ISSUE TOPIC

METEORS, METEORITES, ASTEROIDS Hot stones falling to the ground

For long scientists wanted to study flying bodies in the universe since they contain frozen particles and gas from the time of the solar system when there were no planets but only a huge swarm of asteroids and comets orbiting the Sun. They originated mainly from the solar system and the Kuiper belt behind the planet Neptune, at a distance of 30-50 astronomical units (AU = distance from Earth to the Sun) from the Sun and the Orth-Opik cloud at the outer boundary of the solar system 2,000-100,000 AU from the Sun. The outer boundaries of the Orth cloud represent the cosmological boundaries of the solar system and the Sun gravitational dominance area Exploration of the universe with space probes became possible in the second half of the 20th century thanks to the development of rocket technology and the sending of spacecraft into space.

TESLA

Inventions as forerunners of
modern military technologies

For decades, joint problems have been successfully solved with orthopedic surgeries and with the help of implants or replacement of natural joints with endoprostheses, and in the last 20 years, numerous conservative methods have been applied, including injections of corticosteroids and hyaluronic acid. However, artificial joints are a therapy with a limited lifespan, because endoprostheses require replacement after a certain number of years, and conservative therapies often do not have the expected results, so modern medicine in this area turns to regenerative methods of treatment, in order to activate and strengthen internal regenerative capacities of the body. Thanks to its proven effectiveness, the innovative BS (Barać / Saftić) method could be the future in the treatment of osteoarthritis of the hip and knee. In one of the world's leading textbooks on regenerative medicine, it was recently presented as "the future that is already there." Dr sc. med. Branko Barać, one of its creators, talks about a method that significantly improves the quality of life and, moreover, in some cases helps to not only delay the joint replacement operation but also completely avoid it.As a scientist, Nikola Tesla deeply opposed wars from a moral, economic, theoretical and practical point of view. However, if he stopped thinking like a scientist, allowing emotions to prevail the thoughts, he was able to find exceptions, thus to feel that some wars were justified. Although unwilling to use scientific discoveries to create weapons of war, following emotions he was ready to subordinate his genius to devising procedures and devices that would prevent future wars. Thus, some of his inventions practically paved the way for the development of military technologies and represent another testimony to the genius and imaginative mind that has achieved its epochal works with equal success in various fields - from electrical engineering and radio engineering to mechanical engineering, medicine, aviation and many other fields of science and technology.
Nikola Tesla gave humanity a great number of significant inventions that have - with the ingenuity of the solution, the universality of application and the shifting of many scientific and technological borders - forever changed the world around us. His most significant invention, still all around us today, is the induction AC motor, based on his remarkable discovery of the rotating magnetic field. Tesla discovered the principle of obtaining driving force of induction motors in Budapest, back in 1882, at the very beginning of his engineering career. Tesla's motors are still found in household mixers, hair dryers, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, as well as in many industrial plants and factory machines powered by powerful alternating current motors.
However, the general public is less familiar with Tesla's inventions and ideas, best described as pioneering steps in the field of military technologies. It took several decades for some of them to be realized, and some are still a secret that the world is searching a solution for.
 

TESLA

Wardencliff in Nevesinje

The idea of building a tower developed during the design of the roundabout and the reconstruction of part of Nevesinje, a small town in Herzegovina. The new roundabout was envisioned as unique and much more than a simple way of regulating traffic. In the initial stage, the idea was to symbolically form a circular island resembling "Yin-yang", ie a symbol of balance and harmony. The basic message this symbol conveys is the balance, ie restauration of balance that is disturbed in all spheres of life, in other words the balance of the material and the spiritual .. The tower in Nevesinje was modeled on the original 1901 Wardencliff Tower. As to make it stable as possible and harmoniously proportionate in relation to the surroundings, the tower was sevenfolds reduced version of the original tower, and certain details were lost for a reason. Due to the reduction of the size of the tower, a hexagonal base was formed and some elements of the spatial lattice were omitted, thus obtaining an aesthetically more shaped form. In this way a replica completly corresponds to the original tower.

MEDICINE

Fighting (un) known coronaviruses

Despite that not so long ago the epidemics of SARS and MERS warned the world of the danger of coronavirus infection, a new virus from this family found the planet unprepared. Virologist dr sc. med. Ana Gligić describes the appearance of COVID 19 as one of the largest zoonoses that have ever hit the world. Dr. Gligić, doyen of Yugoslav virology, a scientist who once isolated the deadliest virus, Marburg, and was in the first line of defense against smallpox, talks about the peculiarities of infections originating from so-called natural hotspots, the current pandemic, and precautions for the future.
Exactly one year has passed since Chinese researchers sequenced the genome of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and on January 10, 2020, shared the finding with the world scientific community. It was a completely new, for the first time isolated virus from the otherwise well-known family of coronavirus, which in December 2019 caused an epidemic of an infectious disease seemingly similar to the flu, and completely paralyzed the city of Wuhan. Initially through Italy, the virus began to spread across Europe, and at the same time to the entire planet. As early as mid-February, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially named the disease caused by the new virus COVID-19 (Coronavirus Desease), and on March 11, it declared a pandemic. A week after the proclamation of the global spread of the disease, on March 18 last year, there were 191,127 infected and 7,807 deaths worldwide; today, those numbers have increased hundreds of times - by the end of December 2020, a total of more than 81 million infected (more than 22 million newly infected), more than 57 million recovered, and more than 1,800,000 deaths from COVID-19 had been recorded worldwide.
To return the global population to more or less normal life, in China, Great Britain, Russia and the USA, vaccination of the population against COVID-19 began at the end of the year, with the first vaccines resulting from the feverish search of the world's leading researchers for the most efficient and the safest modern means of immunization. Dr sc. med. Ana Gligić, doyen of Yugoslav virology, says on this occasion that this is one of the largest zoonoses that has ever hit the world, and that the most important thing is to stop the pandemic as soon as possible, and then devise good strategies, both global and national to control the new a virus we will have to continue to live with.

MEDICINE

How vaccines saved the world

Vaccination is considered one of the greatest achievements of modern civilization. It is essential for immunization and the achievement of the collective immunity of entire nations, and in the past century it has eradicated or completely curbed the infectious diseases that previously plagued the world, both among humans and animals. With the development of genetics and synthetic biology, the vaccine can now be designed in an incredibly short time. Immunization dates back for centuries. The first attempts at "pelting" against smallpox (caused by the smallpox virus) were recorded in the 16th century, in China and India, by variolization (inoculation) - inhaling the powder of dried scabies of people suffering from deadly smallpox. This practice reached Europe in the 17th century, but proved to be very risky because, in some cases, instead of protecting against disease, it caused new infections. A safer way of inoculation was discovered in the 18th century by the English physician Edward Jenner, whose experiments are today considered pioneering steps in immunology and preventive medicine. Namely, Jenner noticed that local dairies, which often contracted "cowpox", at the time relatively common and mostly benign infections, also showed immunity to smallpox. Testing the idea of inoculation, Jenner used the material from the blisters on the hands of a dairy woman suffering from cowpox in 1796, and put it in a cut on the arm of an eight-year-old boy. Six weeks later, he exposed the boy to smallpox, but the child did not become infected, neither in the next few times. Jenner confirmed his theory by experimenting on another 23 people, and his preventive method was, due to the material used, which originated from a cow (lat. Vacca), then called vaccination.
 

AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL PUZZLE

The fish will take away the soul

The area of Djerdap, on the Serbian and Romanian side, is very rich in archeological sites from the period of prehistory until the Middle Ages. At 12 locations on both sides of the Danube, there are sites where settlement was documented in the period from the 10th to the 6th millennium BC. Among these localities, Lepenski vir stands out because of its numerous characteristics that make it specific and distinguish it from other localities from the same area and period, such as trapezoidal houses and stone sculptures with human and fish characteristics. The entire Mesolithic culture in the area of Djerdap was named after this archeological site and includes sites on the Serbian and Romanian sides of Danube. Lepenski vir is located on the right bank of the Danube in the Djerdap gorge, not far from the Boljetinska river. This famous site was excavated by archaeologist Dragoslav Srejović and his associates from the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade in the 1960s, before the construction of the hydroelectric power plant "Đerdap I". Archaeological excavations lasted from 1965 to 1970, when it was decided to physically move the site to a new location and thus save it from sinking. A large area was excavated in a short time, about 2,500 m2, with archaeological layers that went up to 3.5 m in depth. Due to the submergence of this part, a large area remained unexplored and destroyed.