4,527 research outputs found
From old wars to new wars and global terrorism
Even before 9/11 there were claims that the nature of war had changed
fundamentally. The 9/11 attacks created an urgent need to understand
contemporary wars and their relationship to older conventional and terrorist
wars, both of which exhibit remarkable regularities. The frequency-intensity
distribution of fatalities in "old wars", 1816-1980, is a power-law with
exponent 1.80. Global terrorist attacks, 1968-present, also follow a power-law
with exponent 1.71 for G7 countries and 2.5 for non-G7 countries. Here we
analyze two ongoing, high-profile wars on opposite sides of the globe -
Colombia and Iraq. Our analysis uses our own unique dataset for killings and
injuries in Colombia, plus publicly available data for civilians killed in
Iraq. We show strong evidence for power-law behavior within each war. Despite
substantial differences in contexts and data coverage, the power-law
coefficients for both wars are tending toward 2.5, which is a value
characteristic of non-G7 terrorism as opposed to old wars. We propose a
plausible yet analytically-solvable model of modern insurgent warfare, which
can explain these observations.Comment: For more information, please contact [email protected] or
[email protected]
Inception report on the Technical Assistance study (T.A. No. 1481-PAK): Crop based irrigation operations in the NWFP
Irrigation systems / Irrigation practices / Cropping systems / Water requirements / Pakistan
Ray and Wave Aberrations Revisited: A Huygens-Like Construction yields Exact Relations
The optical aberrations of a system can be described in terms of the wave
aberrations, defined as the departure from the ideal spherical wavefront; or
the ray aberrations, which are in turn the deviations from the paraxial ray
intersection measured in the image plane. The classical connection between the
two descriptions is an approximation, the error of which has, so far, not been
quantified analytically. We derive exact analytical equations for computing the
wavefront surface, the aberrated ray directions, and the transverse ray
aberrations in terms of the wave aberrations (OPD) and the reference sphere. We
introduce precise conditions for a function to be an OPD function, show that
every such function has an associated wavefront, and study the error arising
from the classical approximation. We establish strict conditions for the error
to be small. We illustrate our results with numerical simulations. Our results
show that large numerical apertures and high-frequency OPD functions yield
larger approximation errors.Comment: 12 pages, 10 Figures, JOSA A, vol. 33, no.
Negative-energy perturbations in cylindrical equilibria with a radial electric field
The impact of an equilibrium radial electric field on negative-energy
perturbations (NEPs) (which are potentially dangerous because they can lead to
either linear or nonlinear explosive instabilities) in cylindrical equilibria
of magnetically confined plasmas is investigated within the framework of
Maxwell-drift kinetic theory. It turns out that for wave vectors with a
non-vanishing component parallel to the magnetic field the conditions for the
existence of NEPs in equilibria with E=0 [G. N. Throumoulopoulos and D.
Pfirsch, Phys. Rev. E 53, 2767 (1996)] remain valid, while the condition for
the existence of perpendicular NEPs, which are found to be the most important
perturbations, is modified. For ( is the
electrostatic potential) and ( is
the total plasma pressure), a case which is of operational interest in magnetic
confinement systems, the existence of perpendicular NEPs depends on ,
where is the charge of the particle species . In this case the
electric field can reduce the NEPs activity in the edge region of tokamaklike
and stellaratorlike equilibria with identical parabolic pressure profiles, the
reduction of electron NEPs being more pronounced than that of ion NEPs.Comment: 30 pages, late
Neutralino Phenomenology at LEP2 in Supersymmetry with Bilinear Breaking of R-parity
We discuss the phenomenology of the lightest neutralino in models where an
effective bilinear term in the superpotential parametrizes the explicit
breaking of R-parity. We consider supergravity scenarios where the lightest
supersymmetric particle (LSP) is the lightest neutralino and which can be
explored at LEP2. We present a detailed study of the LSP decay properties and
general features of the corresponding signals expected at LEP2. We also
contrast our model with gauge mediated supersymmetry breaking.Comment: 21 pages, Latex, uses axodraw.sty (included), 13 figures included as
ps- and eps-files, figures slightly changed after bug-fixing, comparison with
GMSB and a few references added, version to appear in NP
Crop-based irrigation operations in the NWFP: Progress report no.2, Kharif 92 on the Technical Assistance Study, T.A. No.1481-PAK
Irrigation operation / Cropping systems / Irrigation canals / Water users' associations / Institutions / Pakistan
Bound-state dark matter with Majorana neutrinos
We propose a simple scenario in which dark matter (DM) emerges as a stable
neutral hadronic thermal relics, its stability following from an exact
symmetry. Neutrinos pick up radiatively induced
Majorana masses from the exchange of colored DM constituents. There is a common
origin for both dark matter and neutrino mass, with a lower bound for
neutrinoless double beta decay. Direct DM searches at nuclear recoil
experiments will test the proposal, which may also lead to other
phenomenological signals at future hadron collider and lepton flavour violation
experiments.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1803.0852
Critical behavior of ferromagnetic pure and random diluted nanoparticles with competing interactions: variational and Monte Carlo approaches
The magnetic properties and critical behavior of both ferromagnetic pure and
metallic nanoparticles having concurrently atomic disorder, dilution and
competing interactions, are studied in the framework of an Ising model. We have
used both the free energy variational principle based on the Bogoliubov
inequality and Monte Carlo simulation. As a case of study for random diluted
nanoparticles we have considered the FeMnAl alloy
characterized for exhibiting, under bulk conditions, low temperature reentrant
spin glass (RSG) behavior and for which experimental and simulation results are
available. Our results allow concluding that the variational model is
successful in reproducing features of the particle size dependence of the Curie
temperature for both pure and random diluted particles. In this last case, low
temperature magnetization reduction was consistent with the same type of RSG
behavior observed in bulk in accordance with the Almeida-Thouless line at low
fields and a linear dependence of the freezing temperature with the reciprocal
of the particle diameter was also obtained. Computation of the correlation
length critical exponent yielded the values via Bogoliubov
and via Monte Carlo. This fact indicates that even though
thermodynamical models can be indeed used in the study of nanostructures and
they can reproduce experimental features, special attention must be paid
regarding critical behavior. From both approaches, differences in the
exponent with respect to the pure Ising model agree with Harris and Fisher
arguments.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev.
Negative-Energy Perturbations in Circularly Cylindrical Equilibria within the Framework of Maxwell-Drift Kinetic Theory
The conditions for the existence of negative-energy perturbations (which
could be nonlinearly unstable and cause anomalous transport) are investigated
in the framework of linearized collisionless Maxwell-drift kinetic theory for
the case of equilibria of magnetically confined, circularly cylindrical plasmas
and vanishing initial field perturbations. For wave vectors with a
non-vanishing component parallel to the magnetic field, the plane equilibrium
conditions (derived by Throumoulopoulos and Pfirsch [Phys Rev. E {\bf 49}, 3290
(1994)]) are shown to remain valid, while the condition for perpendicular
perturbations (which are found to be the most important modes) is modified.
Consequently, besides the tokamak equilibrium regime in which the existence of
negative-energy perturbations is related to the threshold value of 2/3 of the
quantity , a new
regime appears, not present in plane equilibria, in which negative-energy
perturbations exist for {\em any} value of . For various analytic
cold-ion tokamak equilibria a substantial fraction of thermal electrons are
associated with negative-energy perturbations (active particles). In
particular, for linearly stable equilibria of a paramagnetic plasma with flat
electron temperature profile (), the entire velocity space is
occupied by active electrons. The part of the velocity space occupied by active
particles increases from the center to the plasma edge and is larger in a
paramagnetic plasma than in a diamagnetic plasma with the same pressure
profile. It is also shown that, unlike in plane equilibria, negative-energy
perturbations exist in force-free reversed-field pinch equilibria with a
substantial fraction of active particles.Comment: 31 pages, late
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