The September 11 Attack: A Percolation of Individual Passive Support

A model for terrorism is presented using the theory of percolation. Terrorism power is related to the spontaneous formation of random backbones of people who are sympathetic to terrorism but without being directly involved in it. They just don't oppose in case they could. In the past such friendly-to-terrorism backbones have been always existing but were of finite size and localized to a given geographical area. The September 11 terrorist attack on the US has revealed for the first time the existence of a world wide spread extension. It is argued to have result from a sudden world percolation of otherwise unconnected and dormant world spread backbones of passive supporters. The associated strategic question is then to determine if collecting ground information could have predict and thus avoid such a transition. Our results show the answer is no, voiding the major criticism against intelligence services. To conclude the impact of military action is discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Questioning the Quantitative Imperative: Decision Aids, Prevention, and the Ethics of Disclosure

Patients should not always receive hard data about the risks and benefits of a medical intervention. That information should always be available to patients who expressly ask for it, but it should be part of standard disclosure only sometimes, and only for some patients. And even then, we need to think about how to offer it

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Fifty shades of CHI: the perverse and humiliating human-computer relationship

This paper presents a critical lens on the nature of the relationship between people and contemporary technology. Specifically, the form and language of erotic BDSM romance fiction, a genre that deals specifically with the nature of power in relationships, and which has proved extremely popular recently, are used as a means for provoking reflection on the nature of power in the human-computer relationship. Three sexually explicit scenarios are presented, in which technology is portrayed in a dominant and controlling role, highlighting the often subservient and apologetic nature of human interaction with technology. We suggest that readers offended by graphic and explicit descriptions of sexual behaviour do not read further than this abstract

A generalized Kramers-Kronig transform for Casimir effect computations

Recent advances in experimental techniques now permit to measure the Casimir force with unprecedented precision. In order to achieve a comparable precision in the theoretical prediction of the force, it is necessary to accurately determine the electric permittivity of the materials constituting the plates along the imaginary frequency axis. The latter quantity is not directly accessible to experiments, but it can be determined via dispersion relations from experimental optical data. In the experimentally important case of conductors, however, a serious drawback of the standard dispersion relations commonly used for this purpose, is their strong dependence on the chosen low-frequency extrapolation of the experimental optical data, which introduces a significant and not easily controllable uncertainty in the result. In this paper we show that a simple modification of the standard dispersion relations, involving suitable analytic window functions, resolves this difficulty, making it possible to reliably determine the electric permittivity at imaginary frequencies solely using experimental optical data in the frequency interval where they are available, without any need of uncontrolled data extrapolations.Comment: 10 pages, 6 encapsulated figures. A few typos corrected, some references added. The new version matches the one accepted for publication on Phys. Rev.

Characterization And Rejuvenation Of Local Ecorace Sukinda In Odhisa State

An experiment of outdoor rearing was conducted with the available Sukinda (TV) stock of BSM&TC, Sundargarh (SG), CTSSS, Lakha (CTS) and CTR&TI, Ranchi. The objective of this activity is to utilize economic wild life, conserving the associated environment for sustainable rural and tribal development (Raffi and Ramanujam, 2001; Gill and Lal, 2002; Mahapatra, 2009).

The crop performance of SG showed highest cocoon yield i.e., 83 cocoons / dfl in 1st crop followed by 80 cocoons / dfl in 3rd crop and 42 cocoons / dfl during 2nd crop. Yellow coloured cocoons dominated (94-96%) the population in all the three crops. The cocoon weight, Shell weight and Silk Ratio were (9.72g, 1.07g&11 %) in 1st crop,(9.77g,1.05g & 10.75%) in 2nd crop and (11.11g,1.79g & 16.11%) in commercial third crop season. The ERR were 41.64 %, 50.00 % and 74.51% in 1st, 2nd and 3rd crop respectively. This approach for semi-domesticated and commercially exploited Sukinda ecoraces can further enhances their potential because of better inherent performance levels under in situ (Suryanarayana and Srivastava, 2005) over the current basic and commercial stocks maintained ex situ.
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