Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Video Game Narratives: Pandemic Themes in Covid Times

This article explores the relationship between Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and its influence on video game narratives. Video game sales have increased significantly since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. The influence of Stoker’s Dracula and the narratives of vampire and pandemic video games is important, since some popular games are explicitly centred around pandemics and vampires, and are being played during the Covid-19 pandemic. The article explores the historical connection between epidemics and the vampire myth, and how that influenced the narrative of Dracula, especially the connection between the influence of cholera and his upbringing in Ireland. It then examines how the narrative has been influential in video game narratives. Finally, the article touches on how video games with pandemic themes may be used by a player to find a sense of control, explore difficult narratives in a structured environment, and explore various points of view and catharsis

Relativistic linear stability equations for the nonlinear Dirac equation in Bose-Einstein condensates

We present relativistic linear stability equations (RLSE) for quasi-relativistic cold atoms in a honeycomb optical lattice. These equations are derived from first principles and provide a method for computing stabilities of arbitrary localized solutions of the nonlinear Dirac equation (NLDE), a relativistic generalization of the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation. We present a variety of such localized solutions: skyrmions, solitons, vortices, and half-quantum vortices, and study their stabilities via the RLSE. When applied to a uniform background, our calculations reveal an experimentally observable effect in the form of Cherenkov radiation. Remarkably, the Berry phase from the bipartite structure of the honeycomb lattice induces a boson-fermion transmutation in the quasi-particle operator statistics.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Food safety policy issues for developing countries

"Food safety issues have attracted international attention because they play an increasingly important role in determining whether developing countries have access to export markets.At the same time, food suppliers in developing countries face the challenge of improving food safety for their growing urban middle classes, and the large burden of disease that poor food safety generates in developing countries is more widely appreciated. Because developing countries produce and consume more perishable foods than before, such as meat, milk, fish, and eggs, food safety has become especially important to domestic consumers and in trade among developing countries.... Food safety is no longer simply a public health issue. It is also a market development issue. The focus on food safety in international trade and in trade agreements has also made it a trade issue for many countries—developed and developing alike." from TextFood safety ,food security ,Public health ,