Fighting against the odds

The fight for power is not only over immediate rents, but also over advantageous positions in future power struggles. When incumbency yields an extra fighting edge, current struggles involve high stakes as a victory today may guarantee the victory also tomorrow. Such an incumbency edge may stem from the control of the army, the police and other instruments reserved for the government. The conclusions drawn from static conflict models are turned on their head when the fight is also over the incumbency edge. A sharper incumbency edge increases the implicit prizes of winning. The fighting intensity may therefore rise when the strength of each side becomes more unequal. Unbalanced fights can last long and become particularly severe. This is in contrast to the standard result that equal strengths give the most intense fighting

Against the Odds: Making a Difference in Global Health

Against the Odds: Making a Difference in Global Health is a banner traveling exhibition highlighting the role of communities in improving health at home and all around the world. The exhibition explores the shared basic needs required for a good quality of life, including nutritious food and clean water, a safe place to live, and affordable health care. Using historical and contemporary photographs, the banners tell stories of collaboration between families, scientists, advocates, governments, and international organizations, all taking up the challenge to prevent disease and improve medical care. This exhibition raises awareness of the sources and effects of health inequalities and invites each of us to join the global campaign for health and human rights

Against all odds? Forming the planet of the HD196885 binary

HD196885Ab is the most "extreme" planet-in-a-binary discovered to date, whose orbit places it at the limit for orbital stability. The presence of a planet in such a highly perturbed region poses a clear challenge to planet-formation scenarios. We investigate this issue by focusing on the planet-formation stage that is arguably the most sensitive to binary perturbations: the mutual accretion of kilometre-sized planetesimals. To this effect we numerically estimate the impact velocities $dv$ amongst a population of circumprimary planetesimals. We find that most of the circumprimary disc is strongly hostile to planetesimal accretion, especially the region around 2.6AU (the planet's location) where binary perturbations induce planetesimal-shattering $dv$ of more than 1km/s. Possible solutions to the paradox of having a planet in such accretion-hostile regions are 1) that initial planetesimals were very big, at least 250km, 2) that the binary had an initial orbit at least twice the present one, and was later compacted due to early stellar encounters, 3) that planetesimals did not grow by mutual impacts but by sweeping of dust (the "snowball" growth mode identified by Xie et al., 2010b), or 4) that HD196885Ab was formed not by core-accretion but by the concurent disc instability mechanism. All of these 4 scenarios remain however highly conjectural.Comment: accepted for publication by Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy (Special issue on EXOPLANETS

Bean Research: Against the Odds

The article concerns bean research at the North Dakota State University under Dr. Ken Grafton and Dr. Glen Weisner. They were undertaking a new program in the hopes of creating bean varieties with these characteristics: uright, high protein (quality and quantity), nitrogen-fixing, low flatulence, high yield, disease resistant or tolerant, adapted to a short growing season and that is does not discolor. The article discusses their efforts using a new procedure in the crossing of varieties in greenhouses to produce their desired results