Initiation of stabilized detonations by projectiles

A high-speed projectile in combustible gas can initiate and stabilize a detonation wave under suitable conditions [1]. In this paper, numerical simulations of projectile induced detonation waves are presented. Using a one-step irreversible reaction model, the transition from shock-induced combustion to stabilized oblique detonation is observed via numerical simulations. An analysis of this transition by means of the critical decay-rate model, which considers a balance between energy-release due to reaction, and quenching due to shock-curvature, is presented

From 2000 Bush-Gore to 2006 Italian elections: Voting at fifty-fifty and the Contrarian Effect

A sociophysical model for opinion dynamics is shown to embody a series of recent western hung national votes all set at the unexpected and very improbable edge of a fifty-fifty score. It started with the Bush-Gore 2000 American presidential election, followed by the 2002 Stoiber-Schr\H{o}der, then the 2005 Schr\H{o}der-Merkel German elections, and finally the 2006 Prodi-Berlusconi Italian elections. In each case, the country was facing drastic choices, the running competing parties were advocating very different programs and millions of voters were involved. Moreover, polls were given a substantial margin for the predicted winner. While all these events were perceived as accidental and isolated, our model suggests that indeed they are deterministic and obey to one single universal phenomena associated to the effect of contrarian behavior on the dynamics of opinion forming. The not hung Bush-Kerry 2005 presidential election is shown to belong to the same universal frame. To conclude, the existence of contrarians hints at the repetition of hung elections in the near future.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure

The Cost of Affordable Food

When someone puts a piece of food in front of me, I don’t just see a piece of food. Instead, I see an innocent cow being cornered by a forklift and slaughtered, its limp, moist tissue hung on a long conveyer belt with hundreds of others. I see hundreds of chemically-injected chickens packed into a dark barn with no hope of seeing sunlight in their lifetime. I see immigrants pulled from their houses like criminals, taken away from the lives they’ve spent years building for themselves and their families, working for the same food company that courted them into the country. I see pink slime, a dubious compilation of cartilage, connective tissue, tendons and ammonia being served as chicken nuggets and hamburgers in public school lunches. [excerpt

Contrarian Deterministic Effect: the "Hung Elections Scenario"

A contrarian is someone who deliberately decides to oppoe the prevailing choice of others. The Galam model of two state opinion dynamicsincorporates agent updates by a single step random grouping in which all participants adopt the opinion of their respective local majority group. The process is repeated until a stable collective state is reached; the associated dynamics is fast. Here we show that the introduction of contrarians may give rise to interesting dynamics generated phases and even to a critical behavior at a contrarian concentration $a_c$. For $a<a_c$ an ordered phase is generated with a clear cut majority-minority splitting. By contrast when $a>a_c$ the resulting disordered phase has no majority: agents keep shifting opinions but no symmetry breaking (i.e., the appearance of a majority) takes place. Our results are employed to explain the outcome of the 2000 American presidential elections and that of the 2002 German parliamentary elections. Those events are found to be inevitable. On this basis the ``hung elections scenario'' is predicted to become a common occurrence in modern democracies.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

The economic consequences of a hung parliament : lessons from February 1974

The British general election on 10 May 2010 delivered Britain’s first hung Parliament since February 1974, and in the run-up, the Conservative Party made much of the economic difficulties Britain faced in the second half of the 1970s in order to try and convince voters that anything other than a Tory vote would risk exposing the nation to the discipline of financial markets. The question of how well equipped an exceptional kind of British government is to deal with exceptional economic circumstances is therefore of paramount importance. This paper argues that the Conservative Party made too much of the impact of the 1974 hung Parliament in precipitating subsequent economic crisis and suggests that as such, there is no reason to assume that the Conservative-Liberal coalition government is ill-equipped to manage British economic affairs in difficult circumstances

Bacillus as Siderophore and Iron-bioremoval Bacteria

ome Bacillus strains can produce siderophore. Siderophore is a chelating agent for ferric iron as a response to low iron environment. Bacillus has ability as iron bioremoval. The aim of this research was to get siderophore Bacillus strain which could resist to iron and to know the ability of its bioremoval. This research used Bacillus isolated from Kalimas Surabaya ie: A6, DA11, and SS19. The strains were screened for siderophore bacteria in Fe-CAS agar medium. Ferric bioreduction was analysed on medium contained FeCl3.6H2O 50; 100; and 150 mg/L. Ferric bioremoval was measured by Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy method. Bacillus A6, DA11, and SS19 could produce siderophore and also stand to media containing 150 mg/L FeCl3.6H2O. Bacillus DA11 had the highest ability of ferric bioremoval, which was 26.841 mg/L from 33.365 mg/L concentration, with efficiency 80.5%

The debates and the long-awaited reform

Trung Tran, Phuong-Thao T. Trinh, Thu-Trang Vuong, Hiep-Hung Pham (2019). Chapter 1. The debates and the long-awaited reform. In Quan-Hoang Vuong, Trung Tran (Eds.), The Vietnamese Social Sciences at a Fork in the Road (pp. 17–32). Warsaw, Poland: De Gruyter / Sciendo. DOI:10.2478/9783110686081-006 Online ISBN: 9783110686081 © 2019 De Gruyter / Sciend