Using natural disasters to instigate radical policy changes – the effect of Fukushima nuclear power plant accident on nuclear energy policies

Natural disasters and their effects have evolved to reflect the complexities of the physical and human environments, and their interactions in the modern world. After the earthquake and the tsunami of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors in March 2011 activists, lobbyist and reporters were quick to expose nuclear technology and demand if not an immediate closure, than at least a gradual phasing out of nuclear power plants. Further research on topics such as the safety of nuclear power plants, the environmental and social effects of radioactive contamination, and the potential of nuclear energy as a world power source has a critical role in this ongoing debate in order to reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and continuing rise in national energy demands for providing powerful motivators in the search for alternative energy sources

Soil quality for sustainable production of sunflower and soybean

The production plots of three large sunflower and soybean growers in the Vojvodina Province (AIC "Bečej" in Bečej, "Agrodunav" in Karavukovo and "Graničar" in Adaševci) were analyzed in 2002 and 2003, as a part of the project titled "Soil characterization and land management for production of highvalue food from sunflower and soybean". Soil samples taken from profiles (24) and topsoil (55) were analyzed for more than 30 parameters, i.e. physical properties, main chemical properties, total contents of microelements and heavy metals, contents of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and the activity concentration of radionuclides

On the instability of equilibrium of a mechanical system with nonconservative forces

In this paper the stability of equilibrium of nonholonomic systems, on which dissipative and nonconservative positional forces act, is considered. We have proved the theorems on the instability of equilibrium under the assumptions that: the kinetic energy, the Rayleigh’s dissipation function and the positional forces are infinitely differentiable functions; the projection of the positional force component which represents the first nontrivial form of Maclaurin’s series of that positional force to the plane, which is normal to the vectors of nonholonomic constraints in the equilibrium position, is central and repulsive (with its centre of action in the equilibrium position). The suggested theorems are generalization of the results from [V.V. Kozlov, Prikl. Math. Mekh. (PMM), T58, V5, (1994), 31-36] and [M.M. Veskovic, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, 24, (1998), 139-154]. The result obtained is analogous to the result from [D.R. Merkin, Introduction to theory of the stability of motion, Nauka, Moscow (1987)], which refers to the impossibility of equilibrium stabilization in a holonomic conservative system by dissipative and nonconservative positional forces in case when the potential energy in the equilibrium position has the maximum. The proving technique will be similar to that used in the paper [V.V. Kozlov, Prikl. Math. Mekh. (PMM), T58, V5, (1994), 31-36].