Optimal control of laser plasma instabilities using Spike Trains of Uneven Duration and Delay (STUD pulses) for ICF and IFE

An adaptive method of controlling parametric instabilities in laser produced plasmas is proposed. It involves fast temporal modulation of a laser pulse on the fastest instability's amplification time scale, adapting to changing and unknown plasma conditions. These pulses are comprised of on and off sequences having at least one or two orders of magnitude contrast between them. Such laser illumination profiles are called STUD pulses for Spike Trains of Uneven Duration and Delay. The STUD pulse program includes scrambling the speckle patterns spatially in between the laser spikes. The off times allow damping of driven waves. The scrambling of the hot spots allows tens of damping times to elapse before hot spot locations experience recurring high intensity spikes. Damping in the meantime will have healed the scars of past growth. Another unique feature of STUD pulses on crossing beams is that their temporal profiles can be interlaced or staggered, and their interactions thus controlled with an on-off switch and a dimmer.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. Europ. Phys. J. Web of Conf. IFSA 2011, Bordeau

Assessing the democratic value of civil society engagement in the European Union

"The title indicates an empirical question, but the main problems to solve are of a theoretical nature: Only when this preparatory work is done, we can - with the help of a theoretical model - investigate the democratic quality of civil society engagement in the EU empirically. So this paper is mostly on ‘asking the right questions’: First, a normative conception of democracy is outlined, which is in our view appropriate to measure and assess the changing quality of European democratic performance (1). Then the interpretations of civil society and its latent democratic functions are introduced (2). In a next step, different conceptions of the EU and respective roles of civil society involvement are discussed because the potential democratic function of civil society varies with the conceptions of the EU as polity (3). Based on these deliberations we develop an analytical model of the 'civil society-EU democracy' relation and specify the relevant questions in order to measure its democratic performance (4). Finally, we discuss the implications of our theoretical model for empirical research and try to give some very rough indications concerning the overall democratic performance of the civil society involvement in the European Union (5)." (excerpt

Deliberative Öffentlichkeit

Für Vertreter einer deliberativen Demokratie bildet die Öffentlichkeit einen zentralen Ort anspruchsvoller Beratungen. In Anschluss an J. Habermas werden fünf normative Kriterien ausgewiesen: Repräsentativität der Sprecher, Gleichheit des Publikums, angemessene Offenheit sowie eine Informations- und eine Diskursfunktion. In Auseinandersetzung mit der entsprechenden empirischen Literatur werden forschungspragmatische Probleme erörtert. Insbesondere gilt es bei der Abschätzung der themenspezifischen deliberativen Qualität die relevanten Kommunikationskonstellationen und ihre Einbettung im politischen System - als Wahlkämpfe, politische Entscheidungen und als kollektive Selbstverständigungen - stärker zu berücksichtigen. Im dritten Schritt wird nach persistenten Defiziten der Realisierung obiger Kriterien in modernen Öffentlichkeiten gefahndet. Diese Defizite erweisen sich kurioserweise gerade dort als besonders virulent, wo Vertreter deliberativer Demokratie besonders viel erwarten - bei der Beteiligung von Bürgern und zivilgesellschaftlichen Akteuren. Ihre Beiträge sind nicht von der gewünschten argumentativen Qualität, vor allem lässt sich dauerhaft keine adäquate, egalitäre Rezeption öffentlicher Beratungen erwarten. Gegen die Herangehensweise in der bestehenden empirischen Literatur wird dabei die Fruchtbarkeit der Berücksichtigung spezifischer Kommunikationskonstellationen exemplarisch verdeutlicht.For advocates of deliberative democracy and especially for J. Habermas, the public sphere is a central locus of demanding deliberations. In this article the relevant normative expectations are confronted with questions of their feasibility. Initially five normative criteria were identified: representativeness of speakers, equality of recipients, appropriate openness, as well as an information and a discourse function. Discussing the empirical literature on deliberative public spheres certain methodological problems are outlined. Especially the assessment of the deliberative quality of the specific publics should draw on certain constellations of communication and their embeddedness in the political system - as election campaigns, political decisions and collective self understandings. Finally the question of feasibility is answered by searching for persistent deficits of modern publics in realizing the normative criteria of deliberative democracy. Curiously where advocates of deliberative democracy have especially high expectations, as in the deliberative functioning of citizens and civil society actors, the realistic performance (quality of their contribution and equality of reception) is rather poor

Deliberative Öffentlichkeit

Für Vertreter einer deliberativen Demokratie bildet die Öffentlichkeit einen zentralen Ort anspruchsvoller Beratungen. In Anschluss an J. Habermas werden fünf normative Kriterien ausgewiesen: Repräsentativität der Sprecher, Gleichheit des Publikums, angemessene Offenheit sowie eine Informations- und eine Diskursfunktion. In Auseinandersetzung mit der entsprechenden empirischen Literatur werden forschungspragmatische Probleme erörtert. Insbesondere gilt es bei der Abschätzung der themenspezifischen deliberativen Qualität die relevanten Kommunikationskonstellationen und ihre Einbettung im politischen System - als Wahlkämpfe, politische Entscheidungen und als kollektive Selbstverständigungen - stärker zu berücksichtigen. Im dritten Schritt wird nach persistenten Defiziten der Realisierung obiger Kriterien in modernen Öffentlichkeiten gefahndet. Diese Defizite erweisen sich kurioserweise gerade dort als besonders virulent, wo Vertreter deliberativer Demokratie besonders viel erwarten - bei der Beteiligung von Bürgern und zivilgesellschaftlichen Akteuren. Ihre Beiträge sind nicht von der gewünschten argumentativen Qualität, vor allem lässt sich dauerhaft keine adäquate, egalitäre Rezeption öffentlicher Beratungen erwarten. Gegen die Herangehensweise in der bestehenden empirischen Literatur wird dabei die Fruchtbarkeit der Berücksichtigung spezifischer Kommunikationskonstellationen exemplarisch verdeutlicht.For advocates of deliberative democracy and especially for J. Habermas, the public sphere is a central locus of demanding deliberations. In this article the relevant normative expectations are confronted with questions of their feasibility. Initially five normative criteria were identified: representativeness of speakers, equality of recipients, appropriate openness, as well as an information and a discourse function. Discussing the empirical literature on deliberative public spheres certain methodological problems are outlined. Especially the assessment of the deliberative quality of the specific publics should draw on certain constellations of communication and their embeddedness in the political system - as election campaigns, political decisions and collective self understandings. Finally the question of feasibility is answered by searching for persistent deficits of modern publics in realizing the normative criteria of deliberative democracy. Curiously where advocates of deliberative democracy have especially high expectations, as in the deliberative functioning of citizens and civil society actors, the realistic performance (quality of their contribution and equality of reception) is rather poor

Deliberation oder Demokratie? Zur egalitären Kritik an deliberativen Demokratiekonzeptionen

Untergraben anspruchsvolle Beratungsprozesse, wie sie deliberative Demokratiekonzeptionen vorsehen, die politische Gleichheit und damit die demokratische Qualität entsprechender politischer Arrangements? In einem Vergleich verschiedener, deliberativer und nicht deliberativer bester Praktiken wird gezeigt, dass die unvermeidbaren empirischen Restriktionen deliberativer Prozesse nicht dazu taugen, die normative Plausibilität deliberativer Demokratiekonzeptionen zu beschädigen. In vergleichender Abschätzung zeigt sich vielmehr, dass deliberative und nicht deliberative Politikmodi ein demokratisches Synergiepotential besitzen, das durch den dichotomisierenden Zugriff auf deliberative und andere Verfahren eher verstellt als aufgehellt wird.Do demanding processes of public deliberations expected by normative conceptions of deliberative democracy undermine political equality and thus the democratic quality of corresponding institutional arrangements? By comparing different best practices of deliberative and non-deliberative modes it is shown that the unavoidable empirical restrictions of deliberations are of no use to damage the plausibility of the ideal of deliberative democracy. What is more, the comparative assessment indicates synergic potentials of deliberative and non-deliberative modes of politics, which are more obfuscated than enlightened by dichotomic use of these procedures

A eficácia social do direito ambiental no meio rural agrícola: uma análise a partir da lei 9.605/98

Recently, the environmental issues has been growing as a matter of interest to society, This issues hits the right causing the number of laws on the subject to grown significantly in recent years. Nevertheless, within this universe are frequent juridical notes in the sense that the social effectiveness of these laws does not occur with the same intensity and enthusiasm with which they are promulgated. From an interdisciplinary proposal that seeks contributions of linguistics and sociology, this paper presents an approach to social issues regarding the effectiveness of environmental legislation in the rural environment considering a group of farmers penalized by the courts for violation of the provisions of Special Courts competence of Law 9.605/98 which deal with the flora. It initially made a theoretical approach under the theme of environmental sociology and Right seeking to understand and present the current status of discussions involving environmental legislation in the country. Following, based on Discourse Analysis, it is conducted an incursion by the legislative process that culminated in the promulgation of the Law 9.605/98, with emphasis on conflicting interests represented by the advocates of agribusiness and environmentalists in Congress. Afterwards, based on practical cases of application of the articles of Law 9.605/98 by the fiscalization and Justice aimed to know offenders penalized through a field survey, in order to characterize the farms, farming systems and production systems of existing farms. The data obtained were compared to those obtained in a similar group of farmers, environmentally adequated in order to produce inferences about the searched theme. Then, the same instrument applied to violators was applied to a group of similar farmers, but environmentally suitable in order to produce inferences about the search topic. The results obtained in this work demonstrated the model of development adopted in relation to agriculture is crucial to how the farmers understand environmental legislation. The research aimed to contribute to the debate about the effectiveness of environmental legislation in rural environment.A emergência da questão ambiental como tema de interesse da sociedade atinge o Direito fazendo com que nos últimos anos o número de leis relativas ao tema tenha crescido significativamente. Não obstante, dentro deste universo jurídico são frequentes os apontamentos no sentido de que a eficácia social destas leis não ocorre com a mesma intensidade e entusiasmo com que são promulgadas. A partir de uma proposta interdisciplinar que busca contribuições da linguística e da sociologia este trabalho apresenta uma abordagem das questões relativas a eficácia social da legislação ambiental no meio rural agrícola, tendo como recorte um grupo de agricultores penalizados pela Justiça por infração aos dispositivos da competência dos Juizados Especiais na Lei 9.605/98 que tratam da flora. É feita inicialmente uma abordagem teórica sobre tema no âmbito do Direito e da sociologia ambiental buscando-se compreender e apresentar o estágio atual das discussões envolvendo a legislação ambiental no país. Após, com base na Análise do Discurso, é realizada uma incursão pelo processo legislativo que culminou na promulgação da Lei 9.605/98, com ênfase nos interesses contraditórios representados pelos defensores do agronegócio e ambientalistas no Congresso Nacional. Posteriormente, com base nos casos práticos de aplicação dos dispositivos da 9.605/98 pelos órgãos de fiscalização e pela Justiça buscou-se, por meio de uma pesquisa de campo, conhecer os infratores penalizados a fim de caracterizar as propriedades, sistemas de cultivo e produção existentes nas propriedades. Em seguida o mesmo instrumento aplicado aos infratores foi aplicado a um grupo de agricultores similar, mas ambientalmente adequados a fim de produzir inferências sobre o tema pesquisado. Os resultados obtidos demonstraram que o modelo de desenvolvimento adotado no âmbito da agricultura é determinante para a forma como os agricultores percebem a legislação ambiental. A pesquisa buscou contribuir para o debate acerca da eficácia social da legislação ambiental no meio rural

On first-order phase transition in microcanonical and canonical non-extensive systems

Two examples of Microcanonical Potts models, 2-dimensional nearest neighbor and mean field, are considered via exact enumeration of states and analytical asymptotic methods. In the interval of energies corresponding to a first order phase transition, both of these models exhibit a convex dip in the entropy vs energy plot and a region with negative specific heat within the dip. It is observed that in the nearest neighbor model the dip flattens and disappears as the lattice size grows, while in the mean field model the dip persists even in the limit of an infinite system. If formal transitions from microcanonical to canonical ensembles and back are performed for an infinite but non-extensive system, the convex dip in the microcanonical entropy plot disappears.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure