Submitted Papers 2010

Paprika, East and West

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
In 1937 the Nobel prize for “Physiology or Medicine” was awarded to Albert Szent-Györgyi, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Szeged in Hungary. For the first time, he and some colleagues, including the American Joseph Svirbely from the University of Pittsburgh, were able to isolate Vitamin C, ascorbic acid. Notwithstanding Linus Pauling (another Nobel prize laureate) and Szent-Györgyi himself, vitamin C may not cure or prevent the common cold, but it certainly cures the vitamin deficiency known as scurvy or scorbutus (hence “ascorbic” acid) which plagued English (and other) sailors of yore deprived of fresh fruit and vegetables during their long voyages. Vitamin C is also a major anti-oxydant.
It took Szent-Györgyi a while to find the most economical raw material for his experiments and for producing the vitamin, until he hit upon the idea of using the product, or produce, for which the Szeged region of southern Hungary is so famous, namely paprika, or red pepper.
Paprika (capsicum annuum), our topic, can be approached from various angles. In Korea the spicy paste prepared from red pepper is called gochugaru (고추가루), often added to bibimbap (비빔밥). Paprika or chili is also the key ingredient in kimchi, which in turn is a key dish in the Korean diet. Instead of a trip to Japan or Hongkong, taken by most of my comrades in the military, I remember spending my R and R (Rest and Recuperation) on a beach on the Eastern coast of the Korean peninsula. Our hotel room was a cabin with an outhouse, and our meals consisted of rice for breakfast, rice for lunch and rice for dinner. The same was true about the diet of most Koreans in those days, preceding the boom of the South Korean economy. What made the fare palatable, balanced and nutritious, what relieved the monotony of white rice, was precisely kimchi-- in other words, paprika.


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“American Letters” – Imre Széchenyi’s 1881 Trip to America

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
In 1881, Imre Széchenyi, together with four young Austrian and Hungarian aristocrats, and accompanied by a German economist/politician/journalist, visited the US. This was a study trip; the group was to study the agriculture and government administration in the US. Imre Széchenyi spent about eight months in the US, from March to October 1881, and his travels took him throughout the country. He published a book about his experiences, Somogyvári I. “Amerikai levelek” egy hosszabb zárszóval (Somogyvár I., American Letters with a Longer Postscript). The book has three parts; the first includes the letters that he sent to Hungarian newspapers while in the USA, the second, a briefer part of the book, is a collection of his drawings and explanations of the workings of new American agricultural machinery. The third section, his postscript, enumerates the European and American advantages in agriculture, and offers solutions for changes to be made in order that Hungarian agriculture could increase its competitiveness. This paper will evaluate the solutions proposed.


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An Updated Torockό: Village Tourism and Protection of Local Interests - A megújult Torockó. Faluturizmus és érdekvédelem.

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A torockόi völgyben néhány négyzetkilométer területen s?r?södik Erdély minden szápsége, érdekessége. Sziklafalak, XIII.századbόl valό vár, régi vasbányák, érdekes építkezés, különleges népviselet. Ebben a völgyben ket magyarajkú település találhatό, Torockό és Torockόszentgyörgy. Lakόi ragaszkodnak hagyományaikhoz, nemzetiségükhöz, unitárius vallásukhoz. A 70-es és 80-as évek Romániájában halálraítélték ezeket a falvakat. Tilos volt túristacsoportok látogatása, hagyományos ünnepeik megtartása.
Az 1989-es fordulat után els?rend? feladat lett Torockό újraélesztése, egyrészt a vendégfogadás megszervezésével, másrészt a népi kultúra értékeinek felkutatásával és meg?rzésével. Ezeket a célokat szolgálta Dr.Tobiás Károly, magyar származású, amerikai egyetemi tanár, adománya. A Brassais Véndiák Alapítvány (Kolozsvár) kezdeményezésére létrejött a Tobiás Ház Ifjúsági Szabadid?központ; régi fényképek és dokumentumok gy?jtésével és kiállításával a Múzeum felújítása, valamint utikalauz kiadása. El?adásom a megvalόsítás nehézségeir?l, a munka szépségér?l és az összefogás erejér?l szόl.



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The Implementation and Results of a Hungarian-American Research Project on Childhood-Onset Depression

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The authors summarize their experiences about a joint research project supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH, USA),which was implemented and carried out in Hungary. Scientific cooperation was started in 1999, aiming to find genetic and psychosocial risk factors of childhood-onset depression. The joint work included American, Canadian and Hungarian scientists. The collected sample included N=723 children with major depressive disorder and their families recruited from 23 clinical sites across Hungary. Examinations included detailed psychiatric history, developmental and life events of the child, self and parent-rated questionnaires. At peak intensity the study involved about 30 professionals (child psychiatrists and psychologists), had 3 centers and 23 research sites. There has not been such a scientific cooperation in Hungarian child psychiatry before. Beside the implementation of the American research standards in Hungary, child psychiatry professionals received training in several important areas (semi-structured interviewing, psychiatric diagnostic evaluation, scientific publication). Three Hungarian researchers received scientific training at Pittsburgh University. Scientific results of the study were published in leading international and Hungarian journals (17 publications in genetic research and 15 in psychosocial aspects of childhood-onset depression, as of today). The above described research project shows how bridges between Hungarians can lead to high quality scientific work and benefit all participants.


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A People Live Through Their Language - Nyelvében él a nemzet

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A magyar tudományos nyelv kezdeteit Apáczai Cseri János tevékenységében lelhetjük fel. A Magyar Enciklopédia nemcsak a kor tudományos ismereteinek egyfajta summája, de a magyar filozófiai nyelv megteremtése irányába tett els? lépés.
A következ? jelent?s állomást Kibédi Péterfi Károly: Alapfilozófia cím? munkája jelenti, amely 1842-ben jelent meg, és számtalan eredeti fogalmat alkotott.
A magyar filozófia egyik legjelent?sebb alakja, és természetesen a filozófiai nyelv kreatív tovább fejleszt?je Böhm Károly a XIX-XX század fordulóján.
El?adásomban e három kiváló tudós munká ssága alapján szeretném a magyar filozófiai nyelv kialakulását bemutatni.



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The Status of Small Farming and Village Development in Kalotaszentkirály

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
In the Transylvanian villages, state farms and collective farms were disbanded after the fall of Ceausescu. Village lands were returned to their original owners. As recently as 2004, small farming appeared to be viable, but villagers were worried that the rules of the European Union would complicate their lives and be harmful to their prospects. Would Transylvanians, by heavy investment of labor and low investment of other inputs, be able to grow locally, market locally and eat locally?
On the example of Kalotaszentkirály in the Hungarian folk cultural region called Kalotaszeg, the answer appears to be ‘no’. The European Union’s rules for the dairy industry do not allow for the collecting of the milk from individual households at a central point. Nor can the meat from livestock be marketed. Slaughter facilities have closed down. Nor can animals be sold freely from one farmer to another. Small farming has collapsed. In May 2010, I shall visit the village once more to investigate how local people are adjusting to the new economic realities.



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From Madéfalva to Bukovina to Saskatchewan: Using Y-DNA Testing, Genealogy Software, and the Internet to Connect Bukovina Székely Families to their Canadian Cousins and their Transylvanian Roots

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
About fifteen years ago, a genealogy project was initiated to document all the inhabitants of the five Székely villages founded in Bukovina in the 1780s under the auspices of the Austrian government. These villages existed for more than 150 years until the inhabitants left in 1941 to be resettled first in Bácska,and ultimately in Tolna and Baranya counties after the end of World War Two.
This data has been entered into a searchable computer database, which now contains the data of more than 93,000 individuals, mainly extracted from the Bukovina church registers. Via the Internet connections have been made between Canadian and American descendants and their Hungarian extended families, which resulted in a 2005 trip by a group of 18 Canadians to visit Bukovina descendants in Tolna County and also to Bukovina itself. In many cases, family contacts were made in Tolna County, and, in addition, research has been done in the Romanian National Archives (Csíkszereda and Sepsiszentgyörgy), but with limited success. In any case, these written records go back only to about 1700, leaving open the question of whether Bukovina families of the same surname are genetically related to each other or not.
Just at that point, some new technology came along to definitively answer this question. Y-DNA testing (that is, testing of male-line DNA) became available to the general public for a reasonable price. Y-DNA does not recombine, but is rather handed down virtually unchanged from father to son over thousands of years, making it very valuable for genealogical testing. In the four years since the DNA project was begun, over 200 samples of Bukovina and Transylvania Székely DNA have been collected, with interesting results which give hints about the ancient origin of the Székely as well as making it possible to know which surname lines have the same ancestor and which do not.



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From Madéfalva to Bukovina to Saskatchewan: Using Y-DNA Testing, Genealogy Software, and the Internet to Connect Bukovina Székely Families to their Canadian Cousins and their Transylvanian Roots

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
About fifteen years ago, a genealogy project was initiated to document all the inhabitants of the five Székely villages founded in Bukovina in the 1780s under the auspices of the Austrian government. These villages existed for more than 150 years until the inhabitants left in 1941 to be resettled first in Bácska,and ultimately in Tolna and Baranya counties after the end of World War Two.
This data has been entered into a searchable computer database, which now contains the data of more than 93,000 individuals, mainly extracted from the Bukovina church registers. Via the Internet connections have been made between Canadian and American descendants and their Hungarian extended families, which resulted in a 2005 trip by a group of 18 Canadians to visit Bukovina descendants in Tolna County and also to Bukovina itself. In many cases, family contacts were made in Tolna County, and, in addition, research has been done in the Romanian National Archives (Csíkszereda and Sepsiszentgyörgy), but with limited success. In any case, these written records go back only to about 1700, leaving open the question of whether Bukovina families of the same surname are genetically related to each other or not.
Just at that point, some new technology came along to definitively answer this question. Y-DNA testing (that is, testing of male-line DNA) became available to the general public for a reasonable price. Y-DNA does not recombine, but is rather handed down virtually unchanged from father to son over thousands of years, making it very valuable for genealogical testing. In the four years since the DNA project was begun, over 200 samples of Bukovina and Transylvania Székely DNA have been collected, with interesting results which give hints about the ancient origin of the Székely as well as making it possible to know which surname lines have the same ancestor and which do not.



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MOET Institute’s Role in the Evolution of Magnified Surgery Education in Hungary

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Magnified surgery, specifically microsurgery and endoscopic surgery, is an inclusive term the author uses to describe these surgical modalities. His role in the evolution of skill training and research in these fields dates back to 1972 in San Francisco, CA, USA where he was first involved with the nascent field of reconstructive microsurgery. It was a multidisciplinary approach that involved a vast array of surgical specialists; shortly afterwards the author work expanded and he was part of a leading group of researchers in developing techniques for microsurgery in fertility surgeries. In 1990, he focused his attention on the application of microsurgical techniques to laparoscopy. It began with laparoscopic gynecology, general surgery, urology, pediatric (fetal surgery), cardiovascular (including robotics), and other specialties. Today, the author continues to expand his research and educational endeavors with colleagues in new areas.

In 1983, the author organized a series of one-week intensive, Hands-On Microsurgery Workshops in Hungary that were conducted over a month-long period with invited faculty from the US. These programs were initiated following the visits of Prof. I. Gal and Prof. L. Lampe to the author in San Francisco, when they each issued an invitation to the author. Four consecutive microsurgical workshops in were held in Budapest (at OTKI, arranged by Prof. J. Kiss) and Debrecen (by Prof. Lampe). This workshop series expanded to Szeged at the invitation of Prof. J. Herczeg.

With the advent of the author’s involvement in laparoscopic surgery in 1990 in the USA, the first series of Advanced Laparoscopic Skills Workshops were organized in Hungary 1993 and conducted in Pecs, Debrecen, Szeged. Subsequently several workshops were held annually for several years until the author accepted an invitation from the University Szeged Medical School Surgical Research Institute lead by Prof. Mihaly Boros as a Visiting Professor to train the in-house residents and interested practitioners in 2003. This included his co-editing a published course syllabus in 2006, supported by a HEFOP grant. Initially the Laparoscopic facility was equipped by the MOET Institute. The concept of Magnified Surgery Skills Training was introduced and nationally accepted. This included one week each Micro and Laparoscopy preceded by one week of general surgery. Currently resident skills training programs are held for 30-60 residents each year by the author in collaboration with the MOET institute.



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