[Rezension zu:] Mária Bieliková: Bipolarität der Gestalten in Hermann Hesses Prosa

Rezension zu Mária Bieliková: Bipolarität der Gestalten in Hermann Hesses Prosa. Die Romane Demian und Der Steppenwolf vor dem Hintergrund der daoistischen Philosophie. Hamburg: Dr. Kovač, 200

Stefan Zweig’s Narratives of Migration and Emigration

Stefan Zweig’s relation to the phenomenon of migration is indeed a complicated issue, which can be approached from at least three perspectives. Firstly, there is the biographic aspect: as one of the major representatives of the German exile literature (Exilliteratur), Zweig has one of the most dramatic biographies among the German authors in the 20th century, including his emigration from Austria to England and New York, then to South America, where (in Petrópolis near Rio de Janeiro) he died in February 1942. Secondly, migration is present in his fictional works, such as the short stories Schachnovelle or Incident on Lake Geneva. Thirdly, Zweig published, a year before his death, his book Brazil, Land of the Future, which, lacking fictitious elements, but including biographic ones, basically summarizes the history (also immigration-history) of Brazil and the main cultural features of his host country. Accordingly, the following paper is a brief analysis of three possible dimensions of migration in Stefan Zweig: biographic migration, including his voluntary and, later, his forced migration, finally fictional migration, i.e. migration as a subject of his works

Exact k -Wise Intersection Theorems

A typical problem in extremal combinatorics is the following. Given a large number n and a set L, find the maximum cardinality of a family of subsets of a ground set of n elements such that the intersection of any two subsets has cardinality in L. We investigate the generalization of this problem, where intersections of more than 2 subsets are considered. In particular, we prove that when k−1 is a power of 2, the size of the extremal k-wise oddtown family is (k−1)(n− 2log2(k−1)). Tight bounds are also found in several other basic case

Spreading of families in cyclic predator-prey models

We study the spreading of families in two-dimensional multispecies predator-prey systems, in which species cyclically dominate each other. In each time step randomly chosen individuals invade one of the nearest sites of the square lattice eliminating their prey. Initially all individuals get a family-name which will be carried on by their descendants. Monte Carlo simulations show that the systems with several species (N=3,4,5) are asymptotically approaching the behavior of the voter model, i.e., the survival probability of families, the mean-size of families and the mean-square distance of descendants from their ancestor exhibit the same scaling behavior. The scaling behavior of the survival probability of families has a logarithmic correction. In case of the voter model this correction depends on the number of species, while cyclic predator-prey models behave like the voter model with infinite species. It is found that changing the rates of invasions does not change this asymptotic behavior. As an application a three-species system with a fourth species intruder is also discussed.Comment: to be published in PR

Pushing the limits, episode 2: K2 observations of extragalactic RR Lyrae stars in the dwarf galaxy Leo IV

We present the first observations of extragalactic pulsating stars in the K2 ecliptic survey of the Kepler space telescope. Variability of all three RR Lyrae stars in the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Leo IV were successfully detected, at a brightness of Kp~21.5 mag, from data collected during Campaign 1. We identified one modulated star and another likely Blazhko candidate with periods of 29.8+-0.9 d and more than 80 d, respectively. EPIC 210282473 represents the first star beyond the Magellanic Clouds for which the Blazhko period and cycle-to-cycle variations in the modulation were unambiguously measured.The photometric [Fe/H] indices of the stars agree with earlier results that Leo IV is a very metal-poor galaxy. Two out of three stars blend with brighter background galaxies in the K2 frames. We demonstrate that image subtraction can be reliably used to extract photometry from faint confused sources that will be crucial not only for the K2 mission but for future space photometric missions as well.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Light curves can be downloaded from http://konkoly.hu/KIK/data.htm

Role of labels referring to quality and country of origin in food consumers’ decisions

Within a survey made of Hungarian awareness of, attitudes towards, and preferences for food labels and pricing, this study focused on consumers’ reactions to quality and country of origin labels. Data were collected with a standard questionnaire, face-to-face interviews (1000 participants) in the respondents’ home. It became obvious that consumers were looking for information about quality (rating its importance at 4.04) on packages, but information about origin (3.94) and production (3.89) was also important to them. The capability of respondents to spontaneously recall country of origin and quality labels was very limited: 35.5% of all respondents could not name any such labels. The best known label was “Hungarian Product” (30.5%), which was recognized by up to 90% of the respondents after they were shown it. Many consumers were ready to pay premium for products bearing this label (31.7%). According to our results, information about quality is important to consumers, but they do not look for it deliberately, and only a few consumers ascribe a higher value to products with labels bearing this information. There is a pressing need to increase consumers’ confidence for trademarks through dissemination of reliable information

Vortex dynamics in a three-state model under cyclic dominance

The evolution of domain structure is investigated in a two-dimensional voter model with three states under cyclic dominance. The study focus on the dynamics of vortices, defined by the points where three states (domains) meet. We can distinguish vortices and antivortices which walk randomly and annihilate each other. The domain wall motion can create vortex-antivortex pairs at a rate which is increased by the spiral formation due to the cyclic dominance. This mechanism is contrasted with a branching annihilating random walk (BARW) in a particle antiparticle system with density dependent pair creation rate. Numerical estimates for the critical indices of the vortex density ($\beta=0.29(4)$) and of its fluctuation ($\gamma=0.34(6)$) improve an earlier Monte Carlo study [Tainaka and Itoh, Europhys. Lett. 15, 399 (1991)] of the three-state cyclic voter model in two dimensions.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, to appear in PR