Demographic and Religious Changes in Nahiya Kara Lom in the 17th–18th Centuries

The report presents the changes that took place in nahiya Kara Lom between the late 17th and early 18th centuries. It is based on published and unpublished Ottoman documents – detailed cizye and avariz defters, stored in the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul and at the Oriental Department in Sofia. They were composed in the late 17th – first half of the 18th centuries. At the turn of the 18th century, very significant transformations took place in this region, which changed its appearance and state fundamentally. The main focus of the study is on the demographic and religious changes and processes in the region. They were expressed in the sharp decline of the population. This process was specific to the whole region, and its causes can be traced to many factors that have had a detrimental effect. These included climate change, plague epidemics, population migrations, economic problems in the Ottoman Empire, and the process of Islamization. They led to a decline in the population of Kara Lom, which can be described as a demographic crisis. In the vortex of this crisis, there was a “change” of the confessional image of the nahiya, i.e. a radical change in the religious model of the district, which had disastrous consequences for many settlements in the region. The report provides possible explanations for the demographic and religious transformations in nahiya Kara Lom, which shaped the area in the next century as we know it today.

“Find Your Own and Feel Comfortable…”: Communicative Space of Russian Officials of the Resettlement Administration as a Factor of Professional Adaptation (Late 19th – Early 20th Century)

Based on the published memoirs of the employees of the Migration Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the article reconstructs the communicative space of the Russian bureaucracy, which was responsible for organizing population migrations to the eastern outskirts of the empire in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The research identifies the actors, conditions and channels of communicative actions of managers, who belong to the formed in the post-reform period generation and performed their duties under the influence of socio-cultural transformations of the second half of the 19th century. It has been proved that the main features of the identity of the new type of imperial bureaucracy were: breadth of views and a democratic style of behavior within a professional group, a sense of responsibility towards society and the state, a categorical rejection of radical political ideas and ways of their manifestation. The research demonstrates that the cultural and historical background of organizing the communicative space of resettlement officials was a qualitative rethinking of the tasks of the “resettlement case”, which became an important element of the colonial policy in the eastern parts of the country. The concernes of the authorities on the agrarian issue gave the resettlement movement a priority status in the domestic policy of Russia. In this aspect, the significance of the bureaucracy that was involved in solving problems related to the organization and regulation of the resettlement process has also changed. The article establishes that, in contrast to the bulk of Russian officials, the employees of the resettlement department were characterized by greater mobility and intensity of contacts with various class categories of the empire’s population, primarily with the peasantry. It was the communication with the peasantry that named the considered category of officials “resettelers”, which eventually determined their identity as specific, different from the identity of other groups of the Russian bureaucracy. Thus, within the space of official and informal interaction of resettlement officials, the principles of paternalism and partnership underlied the communicative action, which contributed to the “soft” professional adaptation of young employees of the department, the collective adoption of conventions of mutual understanding, cooperation and maintenance of comfortable conditions for activity. All this, taken together, increased the efficiency of the work of the empire's representatives on the colonized territories, and raised the prestige of the Russian state in the Trans-Ural regions.

Genomic Insight Into the Population Admixture History of Tungusic-Speaking Manchu People in Northeast China

Manchu is the third-largest ethnic minority in China and has the largest population size among the Tungusic-speaking groups. However, the genetic origin and admixture history of the Manchu people are far from clear due to the sparse sampling and a limited number of markers genotyped. Here, we provided the first batch of genome-wide data of genotyping approximate 700,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 93 Manchu individuals collected from northeast China. We merged the newly generated data with data of publicly available modern and ancient East Asians to comprehensively characterize the genetic diversity and fine-scale population structure, as well as explore the genetic origin and admixture history of northern Chinese Manchus. We applied both descriptive methods of ADMIXTURE, fineSTRUCTURE, FST, TreeMix, identity by decedent (IBD), principal component analysis (PCA), and qualitative f-statistics (f3, f4, qpAdm, and qpWave). We found that Liaoning Manchus have a close genetic relationship and significant admixture signal with northern Han Chinese, which is in line with the cluster patterns in the haplotype-based results. Additionally, the qpAdm-based admixture models showed that modern Manchu people were formed as major ancestry related to Yellow River farmers and minor ancestry linked to ancient populations from Amur River Bain, or others. In summary, the northeastern Chinese Manchu people in Liaoning were an exception to the coherent genetic structure of Tungusic-speaking populations, probably due to the large-scale population migrations and genetic admixtures in the past few hundred years.

Swarm Robotic Interactions in an Open and Cluttered Environment: A Survey

Recent population migrations have led to numerous accidents and deaths. Little research has been done to help migrants in their journey. For this reason, a literature review of the latest research conducted in previous years is required to identify new research trends in human-swarm interaction. This article presents a review of techniques that can be used in a robots swarm to find, locate, protect and help migrants in hazardous environment such as militarized zone. The paper presents a swarm interaction taxonomy including a detailed study on the control of swarm with and without interaction. As the interaction mainly occurs in cluttered or crowded environment (with obstacles) the paper discussed the algorithms related to navigation that can be included with an interaction strategy. It focused on comparing algorithms and their advantages and disadvantages.

Network Structure of Intercity Trips by Chinese Residents under Different Travel Modes: A Case Study of the Spring Festival Travel Rush

With the advent of big data, the use of network data to characterize travel has gradually become a trend. Tencent Migration big data can fully, dynamically, immediately, and visually record the trajectories of population migrations with location-based service technology. Here, the daily population flow data of 346 cities during the Spring Festival travel rush in China were combined with different travel modes to measure the spatial structure and spatial patterns of an intercity trip network of Chinese residents. These data were then used for a comprehensive depiction of the complex relationships between the population flows of cities. The results showed that there were obvious differences in the characteristics of urban networks from the perspective of different modes of travel. The intercity flow of aviation trips showed a core-periphery structure with national hub cities as the core distribution. Trips by train showed a core-periphery structure with cities along the national railway artery as the core. This gradually decreased toward hinterland cities. Moreover, the intercity flow of highway trips indicated a spatial pattern of strong local aggregation that matched the population scale.

Transformation of global migration

In the context of the transformations of the modern world, the format of global population migrations is changing. This process is reflected in a slowdown in the growth of short-term movements. In high-income receiving countries, migrants were not rarely blamed for rising unemployment and declining social services. There is also widespread concern about brain drain from donor countries in Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans, the South Caucasus and Central Asia. The monograph focuses on the development of policies on the mobility of the workforce, and also presents trends that determine the factors and types of influence in the market of low-skilled and highly skilled workers. It is intended for specialists, as well as masters, graduate students and students of the relevant specialties of universities.

Production and assortment of dry beans in Serbia

Dry beans belong to pulses, species from Fabaceae family. Its dry grain is used in human nutrition. It is valued as traditional and modern food and medicine, protein source, and high-energy concentrated food. It is an important crop in agricultural production and international trade of many countries, economically viable and good preceding crop. Dry beans are considered the national dish of all people from Balkans, and it is inviolable in Serbia. Crossing of important trade routes, land and climate, turbulent history, which caused frequent population migrations, led to a great divergence of bean germplasm in our area. Domestic bean populations are exceptional genetic potential for breeding of new varieties that could give satisfactory results in these environmental conditions, with the application of appropriate cultivation technology. Areas under beans in Serbia are declining. Due to short vegetation and other biological traits, bean is very intensive and sensitive crop. This is emphasized by exceptional sensitivity to polyphagous insects, as well as the presence numerous pathogens. Low average yield is affected by weather, primarily high temperatures and drought. Yields could be increased by correct and timely application of modern agronomic knowledge, irrigated cultivation, in a joint crop or by sowing as second crop.

Epidemie dalekie i bliskie: mór pod piramidami i w wiejskiej chacie w XVI wieku – Mikołaja Krzysztofa Radziwiłła „Peregrynacyja do Ziemi Świętej…" i „Victoria deorum” Sebastiana Fabiana Klonowica – konwencje opisu na tle literatury klasycznej

The aim of the article is to present outlook specificity to the topic of epidemics process described in two works Mikołaj Krzysztof Radziwiłł’s “Peregrination to the Holy Land” and “Victoria deorum” of Sebastian Fabian Klonowic on the background of Thucydides, Lucretius, Ovid and Boccacio. As the contexts are summoned relations of Homer and Virgil. Elements creating convention are following: description of symptoms, treatment attempts, medics’ hopelessness, mass death of population, consequences of social stratification during the plague, an increase of religious worship or escape into hedonistic use of life, loosening moral principles, population migrations, families’ fall, lack of respect for bodies and mass burials. Radziwiłł describes, from a distant perspective, a several-year dynamics of the epidemic’s development largely omitting conventions, Klonowic focuses on its process among the poorer classes, only partially taking up well known plots. Referring to literary tradition, he introduces new ones.

The Attitude of the Authorities of The Independent State of Croatia Towards the Refugees in Sarajevo During 1941 and 1942 / Odnos organa vlasti Nezavisne Države Hrvatske prema izbjeglicama u Sarajevu tokom 1941. i 1942. godine

The establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) produced a period of extreme interethnic violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina, resulting in forced population migrations, both temporary and permanent. In eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, primarily from insurgent and later predominantly Chetnik attacks, thousands of Muslim refugees fleeing from death sought refuge in ‘safer’ parts of the NDH. Sarajevo, as the closest and, in a wider circle, the biggest city quickly became refugees’ central gathering and rescue point. This paper aims to track the main course of attitude primarily of the local NDH authorities towards the Muslim refugees from autumn 1941 until mid-1942, and the establishment of the Alipašin Most refugee camp.