Understanding Compassion: On The Iceman Cometh

In O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, we meet another kind of family, seventeen roomers in Harry Hope’s saloon who sustain their lives by whiskey and pipe dreams. They all try and help one another, depend on each other, and in fact, their sense of family supports them as they sing the refrains of songs, boast of their glorious past, and wait for the brilliant future that will never come. Through dealing with O’Neill’s tragic experience, his viewpoint of the theatre, backdrop of The Iceman Cometh, production of The Iceman Cometh, the value of strong emotions in tragedy and modern life characterized by repetitious talks, wrangling, laughing and fighting, this paper aims to point out that O’Neill is very close to those social outcasts of his old days at Jimmy the Priest’s and there is no doubt that O’Neill portrays them from his loving memory with deep sympathy and understanding

Biblical Themes in Eugene O’Neill’s Plays

Eugene O’Neill was born in a devout Catholic family. Young Eugene had fervently prayed to God to heal his mother’s drug addiction, but God did not hear his prayers. Disappointed Eugene abandoned his Catholic faith at the age of fifteen, and began to explore a new god for replacing the old one since then. Eugene O’Neill is an honest, sincere and compassionate dramatist; his works focuses on the meaning of human life. Although European writers and thinkers, such as Freud, Jung, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shaw, Chekhov, Synge, Conrad, Nietzsche and Strindberg exerted important influences on him in philosophy, psychology and drama, they could not bring him satisfaction and joy. O’Neill’s exploration of the ultimate meaning of life had finally returned to the biblical doctrine. Through dealing with the recurrent themes in O’Neill’s plays, this paper aims to point out that biblical doctrines are indispensable to O’Neill’s plays

Equalitarian Societies are Economically Impossible

The inequality of wealth distribution is a universal phenomenon in the civilized nations, and it is often imputed to the Matthew effect, that is, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Some philosophers unjustified this phenomenon and tried to put the human civilization upon the evenness of wealth. Noticing the facts that 1) the emergence of the centralism is the starting point of human civilization, i.e., people in a society were organized hierarchically, 2) the inequality of wealth emerges simultaneously, this paper proposes a wealth distribution model based on the hidden tree structure from the viewpoint of complex network. This model considers the organized structure of people in a society as a hidden tree, and the cooperations among human beings as the transactions on the hidden tree, thereby explains the distribution of wealth. This model shows that the scale-free phenomenon of wealth distribution can be produced by the cascade controlling of human society, that is, the inequality of wealth can parasitize in the social organizations, such that any actions in eliminating the unequal wealth distribution would lead to the destroy of social or economic structures, resulting in the collapse of the economic system, therefore, would fail in vain

Coalescence of Carbon Atoms on Cu (111) Surface: Emergence of a Stable Bridging-Metal Structure Motif

By combining first principles transition state location and molecular dynamics simulation, we unambiguously identify a carbon atom approaching induced bridging metal structure formation on Cu (111) surface, which strongly modify the carbon atom coalescence dynamics. The emergence of this new structural motif turns out to be a result of the subtle balance between Cu-C and Cu-Cu interactions. Based on this picture, a simple theoretical model is proposed, which describes a variety of surface chemistries very well

Constructing multiwing attractors from a robust chaotic system with non-hyperbolic equilibrium points

We investigate a three-dimensional (3D) robust chaotic system which only holds two nonhyperbolic equilibrium points, and finds the complex dynamical behaviour of position modulation beyond amplitude modulation. To extend the application of this chaotic system, we initiate a novel methodology to construct multiwing chaotic attractors by modifying the position and amplitude parameters. Moreover, the signal amplitude, range and distance of the generated multiwings can be easily adjusted by using the control parameters, which enable us to enhance the potential application in chaotic cryptography and secure communication. The effectiveness of the theoretical analyses is confirmed by numerical simulations. Particularly, the multiwing attractor is physically realized by using DSP (digital signal processor) chip

Spatial variation in aragonite saturation state and the influencing factors in Jiaozhou Bay, China

Both natural processes and human activities affect seawater calcium carbonate saturation state (Ωarag), while the mechanisms are still far from being clearly understood. This study analysed the seawater surface Ωarag during summer and winter in Jiaozhou Bay (JZB), China, based on two cruises observations performed in January and June 2017. The ranges of Ωarag values were 1.55~2.92 in summer and 1.62~2.15 in winter. Regression analyses were conducted to identify the drivers of the change of Ωarag distribution, and then the relative contributions of temperature, mixing processes and biological processes to the spatial differences in Ωarag were evaluated by introducing the difference between total alkalinity (TA) and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) as a proxy for Ωarag. The results showed that biological processes were the main factor affecting the spatial differences in Ωarag, with relative contributions of 70% in summer and 50% in winter. The contributions of temperature (25% in summer and 20% in winter) and the mixing processes (5% in summer and 30% in winter) were lower. The increasing urbanization in offshore areas can further worsen acidification, therefore environmental protection in both offshore and onshore is needed