to generalize the behaviour observed by the modified solver, by emulating the performance observed without the need for the specialized heuristic solver. The generalized approach is tested on a wide variety of different tests. An approach to value selection was developed that performs lookahead propagations for the two values of a boolean variable and selects the value that has the most optimal solution within the domain after performing the lookahead propagation. This approach added a significant time overhead that increased the overall solving time for many problems, with the lookahead configuration having a median increase of 8.7% over the default configuration for the optimization problems of the MiniZinc Challenge 2022. However, it was able to successfully emulate the performance of the heuristic solver, finding near-optimal solutions significantly faster than the default value selection. In particular, for the optimization problems of the MiniZinc Challenge 2022, on average, the lookahead configuration had a definite integral for the time vs objective graph 54.7% lower than the default Chuffed configuration.Computer Scienc

CATECHOLAMINE INFUSION VERSUS INTRAAORTIC COUNTERPULSATION AT THE INITIAL PHASE OF LEFT INTRAVENTRICULAR BALLOON PUMPING IN THE FIBRILLATING ANIMAL HEART

This experimental study compares the effect of catecholamine infusion to the effect of intraaortic counterpulsation (IABP) while initiating intraventricular balloon pumping (IVBP) in the fibrillating heart. In 12 dogs IVBP started immediately after the induction of ventricular fibrillation. Intravenous adrenaline or noradrenaline (at a progressively increasing infusion rate until the systolic aortic blood pressure was 120 mm Hg) was interchanged with IABP. The systolic aortic pressure, the aotic flow and the mean left atrial pressure were, respectively, 120.4 +/- 0.5 mm Hg, 42 +/- 4 mlkg-1min-1 and 18.7 +/- 1.2 mm Hg (x +/- SEM) ten min after initiating catecholamine infusion and 97 +/- 5 mm Hg (with a 131 +/- 4 mm Hg diastolic wave), 69.6 +/- 4 mlkg-1min-1 and 16 +/- 1.5 mm Hg ten min after initiating IABP. The difference in aortic flow was significant (p&lt;0.001). The results indicate that a better aortic flow may be obtained by combining IVBP and IABP than IVBP and vasoconstrictive agents in the fibrillating heart. If IVBP, IABP and catecholamines are combined, both AF and AP may increase

Alltagsfragen

Heute dreht sich alles um Alltagsfragen. Im Rahmen einer Hörfunk Lehrredaktion haben sich Studenten der Medienwissenschaft der Uni Tübingen mit verschiedenen Alltagsthemen beschäftigt. Daraus sind dann unsere Warum Beiträge entstanden. Das Seminar fand vor der Corona-Pandemie statt. Die Leitung hatte Ulrich Hägele. Dabei hat sich deutlich herauskristallisiert was unseren StudentInnen am meisten auf der Seele gebrannt hat. Von insgesamt 24 Beiträgen geht es bei den meisten um Nahrung oder um die Funktionen des menschlichen Körpers. Aber auch auf Fragen wie „Warum wir uns gerne gruseln“ oder „warum wir bisher noch nicht von Aliens kontaktiert wurden“ bekommen wir eine Antwort