Computational modelling in chemical engineering

Presentation given at the 60th anniversaryComputational modelling in chemical engineering: from science to technolog

Education for Sustaining Peace through Historical Memory

Informed by the author’s long-standing work on violent conflict, peace and education in countries of the Global South, particularly Colombia, this open access book presents a comprehensive narrative about the relationship between peace education, historical memory and the sustaining peace agenda, advocating for the adoption of a new perspective on education for sustaining peace through historical memory. Education on and for peace in countries wrestling with, or emerging from, protracted violent conflict is up against major challenges, and both conventional and critical approaches to peace education are limited to address these. Incorporating a focus on historical memory, without losing sight of its own pitfalls, into peace education can support learners and teachers to come to grips with achieving positive, peace-sustaining change at both the micro (individual) and macro (social and institutional) levels, and to develop concepts and practices of effective and legitimate alternatives to violence and war. Conceived in these terms, historical memory-oriented peace education also stands to enhance the work-in-progress that is the UN-led sustaining peace agenda, including its Sustainable Development Goals

Nigeria's Post-1999 Political Settlement and Violence Mitigation in the Niger Delta

Almost fifteen years after transitioning to civilian-electoral rule, Nigeria is still wrestling with the legacy of a protracted period of military government and the ‘resource curse’ associated with its huge oil wealth. The ‘Niger Delta question’, as it is often referred to in Nigeria, is not close to resolution. The region has temporarily been pacified and oil production has gone up again, though it still falls short of Nigeria’s full production potential. But the reintegration of former mid-ranking militant commanders and fighters is faltering and social unrest persists due to high youth unemployment and poverty. Large scale organised criminal activity continues, and violence could quickly re-erupt and send the Delta back to where it was before 2009 if no remedying action is taken by the Nigerian authorities and their international partners.DFI

Organised Crime, Violence and Development: Topic Guide Update

Since the publication of the GSDRC topic guide on Organised Crime, Violence and Development in 2016, serious and organised crime (SOC) has remained a cause for concern in many countries in the developing world. Marking a difference to previous international development frameworks, the issue has now been included both as an explicit goal and as a cross-cutting issue in the Sustainable Development Goals. This report identifies some of the latest key literature on organised crime and its manifestations, workings and impacts in development settings. The majority of the literature examined for this report focuses on economic, political and governance issues. Socio-cultural and human security aspects of organised crime and any effects they may have on development processes are not at the forefront in this literature. In summary, the review found that there is a growing emphasis in the literature on the insertion of organised crime in developing countries, particularly in Africa, into the global criminal economy. Organised criminal activities are part of broader (decentralised) governance structures and political orders. In many countries, such activities underpin governance arrangements and political institutions and settlements, rather than merely filling gaps left by state incapacity, underperformance or absence. In developing countries where organised criminal structures and activities are pervasive, including large-scale political and public sector corruption, industrial-scale oil theft and even drug trafficking, such activities are not necessarily perceived as ‘immoral’ or depraved, but can boast significant social legitimacy. In the past fifteen years or so, the relationship between security and development has become increasingly well recognised. Although Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) considers organised crime as a ‘hard’ security issue and places it outside of the mandate of development actors, SDGs, particularly Target 16.4, unequivocally place organised crime on the development agenda. One of the challenges highlighted in the latest literature is that criminals, who traditionally have been seen as a threat to the security and stability of (developing) states and society, are today finding themselves in the role of providing essential public services in many development settings. This type of informal illegal-criminal provision of public services, however, often comes at the cost of urban gang violence, including turf wars between rival gangs and other criminal organisations, and jeopardises the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of violence and coercion

‘External Stresses’ and Violence Mitigation in Fragile Contexts: Setting the Stage for Policy Analysis

Following on from the World Bank’s World Development Report 2011 on conflict, security and development, a debate has emerged about the role of so-called ‘external stresses’ in generating ‘new’ forms of violence and insecurity in poor and fragile countries. The Bank posits that the combination of internal stresses (e.g. low income levels, high youth unemployment) and external stresses (e.g. cross-border conflict spillovers, illicit drug trafficking) heightens the risk of different forms of violence, which are not confined to inter-state and civil war but range from communal conflicts to criminal violence and terrorism. This perspective is useful, yet a more comprehensive and nuanced framework for policy analysis is called for, based on the recognition that external stresses: (a) tend to involve external, internal as well as transnational actors and variables that are often interrelated; (b) create both losers and winners, and can promote the interests of powerful state and non-state groups in and outside of the country or world region under ‘stress’; and (c) do not all have the same kind of impact on states and societies in terms of generating violence.DFI

Serious and Organised Crime and Livelihoods Programmes

This Helpdesk report discusses the following: What types of alternative livelihoods/development programmes that address serious and organised crime exist in developing countries, what interventions do they use and what outcomes do they seek to achieve? What does the evidence say about how effective these programmes are? Tackling the effects of serious and organised crime (SOC) on development is not an area that traditionally has received much attention from the international aid community. Arguably, the issue only moved onto the mainstream development agenda with the publication of the World Development Report 2011, facilitating its cross-cutting inclusion in the Sustainable Development Goals. This notwithstanding, development work in relation to SOC remains incipient and the field is still being scouted. Among the reasons for this is that the phenomenon of SOC defies clear definition and categorisation. For the most part, SOC has been framed as a security problem for states, not a development issue. Consequently, policy responses – mostly by governments and multilateral organisations, but sometimes also by civic groups taking justice and armed defence against SOC into their own hands - have focused on law enforcement against, and criminal prosecution and incarceration of, members of crime structures and networks. The evidence on the relationship between SOC and alternative development or livelihoods programmes, and the effect of such programmes, is very limited. The literature search conducted for this Helpdesk report identified four principal areas of intervention pertaining to (a) alternative development and/or rural livelihoods/development promotion for drug crop producing communities, such as poppy farmers in Afghanistan, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, coca farmers in Colombia and cannabis growers in Morocco; (b) alternative livelihoods promotion for rural populations engaged in wildlife crime, such illegal hunting and poaching in Uganda and other sub-Saharan African countries; (c) alternative livelihoods promotion for populations at risk of engaging in piracy, particularly in coastal areas in Somalia; and (d) gang violence reduction and citizen security enhancement, such as the socalled ‘second-generation’ violence prevention and reduction interventions in several Central American states, as well as in Liberia and Afghanistan

An improved stochastic algorithm for temperature-dependent homogeneous gas phase reactions

We propose an improved stochastic algorithm for temperature-dependent homogeneous gas phase reactions. By combining forward and reverse reaction rates, a significant gain in computational efficiency is achieved. Two modifications of modelling the temperature dependence (with and without conservation of enthalpy) are introduced and studied quantitatively. The algorithm is tested for the combustion of n-heptane, which is a reference fuel component for internal combustion engines. The convergence of the algorithm is studied by a series of numerical experiments and the computational cost of the stochastic algorithm is compared with the DAE code DASSL. If less accuracy is needed the stochastic algorithm is faster on short simulation time intervals. The new stochastic algorithm is significantly faster than the original direct simulation algorithm in all cases considered

Numerical study of a stochastic particle method for homogeneous gas phase reactions

In this paper we study a stochastic particle system that describes homogeneous gas phase reactions of a number of chemical species. First we introduce the system as a Markov jump process and discuss how relevant physical quantities are represented in terms of appropriate random variables. Then, we show how various deterministic equations, used in the literature, are derived from the stochastic system in the limit when the number of particles goes to infinity. Finally, we apply the corresponding stochastic algorithm to a toy problem, a simple formal reaction mechanism, and to a real combustion problem. This problem is given by the isothermal combustion of a homogeneous mixture of hepthane and air modelled by a detailed reaction mechanism with 107 chemical species and 808 reversible reactions. Heptane as described in this chemical mechanism serves as model-fuel for different types of internal combustion engines. In particular, we study the order of convergence with respect to the number of simulation particles, and illustrate the limitations of the method

Education for Sustaining Peace through Historical Memory

Informed by the author’s long-standing work on violent conflict, peace and education in countries of the Global South, particularly Colombia, this open access book presents a comprehensive narrative about the relationship between peace education, historical memory and the sustaining peace agenda, advocating for the adoption of a new perspective on education for sustaining peace through historical memory. Education on and for peace in countries wrestling with, or emerging from, protracted violent conflict is up against major challenges, and both conventional and critical approaches to peace education are limited to address these. Incorporating a focus on historical memory, without losing sight of its own pitfalls, into peace education can support learners and teachers to come to grips with achieving positive, peace-sustaining change at both the micro (individual) and macro (social and institutional) levels, and to develop concepts and practices of effective and legitimate alternatives to violence and war. Conceived in these terms, historical memory-oriented peace education also stands to enhance the work-in-progress that is the UN-led sustaining peace agenda, including its Sustainable Development Goals

Some Analytic Solutions for Stochastic Reactor Models Based on the Joint Composition PDF

The stochastic reactor models Partially Stirred Reactor (PaSR) and Partially Stirred Plug Flow Reactor (PaSPFR) have been investigated. These models are based on a simplified joint composition PDF transport equation. Analytic solutions for five different Cauchy problems for the PDF transport equation as given by the stochastic reactor models are presented. In all cases, molecular mixing in the stochastic reactor models is described by the LMSE mixing model. The analytic solutions have been found by combining the method of characteristics with a set of ordinary differential equations for the statistical moments to account for the functional dependence of the coefficients in the corresponding PDF transport equation. For each case an example problem is discussed to illustrate the behavior of the analytic solution