Simulation of Demographic Change in Palestinian Territories

Mortality, birth rates and retirement play a major role in demographic changes. In most cases, mortality rates decreased in the past century without noticeable decrease in fertility rates, this leads to a significant increase in population growth. In many poor countries like Palestinian territories the number of births has fallen and the life expectancy increased. In this article we concentrate on measuring, analyzing and extrapolating the age structure in Palestine a few decades ago into future. A Fortran program has been designed and used for the simulation and analysis of our statistical data. This study of demographic change in Palestine has shown that Palestinians will have in future problems as the strongest age cohorts are the above-60-year olds. We therefore recommend the increase of both the retirement age and women employment.Comment: For Int. J. Mod. Phys. C 18, issue 11; 9 pages including figures and progra

Comparison of Ising magnet on directed versus undirected Erdos-Renyi and scale-free network

Scale-free networks are a recently developed approach to model the interactions found in complex natural and man-made systems. Such networks exhibit a power-law distribution of node link (degree) frequencies n(k) in which a small number of highly connected nodes predominate over a much greater number of sparsely connected ones. In contrast, in an Erdos-Renyi network each of N sites is connected to every site with a low probability p (of the orde r of 1/N). Then the number k of neighbors will fluctuate according to a Poisson distribution. One can instead assume that each site selects exactly k neighbors among the other sites. Here we compare in both cases the usual network with the directed network, when site A selects site B as a neighbor, and then B influences A but A does not influence B. As we change from undirected to directed scale-free networks, the spontaneous magnetization vanishes after an equilibration time following an Arrhenius law, while the directed ER networks have a positive Curie temperature.Comment: 10 pages including all figures, for Int. J, Mod. Phys. C 1

Happiness around the world: A combined etic-emic approach across 63 countries

What does it mean to be happy? The vast majority of cross-cultural studies on happiness have employed a Western-origin, or "WEIRD" measure of happiness that conceptualizes it as a self-centered (or "independent"), high-arousal emotion. However, research from Eastern cultures, particularly Japan, conceptualizes happiness as including an interpersonal aspect emphasizing harmony and connectedness to others. Following a combined emicetic approach (Cheung, van de Vijver & Leong, 2011), we assessed the cross-cultural applicability of a measure of independent happiness developed in the US (Subjective Happiness Scale; Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999) and a measure of interdependent happiness developed in Japan (Interdependent Happiness Scale; Hitokoto & Uchida, 2015), with data from 63 countries representing 7 sociocultural regions. Results indicate that the schema of independent happiness was more coherent in more WEIRD countries. In contrast, the coherence of interdependent happiness was unrelated to a country's "WEIRD-ness." Reliabilities of both happiness measures were lowest in African and Middle Eastern countries, suggesting these two conceptualizations of happiness may not be globally comprehensive. Overall, while the two measures had many similar correlates and properties, the self-focused concept of independent happiness is "WEIRD-er" than interdependent happiness, suggesting cross-cultural researchers should attend to both conceptualizations

Structure of Dark Triad Dirty Dozen Across Eight World Regions

The Dark Triad (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism) has garnered intense attention over the past 15 years. We examined the structure of these traits’ measure—the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen (DTDD)—in a sample of 11,488 participants from three W.E.I.R.D. (i.e., North America, Oceania, Western Europe) and five non-W.E.I.R.D. (i.e., Asia, Middle East, non-Western Europe, South America, sub-Saharan Africa) world regions. The results confirmed the measurement invariance of the DTDD across participants’ sex in all world regions, with men scoring higher than women on all traits (except for psychopathy in Asia, where the difference was not significant). We found evidence for metric (and partial scalar) measurement invariance within and between W.E.I.R.D. and non-W.E.I.R.D. world regions. The results generally support the structure of the DTDD

The economic well-being of nations is associated with positive daily situational experiences

People in economically advantaged nations tend to evaluate their life as more positive overall and report greater well-being than people in less advantaged nations. But how does positivity manifest in the daily life experiences of individuals around the world? The present study asked 15,244 college students from 62 nations, in 42 languages, to describe a situation they experienced the previous day using the Riverside Situational Q-sort (RSQ). Using expert ratings, the overall positivity of each situation was calculated for both nations and individuals. The positivity of the average situation in each nation was strongly related to the economic development of the nation as measured by the Human Development Index (HDI). For individuals’ daily experiences, the economic status of their nation also predicted the positivity of their experience, even more than their family socioeconomic status. Further analyses revealed the specific characteristics of the average situations for higher HDI nations that make their experiences more positive. Higher HDI was associated with situational experiences involving humor, socializing with others, and the potential to express emotions and fantasies. Lower HDI was associated with an increase in the presence of threats, blame, and hostility, as well as situational experiences consisting of family, religion, and money. Despite the increase in a few negative situational characteristics in lower HDI countries, the overall average experience still ranged from neutral to slightly positive, rather than negative, suggesting that greater HDI may not necessarily increase positive experiences but rather decrease negative experiences. The results illustrate how national economic status influences the lives of individuals even within a single instance of daily life, with large and powerful consequences when accumulated across individuals within each nation

Analytical approach of the nonlinear surface plasmon at a left-handed material

The surface wave dispersion relations of surface Plasmon at the interface of a left-handed material and a non-linear Kerr medium of arbitrary nonlinearity are derived based on a generalized first integral approach. The normalized power flow is also investigated for various values of frequency. The above study is conducted for both cases: self-focusing ( 0 α) and de-focusing ( 0 α) nonlinear Kerr coefficient