3,493 research outputs found
The Nexus between Social Capital and Reintegration of Ex-combatants: A Case for Sierra Leone
Following the end of the cold war, the international community shifted its attention from duelling ideological warfare to the many intra-state, or internal armed conflicts occurring globally. In response, the United Nations, along with a wide array of aid agencies, have invested greater and greater time and resources in post-conflict environments. When peace is reached after conflict, economic and social conditions are not
conducive for ex-combatants to reintegrate on their own. Programmes that address ex-combatants as well as broader post-conflict recovery are essential. Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration (DDR) is one such programme that has received widespread attention. Policy analysts have debated the factors that contribute to a successful DDR programme.This study examines reintegration, the final phase of DDR, arguing that in order to achieve successful reintegration of ex-combatants, a community-focused approach that generates social capital must be implemented. Using
a comprehensive literature review of social capital and community-based reintegration and a thorough case study from Sierra Leone, this paper will demonstrate the relationship between social capital and reintegration. African Journal on Conflict Resolution Vol. 8 (1) 2008: pp. 9-3
Information erasure without an energy cost
Landauer argued that the process of erasing the information stored in a
memory device incurs an energy cost in the form of a minimum amount of
mechanical work. We find, however, that this energy cost can be reduced to zero
by paying a cost in angular momentum or any other conserved quantity. Erasing
the memory of Maxwell's demon in this way implies that work can be extracted
from a single thermal reservoir at a cost of angular momentum and an increase
in total entropy. The implications of this for the second law of thermodynamics
are assessed.Comment: 8 pages with 1 figure. Final published versio
Universal efficiency at optimal work with Bayesian statistics
If the work per cycle of a quantum heat engine is averaged over an
appropriate prior distribution for an external parameter , the work becomes
optimal at Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency. More general priors of the form yield optimal work at an efficiency which stays close to
CA value, in particular near equilibrium the efficiency scales as one-half of
the Carnot value. This feature is analogous to the one recently observed in
literature for certain models of finite-time thermodynamics. Further, the use
of Bayes' theorem implies that the work estimated with posterior probabilities
also bears close analogy with the classical formula. These findings suggest
that the notion of prior information can be used to reveal thermodynamic
features in quantum systems, thus pointing to a new connection between
thermodynamic behavior and the concept of information.Comment: revtex4, 5 pages, abstract changed and presentation improved; results
unchanged. New result with Bayes Theorem adde
Hamiltonian Derivations of the Generalized Jarzynski Equalities under Feedback Control
In the presence of feedback control by "Maxwell's demon," the second law of
thermodynamics and the nonequilibrium equalities such as the Jarzynski equality
need to be generalized. In this paper, we derive the generalized Jarzynski
equalities for classical Hamiltonian dynamics based on the Liouville's theorem,
which is the same approach as the original proof of the Jarzynski equality
[Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 2690 (1997)]. The obtained equalities lead to the
generalizations of the second law of thermodynamics for the Hamiltonian systems
in the presence of feedback control.Comment: Proceedings of "STATPHYS - Kolkata VII", November 26-30, 2010,
Kolkata, Indi
Abundance of Planktonic Virus-Like Particles in Lake Erie Subsurface Waters
Author Institution: Department of Biological Sciences, Kent State University - Trumbull Campus ; Department of Biological Sciences and Water Resources Research Institute, Kent State UniversityAbundance of virus-like particles (VLP) was determined in Lake Erie subsurface water. The relationship between VLP and the bacterial and phytoplankton communities were investigated. Viral and bacterial numbers were determined using nucleic acid stains and epifluorescent microscopy. Phytoplankton abundance was estimated by chlorophylls extraction. Viral abundance averaged 1.05 x 106 VLP/ml and the ratio of viral to bacterial number was less than 1.0 across most sampling sites and dates. Viral abundance was not correlated with either bacterial abundance or chlorophyll a concentration. Viral abundance was found to be most similar to other Great Lakes and marine systems and dissimilar to other freshwater systems
Brief Note: Characterization of Hydrophobic Stream Bacteria Based on Adhesion to n-Octane
Author Institution: Department of Biological Sciences, Kent State UniversityThe purpose of this study was to characterize stream bacterial communities based on cell surface hydrophobicity. Because hydrophobicity is related to adhesion we hypothesized that more hydrophobic bacteria would be found on solid surfaces than in water. Water, rock, and sediment from two northeastern Ohio streams were sampled and bacteria were plated on modified nutrient agar. Hydrophobicity was determined by measuring adherence to n-octane. No difference was found in the proportion of hydrophobic bacteria among habitats. Two hydrophobic isolates were identified as Sphingomonas paucimobilis and Chryseomonas luteola. A large proportion of hydrophobic bacteria were gram positive and urease positive; none were gelatinase positive. More hydrophobic than hydrophilic bacteria were able to grow using manatose or malatose as the only carbon source. These physiological differences indicate that hydrophobic bacteria may be able to utilize resources not available to hydrophilic bacteria
Energy Requirement of Control: Comments on Szilard's Engine and Maxwell's Demon
In mathematical physical analyses of Szilard's engine and Maxwell's demon, a
general assumption (explicit or implicit) is that one can neglect the energy
needed for relocating the piston in Szilard's engine and for driving the trap
door in Maxwell's demon. If this basic assumption is wrong, then the
conclusions of a vast literature on the implications of the Second Law of
Thermodynamics and of Landauer's erasure theorem are incorrect too. Our
analyses of the fundamental information physical aspects of various type of
control within Szilard's engine and Maxwell's demon indicate that the entropy
production due to the necessary generation of information yield much greater
energy dissipation than the energy Szilard's engine is able to produce even if
all sources of dissipation in the rest of these demons (due to measurement,
decision, memory, etc) are neglected.Comment: New, simpler and more fundamental approach utilizing the physical
meaning of control-information and the related entropy production. Criticism
of recent experiments adde
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