Letter to Bichler and Nitzan: points of agreement and disagreement on the labour theory of value and on power

Commentary on and critique of Bichler and Nitzan’s power theory of value and capital accumulation

LS Penrose’s limit theorem: Tests by simulation

LS Penrose’s limit theorem (PLT) – which is implicit in Penrose [5, p. 72] and for which he gave no rigorous proof – says that, in simple weighted voting games, if the number of voters increases indefinitely while existing voters retain their weights and the relative quota is pegged, then – under certain conditions – the ratio between the voting powers of any two voters converges to the ratio between their weights. Lindner and Machover [3] prove some special cases of PLT; and conjecture that the theorem holds, under rather general conditions, for large classes of weighted voting games, various values of the quota, and with respect to several measures of voting power. We use simulation to test this conjecture. It is corroborated w.r.t. the Penrose–Banzhaf index for a quota of 50% but not for other values; w.r.t. the Shapley–Shubik index the conjecture is corroborated for all values of the quota (short of 100%).limit theorems, majority games, simulation, weighted voting games

PROSECUTING ALLEGED ISRAELI WAR CRIMINALS IN ENGLAND AND WALES

The criminal justice system in England & Wales is faced with allegations made by Palestinians of Israeli war crimes contrary to the Geneva Conventions Act 1957 (and which in some cases also involve allegations of torture contrary to s134 Criminal Justice Act 1988) – how will it cope with this challenge

Experimental investigation on spark ignition of annular premixed combustors

The ignition behaviour of a multiple-burner annular combustion chamber consisting of 12 or 18 bluff-body premixed methane-air swirl burners was investigated experimentally. The study focusses on the mechanism of lightround, namely the burner-to-burner flame propagation. Side visualization of the spreading flame by 5 kHz OH* chemiluminescence showed that propagation from burner to burner did not follow a purely azimuthal direction, but a sawtooth pattern with downstream and sideways motion from one burner to the following, bringing flame to the downstream part of the recirculation zone of the adjacent burner before being convected upstream leading to full burner ignition. This pattern was more pronounced when the burners where fitted with swirlers. Top visualization and image processing were used to quantify the speed of lightround as a function of inter-burner spacing, bulk velocity, equivalence ratio, and swirling feature. It was found that flame spread from burner to burner following two balanced modes of propagation. These are turbulent flame propagation combined with volumetric expansion in the inter-burner region and convection within the next un-ignited burner. The results presented in this paper bring new insights into the ignition of realistic gas turbines.The authors acknowledge financial assistance from EPSRC and Rolls–Royce Group

Der Zionismus und sein Popanz: Eine Antwort an die „linken" Zionisten

Acht Jahre sind seit dem Beginn der Besetzung der im Junikrieg 1967 eroberten Gebiete durch Israel vergangen. Die palästinensische Befreiungsbewegung hat einen großen Aufschwung genommen und wurde zu einem nicht mehr wegzudenkenden Faktor bei jeder Diskussion über die Perspektiven der Palästinafrage und des Nahostkonfliktes. Die relativen Erfolge der arabischen Armeen über Israel im Oktoberkrieg 1973, die wirtschaftliche und ideologische Brüchigkeit des israelische Staates und schließlich die veränderte Haltung der USA und der westeuropäischen Staaten gegenüber den arabischen Staaten - mit der damit verbundenen zwangsläufig erfolgenden Nuancenverschiebung in der Frage der israelisch-arabischen Konfrontation - offenbaren überdeutlich die innen- und außenpolitische Schwächung der Position Israels. Die Isolierung Israels, die in der UNO symbolisch in den 104 Stimmen für die Palästina-Resolution zum Ausdruck gekommen ist, hat international gesehen nicht nur in den Ländern der III. Welt und Osteuropas, sondern in unterschiedlichem Maße auch in der westlichen Hemisphere stattgefunden: die Bundesrepublik ist hiervon nicht ausgenommen

Experimental and numerical investigation on spark ignition of linearly-arranged non-premixed swirling burners

The ignition characteristics of a non-premixed multiple-burner linear combustion chamber was investigated experimentally and numerically, focusing on the determination of the mechanisms driving flame propagation from burner to burner. For different inter-burner spacings, overall equivalence ratios and bulk velocities, measurements of the velocity field and the mixture fraction distribution have been performed, respectively, with laser doppler anemometry and planar laser-induced fluorescence of acetone in the un-ignited flow. It was shown that in every individual burner, gas mixes with air within a central recirculation zone (CRZ) where the mixture is flammable except in the axial central rich gas jet and the annular air jet. Flammable mixture from the CRZ is extracted by the annular jet and this results in the existence of bridges of positive flammability factor in the inter-burner region. These bridges allow flame fragments to travel from the CRZ of the ignited burner to the CRZ of the adjacent unignited one, leading to burner-to-burner flame propagation. The ignition probability that sparking within a burner results in ignition of the adjacent one was obtained by performing many separate ignition trials with a laser spark. Ignition probability contours were also computed using a previously developed stochastic low-order ignition model and a large eddy simulation (LES) time-averaged solution of the cold flow. The quantification of the probability a flame kernel leads to burner ignition explained the differences existing between experimental results and the model. The results presented in this article extend our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the global ignition behavior of non-premixed annular combustion chambers.The authors gratefully acknowledge financial assistance from the EPSRC