Journal articles on the topic 'Statics and dynamics (Social sciences) – Mathematical models'

A general concept is presented which allows of setting up mathematical models for stochastic and quasi deterministic dynamic processes in social systems. The basis of this concept is the master equation for the probability distribution over appropriately chosen personal and material macrovariables of the society. The probabilistic transition rates depend on motivation potentials governing the decisions and actions of the social agents. The transition from the probability distribution to quasi-meanvalues leads to in general nonlinear coupled differential equations for the macrovariables of the chosen social sector. Up to now several models about population dynamics, collective political opinion formation, dynamics of economic processes and the formation of settlements have been published.

As a key sub-field of social dynamics and sociophysics, opinion dynamics utilizes mathematical and physical models and the agent-based computational modeling tools, to investigate the spreading of opinions in a collection of human beings. This research field stems from various disciplines in social sciences, especially the social influence models developed in social psychology and sociology. A multidisciplinary review is given in this paper, attempting to keep track of the historical development of the field and to shed light on its future directions. In the review, the authors discuss the disciplinary origins of opinion dynamics, showing that the combination of the social processes, which are conventionally studied in social sciences, and the analytical and computational tools, which are developed in mathematics, physics and complex system studies, gives birth to the interdisciplinary field of opinion dynamics. The current state of the art of opinion dynamics is then overviewed, with the research progresses on the typical models like the voter model, the Sznajd model, the culture dissemination model, and the bounded confidence model being highlighted. Correspondingly, the future directions of this academic field are envisioned, with an advocation for closer synthesis of the related disciplines.

Scholarly research on peace has overwhelmingly focused on negative peace, or the absence of conflict, aggression, violence, and war. We seek to understand holistic peace systems, the political, economic, and social systems that sustain peaceful societies. We show how two methods can help us understand the properties and dynamics of such complex peace systems. Each method provides insights from different perspectives to help understand sustaining peace. The causal loop diagram helps us to identify the peace factors and the connections between them. The mathematical model helps us determine the quantitative results of the interactions between all the peace factors. Using these methods, we found that there is no single “leverage” factor that is the lynchpin in creating sustainable peace. Rather, the small effects of a large number of positive peace factors that support peace can collectively overcome the stronger emotional response to the negative conflict factors that jeopardize peace.

There are numerous examples of societies with extremely stable mix of contrasting opinions. We argue that this stability is a result of an interplay between society network topology adjustment and opinion changing processes. To support this position we present a computer model of opinion formation based on some novel assumptions, designed to bring the model closer to social reality. In our model, the agents, in addition to changing their opinions due to influence of the rest of society and external propaganda, have the ability to modify their social network, forming links with agents sharing the same opinions and cutting the links with those they disagree with. To improve the model further we divide the agents into "fanatics" and "opportunists," depending on how easy it is to change their opinions. The simulations show significant differences compared to traditional models, where network links are static. In particular, for the dynamical model where inter-agent links are adjustable, the final network structure and opinion distribution is shown to resemble real world observations, such as social structures and persistence of minority groups even when most of the society is against them and the propaganda is strong.

In the context of mathematical models applied to social sciences, we present and analyze a model based on differential equations for the intimate partner violence (IPV). Such a model describes the dynamics of a heterosexual romantic couple in which the man perpetrates violence against the woman. We focus on incorporating different key factors reported in the literature as causal or motivational factors to perpetrate IPV. Among the main factors included are the failures in self-regulation, the man’s need to control the woman, the social pressure on the woman to remain married, and empowerment programs. Another aspect that we include is periodic alcohol consumption for the man. The discussion of the model includes a stability analysis of its equilibrium points and the asymptotic behavior of its solutions. Also, the interpretation of results is presented in terms of IPV phenomenon. Finally, a brief review is given on different scales to quantify human behavioral traits and numerical simulations for some IPV scenarios.

Mathematical models that couple disease dynamics and vaccinating behaviour often assume that the incentive to vaccinate disappears if disease prevalence is zero. Hence, they predict that vaccine refusal should be the rule, and elimination should be difficult or impossible. In reality, countries with non-mandatory vaccination policies have usually been able to maintain elimination or very low incidence of paediatric infectious diseases for long periods of time. Here, we show that including injunctive social norms can reconcile such behaviour-incidence models to observations. Adding social norms to a coupled behaviour-incidence model enables the model to better explain pertussis vaccine uptake and disease dynamics in the UK from 1967 to 2010, in both the vaccine-scare years and the years of high vaccine coverage. The model also illustrates how a vaccine scare can perpetuate suboptimal vaccine coverage long after perceived risk has returned to baseline, pre-vaccine-scare levels. However, at other model parameter values, social norms can perpetuate depressed vaccine coverage during a vaccine scare well beyond the time when the population's baseline vaccine risk perception returns to pre-scare levels. Social norms can strongly suppress vaccine uptake despite frequent outbreaks, as observed in some small communities. Significant portions of the parameter space also exhibit bistability, meaning long-term outcomes depend on the initial conditions. Depending on the context, social norms can either support or hinder immunization goals.

Human populations in many countries have undergone a phase of demographic transition, characterized by a major reduction in fertility at a time of increased resource availability. A key stylized fact is that the reduction in fertility is preceded by a reduction in mortality and a consequent increase in population density. Various theories have been proposed to account for the demographic transition process, including maladaptation, increased parental investment in fewer offspring, and cultural evolution. None of these approaches, including formal cultural evolutionary models of the demographic transitions, have addressed a possible direct causal relationship between a reduction in mortality and the subsequent decline in fertility. We provide mathematical models in which low mortality favours the cultural selection of low-fertility traits. This occurs because reduced mortality slows turnover in the model, which allows the cultural transmission advantage of low-fertility traits to outrace their reproductive disadvantage. For mortality to be a crucial determinant of outcome, a cultural transmission bias is required where slow reproducers exert higher social influence. Computer simulations of our models that allow for exogenous variation in the death rate can reproduce the central features of the demographic transition process, including substantial reductions in fertility within only one to three generations. A model assuming continuous evolution of reproduction rates through imitation errors predicts fertility to fall below replacement levels if death rates are sufficiently low. This can potentially explain the very low preferred family sizes in Western Europe.

In this paper, we investigate the dynamics of a mathematical model of obesity population within fluctuating social environment. A stochastic differential equation model is constructed by perturbing two social related parameters of the deterministic model with white noise terms characterized by Gaussian distribution having zero mean and unit spectral density. In order to compute the numerical solution of the stochastic models Euler-Maruyama numerical method is used. Confidence intervals for the overweight and obesity childhood population are computed using Monte Carlo method. Analysis of the numerical results reveals that small perturbations on the parameters are not a major driving force for dynamical transitions from the underlying deterministic model. In addition, numerical results indicate a close relationship between the amplitude of the fluctuation of the social environment parameters and the variability of forecasts for the incidence of the obesity in the population.

Existing crowd evacuation guidance systems require the manual design of models and input parameters, incurring a significant workload and a potential for errors. This paper proposed an end-to-end intelligent evacuation guidance method based on deep reinforcement learning, and designed an interactive simulation environment based on the social force model. The agent could automatically learn a scene model and path planning strategy with only scene images as input, and directly output dynamic signage information. Aiming to solve the “dimension disaster” phenomenon of the deep Q network (DQN) algorithm in crowd evacuation, this paper proposed a combined action-space DQN (CA-DQN) algorithm that grouped Q network output layer nodes according to action dimensions, which significantly reduced the network complexity and improved system practicality in complex scenes. In this paper, the evacuation guidance system is defined as a reinforcement learning agent and implemented by the CA-DQN method, which provides a novel approach for the evacuation guidance problem. The experiments demonstrate that the proposed method is superior to the static guidance method, and on par with the manually designed model method.

Beginning in March 2020, the United States emerged as the global epicenter for COVID-19 cases with little to guide policy response in the absence of extensive data available for reliable epidemiological modeling in the early phases of the pandemic. In the ensuing weeks, American jurisdictions attempted to manage disease spread on a regional basis using non-pharmaceutical interventions (i.e., social distancing), as uneven disease burden across the expansive geography of the United States exerted different implications for policy management in different regions. While Arizona policymakers relied initially on state-by-state national modeling projections from different groups outside of the state, we sought to create a state-specific model using a mathematical framework that ties disease surveillance with the future burden on Arizona’s healthcare system. Our framework uses a compartmental system dynamics model using a SEIRD framework that accounts for multiple types of disease manifestations for the COVID-19 infection, as well as the observed time delay in epidemiological findings following public policy enactments. We use a compartment initialization logic coupled with a fitting technique to construct projections for key metrics to guide public health policy, including exposures, infections, hospitalizations, and deaths under a variety of social reopening scenarios. Our approach makes use of X-factor fitting and backcasting methods to construct meaningful and reliable models with minimal available data in order to provide timely policy guidance in the early phases of a pandemic.

Collective intelligence, an emergent phenomenon in which a composite system of multiple interacting agents performs at levels greater than the sum of its parts, has long compelled research efforts in social and behavioral sciences. To date, however, formal models of collective intelligence have lacked a plausible mathematical description of the relationship between local-scale interactions between autonomous sub-system components (individuals) and global-scale behavior of the composite system (the collective). In this paper we use the Active Inference Formulation (AIF), a framework for explaining the behavior of any non-equilibrium steady state system at any scale, to posit a minimal agent-based model that simulates the relationship between local individual-level interaction and collective intelligence. We explore the effects of providing baseline AIF agents (Model 1) with specific cognitive capabilities: Theory of Mind (Model 2), Goal Alignment (Model 3), and Theory of Mind with Goal Alignment (Model 4). These stepwise transitions in sophistication of cognitive ability are motivated by the types of advancements plausibly required for an AIF agent to persist and flourish in an environment populated by other highly autonomous AIF agents, and have also recently been shown to map naturally to canonical steps in human cognitive ability. Illustrative results show that stepwise cognitive transitions increase system performance by providing complementary mechanisms for alignment between agents’ local and global optima. Alignment emerges endogenously from the dynamics of interacting AIF agents themselves, rather than being imposed exogenously by incentives to agents’ behaviors (contra existing computational models of collective intelligence) or top-down priors for collective behavior (contra existing multiscale simulations of AIF). These results shed light on the types of generic information-theoretic patterns conducive to collective intelligence in human and other complex adaptive systems.

The pandemic that transformed our lives in 2020 brought important reflections on way of seeing the world demanding new skills and behaviors to interact in an environment so common to innovation - virtual environment. In innovation processes, digital transformation that modifies, alters and creates ways of doing things, declares itself and presents itself as facilitating vehicle, also of interpersonal relationships, requiring us to learn to relate in different ways through digital world, using creativity to overcome social, institutional, political, religious, economic obstacles, among others.In science, researchers strive to understand or explain some transformational impacts and seek a perfect adaptation for transferring and exploitation of appropriate knowledge for each eminent need. However, we are still halfway there.Some relevant topics in academia also explored by IJI - International Journal Innovation, such as, innovative entrepreneurship, innovation and learning, innovation and sustainability, internationalization of innovation, innovation systems and digital transformation are now undergoing a new sieve, a new look at understanding of disruptive effects inherent to this theme on transformation and knowledge. A new window has opened in digital age, provided by new world context.In the past, a commonly observed resistance to including innovation in daily processes, and not only in organizational sphere, are now mandatory and our survival in society depends on them. So, what do we see? We can simply call it transformation, but if we broaden a perspective of events in the year 2020, we risk saying that we do live a cotransformation, that is, a rhythmic and continuous, joint and effective learning in creation of value in all global social spheres. It is no longer about transforming a process or creating a system to achieve desired performance, it is about integrating collective, learning by sharing, changing to be able to transform and, all of this, through an increasingly disruptive world.We highlight Moreira, Teixeira and Locatelli (2020) about influences of motivational goals, confirming Schwartz's (2005) theory that groups differ significantly in relative importance they attach to their values, that is, individuals and groups have priorities or axiological hierarchies different from values (Calvosa, Serra, Almeida, 2011). This understanding must support our challenges regarding how to address a co-transformation and transmission of knowledge to future generations, prioritizing care for preservation of our planet, human relations, adaptation of knowledge to current realities and, above all, ability to innovate at any time.As presented by Falaster et al. (2020) it is not for us to assign a mathematical value to life and health or to guide our research by addressing political agendas, nor to distort theory, method and argumentation to suit any situation. What should motivate us, especially in scientific research, is the understanding and strategic responses in times of crisis: our adaptation and compliance, stress with its effects on decision-making on acquisition of knowledge to co-transform and innovate. For this reason, we emphasize that we are in the middle of road because there are still notorious forces that demand permanence of more stable and static social models. Innovation takes on another level. With its disruptive character, it will continue to build future scenarios in improving performance of society's demands (Pol Ville, 2009) through process of cotransformation emphasized here.Efforts and studies aimed at innovation point to relationship networks as important channels for increasing efficiency (Pio, 2020). This is one of evidence regarding the need for a rhythmic and continuous, joint, and effective interconnection for cotransformation. We are not only pointing to innovation as a support for cotransformation, but as something inevitable in practical life of future generations.We must advance how to promote improvements that bring productivity and effectiveness to social relationships through innovation. This will facilitate our insertion in this “new normal” presented in almost all groups of society. We already know that we need to change at a fast pace, but we often get lost in timing of things, that is, the right time for change. Therefore, we must learn to work among diversity, producing new values that take our society to a new level of civility. And all of this translates into different ways of knowing and learning, transmitting, and assimilating, stretching, and making flexible.In fact, it is necessary to identify elements that determine existence of more dynamic capacities, such as, for example, set of behaviors, skills, routines, processes and mechanisms of learning and knowledge governance aimed at cotransformation. Articulation of these elements can result in varying degrees of innovation and dynamism and can manifest themselves in a more intense or more traditional way, where virtual can be more consolidated. Anyway, this is just an indication that, in a cotransformation model, all indicators are reflective (Meirelles Camargo, 2014).Innovations can lead us to co-transformation, reconfiguring activities requiring a greater evolutionary flow of existing capacities and requiring new experiences and management of these more dynamic capacities. Therefore, research must change its perspectives by establishing links between these capacities, to identify and react to innovations that are a contemporary landmark in recent history.The extent of cotransformation depends on some factors, such as perceived environmental pressure (Helfat et al., 2007) and adaptability (Madjdi Hüsig, 2011) that vary in degree, from small adaptations to major revisions or even a reconfiguration (O'Reilly Tushman, 2008). Generally, we know they are interconnected components that specify how we can survive all dynamism and disruption that exists in the world.In this context, the most important thing is not to know what will be the results of what you want, but to intensely take advantage of construction path of what you can have with appropriate use of capabilities to co-transform and innovate.We hope that in this editorial we have promoted important reflections on understanding of cotransformation, inspiring our readers about new knowledge and expanding a debate for better direction of academic and business society. The role of knowledge and transformation awakens a world of possibilities to be explored, which is why we are still halfway there.

Hirofumi Uzawa is one of the giants of modern economic theory. Hiro is probably best known to the readers of Macroeconomic Dynamics (MD) for his seminal articles on two-sector economic growth. The two-sector technology is more general than the one-sector technology: it allows a production possibility frontier that is strictly concave to the origin as opposed to being necessarily flat. This generality allows richer and more complex dynamics. This makes it especially useful for the analysis of economic fluctuations. The two-sector model is perfect for dynamic international trade.Hiro is also well known to macroeconomists for his seminal contribution to endogenous growth. In his article in the 1965 IER, productivity permanently increases as the result of permanent accumulation of human capital. Uzawa was thus a first mover in the new growth theory. The symbol H (for Human Capital, or for Hiro?) is today everywhere in models of economic dynamics.On his own and through his many students and mentees, Hiro has been the major inspiration for the modern theory of optimal economic growth. He taught a generation of pure and applied economists how to apply Pontryagin's maximum principle in economic dynamics. It seems that Uzawa introduced—or at least pushed the use of—phase diagrams in economic dynamics. Where would we be without this essential tool?Most readers of MD are likely to think first of Uzawa's contributions to macro, but Hiro is equally well known for his superb works on mathematical economics, general equilibrium, and demand theory. Hiro's mathematics is elegant and often very deep. Like the quality mathematician that he is, he does not apply technique for technique's sake.Hiro has made fundamental contributions to nonlinear programming. For the convex (but not necessarily smooth) case, he employed Slater's condition to obtain Kuhn–Tucker multipliers that satisfy the saddlepoint property necessary for an optimum. For the smooth (but not necessarily convex) case, Arrow, Hurwicz, and Uzawa introduced the current version of the constraint qualification, which ensures that optimality implies the existence of Kuhn–Tucker multipliers satisfying the saddlepoint property.Hiro's paper “Walras's Existence Theorem and Brouwer's Fixed Point Theorem” in the Economic Studies Quarterly (1962) is a hidden gem on general equilibrium. This paper can be seen as foreshadowing Sonnenschein's result on excess demand functions. Hiro clarified old, important questions about recovering preference maps from demand functions. Hiro was probably the first to convincingly show—in the context of tatonnement adjustment—the important distinction between local stability and global stability in economic dynamics.We have given here only a glimpse into the very large body of beautiful, influential Uzawa papers. Hiro's splendid bibliography is given at the end of the interview. Some of the work that Hiro has pursued energetically has yet to be widely recognized. One thinks, for example, of the Penrose Effect, Hiro's modeling of the organizational costs incurred in adding capital or making other changes in the way a firm does business.Hiro has had many successful students and mentees. Your MD interviewers are lucky to have been among those whom Hiro has influenced profoundly. A very incomplete list of the others would also include Dave Cass, Steve Goldman, Harl Ryder, Hajime Oniki, Bob Lucas, George Akerlof, Joe Stiglitz, Miguel Sidrauski, Morris Teubal, Assaf Razin, Guillermo Calvo, Bill Ethier, and Lenny Mirman.Hiro is widely recognized and even revered in Japan. He was elected to the very selective Japan Academy in 1989 at a remarkably young age. He was named “A Person of Cultural Merit” in 1983 and elected to the Order of Culture in 1997. Hiro has received significant international recognition. He was President of the Econometric Society. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Foreign Honorary Member of the American Economic Association, and Foreign Associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.This interview took place nearly 10 years ago. We apologize to the readers and to Professor Uzawa for the delay in getting the transcript to the editor. The interview was held at the Research Center on Global Warming of the Development Bank of Japan, at which Hiro plays an important role. Four of us—Uzawa, the two interviewers, and Yumiko Baba, who was then a post-doc in economics at the University of Tokyo, there to operate the tape recorder—were collected at the Meiji Gakuin University in central Tokyo and whisked away in a large black automobile to Hiro's home court at the Bank. Hiro is an imposing figure: tall and erect with a very long, pointed white beard. His eyes are very active. He strokes his beard in a soothing manner. It is not difficult to be in awe of him. The interview took an even more formal tack because there were two in the room with the nickname “Hiro.” It was hence efficient to use last names at times.The interviewers had agreed to try to steer Uzawa toward a discussion of his well-known basic technical contributions and away from his less well-known and more political contributions. In the end, we failed to steer Hiro onto any course other than his own. This is mostly as it should be. In this interview, you will hear about some of the technical contributions for which Hiro is widely known. You will also hear about what motivated him to enter economics, his strong social concerns and strong political views, the turbulence of the war years and the postwar years, and his recent work and interests. A few of the paragraphs at the end of the interview were added to bring the record up to date. What comes through is a picture of Hirofumi Uzawa, a truly distinguished scholar and a person dedicated to human betterment.Hiro talked in his usual warm, friendly voice. He peppered the interview with his strong opinions about other major economists, often with lively anecdotes. Of course, Hiro's opinions are his own, not those of the interviewers or the editors. We hope that the readers will get as much out of this conversation with Hiro as we did.

Rapid urbanization rates impact significantly on the nature of Land Cover patterns of the environment, which has been evident in the depletion of vegetal reserves and in general modifying the human climatic systems (Henderson, et al., 2017; Kumar, Masago, Mishra, & Fukushi, 2018; Luo and Lau, 2017). This study explores remote sensing classification technique and other auxiliary data to determine LULCC for a period of 50 years (1967-2016). The LULCC types identified were quantitatively evaluated using the change detection approach from results of maximum likelihood classification algorithm in GIS. Accuracy assessment results were evaluated and found to be between 56 to 98 percent of the LULC classification. The change detection analysis revealed change in the LULC types in Minna from 1976 to 2016. Built-up area increases from 74.82ha in 1976 to 116.58ha in 2016. Farmlands increased from 2.23 ha to 46.45ha and bared surface increases from 120.00ha to 161.31ha between 1976 to 2016 resulting to decline in vegetation, water body, and wetlands. The Decade of rapid urbanization was found to coincide with the period of increased Public Private Partnership Agreement (PPPA). Increase in farmlands was due to the adoption of urban agriculture which has influence on food security and the environmental sustainability. The observed increase in built up areas, farmlands and bare surfaces has substantially led to reduction in vegetation and water bodies. The oscillatory nature of water bodies LULCC which was not particularly consistent with the rates of urbanization also suggests that beyond the urbanization process, other factors may influence the LULCC of water bodies in urban settlements. Keywords: Minna, Niger State, Remote Sensing, Land Surface Characteristics References Akinrinmade, A., Ibrahim, K., & Abdurrahman, A. (2012). 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AbstractWe introduce a mathematical description of the impact of the number of daily contacts in the spread of infectious diseases by integrating an epidemiological dynamics with a kinetic modeling of population-based contacts. The kinetic description leads to study the evolution over time of Boltzmann-type equations describing the number densities of social contacts of susceptible, infected and recovered individuals, whose proportions are driven by a classical SIR-type compartmental model in epidemiology. Explicit calculations show that the spread of the disease is closely related to moments of the contact distribution. Furthermore, the kinetic model allows to clarify how a selective control can be assumed to achieve a minimal lockdown strategy by only reducing individuals undergoing a very large number of daily contacts. We conduct numerical simulations which confirm the ability of the model to describe different phenomena characteristic of the rapid spread of an epidemic. Motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic, a last part is dedicated to fit numerical solutions of the proposed model with infection data coming from different European countries.

Abstract In this paper, we investigate the nature of rational expectations equilibria for economic epidemiological models, with a particular focus on the behavioral origins and dynamics of epidemiological bifurcations. Unlike mathematical epidemiological models, economic epidemiological models can produce regions of indeterminacy or instability around the endemic steady states due to endogenous human responses to epidemiological circumstance variation, medical technology change, or health policy reform. We consider SI, SIS, SIR and SIRS versions of economic compartmental models and show how well-intentioned public policy may contribute to disease instability, uncertainty, and welfare losses.

In this perspective, we describe how the link removal (LR) analysis in social complex networks may be a promising tool to model non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and social distancing to prevent epidemics spreading. First, we show how the extent of the epidemic spreading and NPIs effectiveness over complex social networks may be evaluated with a static indicator, that is, the classic largest connected component (LCC). Then we explain how coupling the LR analysis and type SIR epidemiological models (EM) provide further information by including the temporal dynamics of the epidemic spreading. This is a promising approach to investigate important aspects of the recent NPIs applied by government to contain SARS-CoV-2, such as modeling the effect of the social distancing severity and timing over different network topologies. Further, implementing different link removal strategies to halt epidemics spreading provides information to individuate more effective NPIs, representing an important tool to offer a rationale sustaining policies to prevent SARS-CoV-2 and similar epidemics.

AbstractThe behavioral dynamics within a social group not only could depend on individual traits and social-experience of each member, but more importantly, emerges from inter-individual interactions over time. Herein, we first present a dataset, as well as the corresponding original video recordings, of the results of 4 behavioral tests associated with fear and aggressive response performed on 106 Japanese quail. In a second stage, birds were housed with conspecifics that performed similarly in the behavioral tests in groups of 2 females and 1 male. By continuously monitoring each bird in these small social groups, we obtained time series of social and reproductive behavior, and high-resolution locomotor time series. This approach provides the opportunity to perform precise quantification of the temporal dynamics of behavior at an individual level within different social scenarios including when an individual showing continued aggressive behaviors is present. These unique datasets and videos are publicly available in Figshare and can be used in further analysis, or for comparison with existing or future data sets or mathematical models across different taxa.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore the heat transfer enhancement in copper–water nanofluid flowing in a diagonally vented rectangular enclosure with four discrete heaters mounted centrally on the sidewalls and a square-shaped embedded heated block in the influence of a static magnetic field. Design/methodology/approach Four discrete heaters are mounted centrally on each sidewall of the rectangular enclosure that embraces a heated square block. A static transverse magnetic field is acting on the vertical walls. The Navier–Stokes equations of motion and the energy equation are modified by incorporating Lorentz force and basic physical properties of nanofluid. The derived momentum and energy equations are tackled numerically using the successive over-relaxation technique associating with the Gauss–Seidel iteration technique. The effects of physical parameters connected to dynamics of flow and heat convection are explored from streamlines and isotherms graphs and discussed numerically in terms of Nusselt number. Findings The effect of the embedded heated square block size and its location in the enclosure, nanoparticles volume fraction and the intensity of the magnetic field on flow and heat transfer are computed. Compared with the case when no heated block is embedded in the enclosure, in free convection at Ra = 106, the average local Nusselt number on the wall-mounted heaters is attenuated by 8.25%, 11.24% and 12.75% when the enclosure embraced a heated square block of side length 10% of H, 20% of H and 30% of H, respectively. An increase in Hartmann number suppresses the heat convection. Research limitations/implications The enhancement in the convective heat is greater when the buoyancy effect dominates the viscous effects. Placing the embedded heated block near the inlet vent, the lower temperature zone has reduced while the embedded heated block is at the central location of the enclosure, the high-temperature zone has expanded. The external magnetic field can be used as a non-invasive controlling device. Practical implications The numerically simulated results for heat convection of water-based copper nanofluid agreed qualitatively with the existing experimental results. Social implications The models could be used in designing a target-oriented heat exchanger. Originality/value The paper includes a comparative study for three locations of the embedded heated square. The optimal results for the centrally located heated block are also performed for three different sizes of the embedded block. The numerically simulated results are compared with the published numerical and experimental studies.

Israel Kirzner lays the foundations of entrepreneurship as the driving force of the market process by referring to alertness, uncertainty, and plan coordination. His approach, following the footsteps of Mises and Hayek, legitimizes entrepreneurial creativity and profit-making as the heart of the dynamic market process. He argues that an accurate insight into the economic system requires exploring how entrepreneurial dynamics work in society. This statement contrasts with the theories and models that govern modern development economics, such as randomized controlled trials (RCTs), in which the zero-intelligence agents replace the flesh-and-blood entrepreneur. Randomized controlled trials are considered the gold standard in modern development economics to assess treatment intervention efficacy in underdeveloped countries (Rodrik 2009). As a causal inference method, RCTs seek to determine whether a program had the outcome for which it was designed. Experts often utilize purely quantitative and experimental strategies for their guiding insights through trial and error of different interventions. In the ethics domain, experts seek to maximize the cost-benefit of specific interventions subject to a given set of data to rectify the inequalities generated by the market economy in underdeveloped economies. The economist becomes a kind of plumber who designs the creation and distribution of the “social pie,” assigning the respective slices to the specific individuals who participate in the experiments. Consequently, RCTs have justified active government intervention in the market process on behalf of policy advisers.However, Kirzner’s theory of entrepreneurship indicates that modern development economics’s core problem is epistemological and related to using the criterion of static efficiency in applied economics. Although RCTs are considered one of the most rigorous methods to inquire into the effectiveness of development policies, their design lacks interpretative capacity on the essence of economic phenomena. Experts on RCTs do not recognize that economic development is the byproduct of achieving social cooperation and coordination driven by purposeful human action under the division of labor. If the essence of economic phenomena is disregarded, it is impossible to address poverty causes adequately. Accordingly, RCTs are limited to testing cosmetic problems of economic underdevelopment.This article does not seek to offer specific proposals to remedy RCTs’ shortcomings, but it provides a theoretical foundation to guide further theoretical and empirical work. It argues that development economists have overlooked Kirzner’s theory of efficiency, which cannot be omitted without impairing the premise that development theory involves studying the dynamic process of plan coordination. Its relevance lies in the fact that Kirzner’s research can reshape modern development economics, which implies a theoretical advancement in several areas:• Kirzner’s analysis of static efficiency reveals the epistemological and ethical problems of modern development economics.• The framework of Kirzner’s dynamic efficiency clarifies the role of entrepreneurship in understanding how the market works.• Dynamic efficiency recognizes the creative and coordinating potential of entrepreneurship and capital accumulation in economic development.• Kirzner’s economic development theory responds to ethical dilemmas about (in)equality and pure profit within a market economy.• Contemporary research on dynamic efficiency explores new branches, such as the role of psychology, culture, and morality in economic development.Most research on efficiency and underdevelopment is still packaged in mathematical models that reduce the market’s complexity to comparative statics. Fortunately, a growing number of theories have begun to challenge this state of affairs by examining the following: First, psychology’s impact on productivity or the unproductiveness of entrepreneurial profit opportunities. Second, the role of culture in the dynamic process of institutional change and the adaptation of the entrepreneurial performance that ensures or deter economic development. Third, the relationship between personal morality and dynamic efficiency concerns private property and contractual ties. Hence, there are several strands of new literature on dynamic efficiency and development economics. This article focuses on one aspect that concerns both economists and governments in terms of modern thinking and practice: the role of efficiency (static and dynamic) in economic development.

The article examines the methodological problems of jurisprudence, caused by a change in the paradigms of scientific rationality and corresponding to the level of conceptual structures. This level is characterized by problems of understanding the qualitative evolution of knowledge, as well as an appeal to a more abstract, rather than objective, level of understanding of reality. The named level, usually called philosophical, can be based on two genetically different axioms, namely philosophy, including the philosophy of the phenomenon being studied, as well as the philosophy and epistemology of science. At the same time, the difference in the initial axioms determines the difference in the final conclusions for an apparent terminological similarity. At present, philosophy in jurisprudence is mainly represented by postmodernism; the philosophy of law searches for the demarcation line between the philosophical-legal and theoretical-legal knowledge; the philosophy and epistemology of science that has developed within the framework of natural sciences is aimed at analyzing the foundations of models of scientific rationality, applicable, in particular, to the socio-humanitarian sphere. The legal distancing from classical rationality is represented by two main directions: the overcoming of classical rationality and appeal to the synergy and nonlinear dynamics. For the understanding of the law is enough selection of classical and post-classical type of rationality, while the conjugate with the state of knowledge of social management issues should be allocated classical, non-classical and post-nonclassical types of rationality. The postnonclassical paradigm (synergetics) allows us to consider the existence of unique (historical) open unstable nonlinear hierarchical dynamic complex, attractive self-developing subject systems, included in the sociocultural context, under external chaos and interacting with other subjects and subject systems. As a result, the state and law conceptualized as dynamic organic selfregulating non-equilibrium systems, and in the subject field of law include the idea of philosophy, nonlinear dynamics and mathematical simulation of evolutionary and catastrophic processes that transforms the object and the subject of law and includes in it a number of qualitatively new methodological orientations.

The Silk Route Between Past and Present. A Paradigm Beyond Space and Time. On the threshold of the third millennium, in an atmosphere of anachronisms and contradictions, dominated and conditioned by scientific and technological discoveries, new ideas seem to take flight whilst regional barriers and territorial boundaries are collapsing to give way to a new form of comprehensiveness. Sharing ideas and intellectual stimuli, amalgamating cultural elements circulating along its intertwining branches, the Silk Route has more than once given life to new scientific forms, cultural and intellectual systems and, amongst these, artistic shapes and religious syncretism. The “Silk Route”, which, with its articulated network of twisting routes and sub-routes, even now well represents the challenging paradigm of a new age yet standing at its threshold. A paradigm beyond time and space. The following paper aims at focusing on the Silk Route’s Religious-Cultural dimension in the middle-inner Asia of the 13th-15th Centuries, when, whatever may have happened regarding local realms and rulers, it played the role of junction and meeting point of different worlds and their civilisations. Even now we are confronted with a political trend that is at once and the same time a cultural current; emanating from the past, it is re-linking Europe and Asia and, re-uniting territories with their individual and traditional cultural forms, is shaping a renewed kaleidoscopic framework. We are confronted with new forces deeply rooted in the past, which, emanating from the far eastern fringes of Asia, by the second decade of the 21st century have reached the far western fringes of Europe, dynamics that are not only ‘economics’ and ‘scientific technologies’ but also thought, religion, and other intellectual values. These forces are heir of past times, nevertheless they endure in the present and are the active lively projection of a future time…though still largely to be understood and matured. A vision of life and universe where speculative and religious values coexist with astounding technological and scientific discoveries in a global dimension without space and time. At the verge of this millennium, the Information and Communication Revolution has given life with its advanced technologies to a new space conditioned and dominated by no-distances. And this space with its always-evolving scientific discoveries today involves the society in its entirety (what is commonly named as “global space” actually symbolised by the Silk Route), endeavours to amalgamate it creating new links between civil and political society and positioning them in a new military dimension. New forms and structures that are rapidly evolving in search of some balance between technological development and preservation of ancient traditions, which might make possible social and economic justice, yet an utopia more than a reality. However, both (social and economic justice) form the ideological basis of order and stability, anxiously pursued by the young generation in search of an economic and speculative order where stability, security (hard and soft security) and religious structures should in their turn become the platform of new political-institutional structures. Be that as it may, this is not a new phenomenon. Technological advancements are astoundingly new, but not the process and its aims. We are confronted with a phenomenon that has already occurred in more than one historic phase. Epochal phases. That is the human search for economic and social justice, and their framing into new conceptual schemes. And within this ratio, it would be unrealistic to ignore an additional key-factor. It would be unrealistic to deny that Religion has always been a major player. It has been at the basis of more than one revolution, it has represented the culturalpolitical response to foreign challenges, it has legitimised military action, it has given life to new spaces and political systems, it has filled with its pathos cultural and political voids. It has given to Mankind and Universe a new centrality, creating a new space within which Man and Mankind, History and Philosophy, Cosmos and Universe with their laws meet and merge in new systems and structural orders. The World and its Destiny, core of lively debates, conditioned by the eternal dialectic between economics and society, between society and religion, between science and technology on the one hand, and religion on the other, between formal ratio and ideologies or myths, which underline with their voice the eternal antithesis between cultures and civilisations. At the verge of the third millennium, the intellectual world is facing a new historiographical debate, into which the Religious Factor has also entered. Knowledge and the vision of the world and its new order/disorder are translated into a new philosophy of culture and history, of society and religion. Rationality, historicity of scientific knowledge, nature and experience, nature and human ‘ratio’, science and ethics, science and its language, science and its new aims and objectives are amongst some of the major themes of this debate. But not only this: which aims, which objectives? And within which new order that might ensure security and stability, social and economic justice? Thence, revolution and power are coming to the fore with another factor: Force and its use…a stage that, however, does not disregard dialogue and tolerance, or, as recently stated by Francesco Bergoglio, more than tolerance, “reciprocal respect”. These are only ‘some’ amongst the main issues discussed and heard of also in the traditional culture of ordinary people. Undoubtedly, the end of the Cold War and the well-known “global village” dealt with by Samuel Huntington, the global village with its technological revolutions, have induced to re-think our own speculative parameters, traditional paradigms and models of society and power, mankind and statehood. And once again we have been confronted with elements that might bring to new forms of sharp opposition and a global disorder. However, beyond and behind the Huntingtonian cliché of the “clash of civilizations”, a new cultural current seems to take flight spurring from the roots of a traditional past, which however has not yet disappeared. The Silk Route stems out emanating from the far-eastern lands of Asia as the conceptual image, the paradigm of a conceivable new order. By merging the material, scientific-technological and economic dimension of life with a new cultural (or neo-cultural) vocation it seeks (and seems to be able) to give life to a new social body and new systemic-structural answers, a comprehensive order capable of tackling the challenges opened by the collapse of the traditional cultural parameters and the dramatic backdrop of a mere clash of civilisations. Middle-Inner Asia of the 13th -15th Centuries: the Silk Route and its Reflection on Painting and Architectonic Forms. As just pointed out, nothing is new in the course of History. Professor Axel Berkowsky has authoritatively lingered on the Silk Route – or better “the New Silk Route” – with specific regard on practical aspects of these last decades. In the following text, I wish to linger on a past historic period, particularly fertile when confronted with the collapse of traditional values and the challenges posed by new fearful forces and their dynamics: the Mongols with their hordes (ulus) and, some later, Tamerlane with his terrible Army. Sons of the steppe and its culture, these people suddenly appeared on the stage, raced it from Mesopotamia to the north-eastern corner of Asia with their hordes and their allied tribal groups, shattered previous civilisations and imposed a new dominion, a new political-military order and new models of life. But, with their Military superiority, they also brought the codes and the ancient traditional knowledge of the nomadic world. It is misleading to watch to this epochal phase only as a phase of devastation and horrors. With their codes, Mongols and Timurids brought with them the Chinese algebraic, mathematical and scientific knowledge, and fused it with Mesopotamian mathematical and medical sciences reaching peaks of astronomical, arithmetical, numerical, geometric, algebraic theoretical and practical knowledge. They also brought with them from vital centres of religious scholarship and life a large number of theologians, pirs, traditionists and legal religious scholars with their individual religious features and systems. Shamanism, Buddhism, Muslim forms, Nestorianism and other cults vigorously practised in the mobile world of the steppe gave life to an important phase of religious culture and multifarious practices largely imbued with mystic feelings and traditional emotional states. Then, and once again, within the global space created by the military conquests of the new-comers, the Silk Route – or more precisely, the Silk and its Routes – reorganised and revitalised trades and business, gave life to close diplomatic connections and matrimonial allegiances reinforced by a vigorous traditional chancery and official correspondence, that tightly linked Asia with Europe. Within this new global order, the Silk and its routes played the crucial role, shaped new political, institutional, scientific and intellectual formulae, gave life to new conceptual forms that – at their core – had Man and Mankind as centre of the entire Universe. We are confronted with a cultural development begun at a time when the sons of the steppe were taking over lands of the classical Arabic civilisation (like Syria, Iraq and al-Jaszīra), at a time when the Iranian world was still centre of intellectual life and its social norms were still spreading over large spaces of Inner Asian territories. Visual Arts wonderfully mirror this phenomenon. We witness a process that renovated itself ‘from within’ in the course of three centuries and did not stop even when the arrival of the European Powers on the Asian markets seemed to sign, with the decay and end of the traditional market economy, also the closing of the cultural interactions created by the Silk Routes of the time. Once again, Visual Arts wonderfully mirror this phenomenon: a dramatic transitional, fluid period, marked by a distinctive timeless reality, which had no longer territories well delimited by frontiers to conquer or defend. Herewith I have dealt, as an example, with the reflection of the new conceptions of Life and Universe on visual Fine Arts in the 13th-15th centuries, specifically painting and architectonic forms. Ideological values that aimed to forge new relationships among different peoples and their individual human values, religious thinking, moral codes…and economic, scientific, technological achievements. ‘Fine Arts’. Visual fine arts, in my case painting and architecture, are the mirror of feelings shared by the Lords of the time, registered by painters and architects in plastic forms, the signal of these stances to an often confused Humanity. Here, I linger on two pictorial themes: Nature and Landscape on the one hand, and Religion with its very images on the other. With regard to architectonic forms, these reflect the same conceptual paradigm shaped through technical features. By those ages, Nature and Landscape were perceived by contemporary painters and architects with formal, stylistic and technical characteristics which strongly reflected the impact with a world which lived its life in close, intimate contact with nature, a world and a culture which observed Nature and the Cosmos, and perceived them in every detail over the slow rhythmical march of days and nights, of seasons and the lunar cycles. These artistic features depict a precise image, that of a world which lives its life often at odds with nature for its very survival, a world which conditions nature or is conditioned in its turn. At that time, it was a world and a cosmic order which were often perceived by the artist in their tension with uncertainty and the blind recklessness of modern-contemporary times. However, to a closer analysis, these same artistic forms shape a celestial order which was at one and the same time a culture and a religion. In the vast borderless space of the Euro-Asiatic steppes, cut by great rivers, broken by steep rocky mountainous chains and inhospitable desert fig.aux, the Silk succeeded in building and organising its own network of twisting routes and sub-routes, along which transited (albeit, yet still transit) caravans with their goods…but also cultural elements and their conceptual-philosophical forms. Of these latter and their syncretic imageries and dreams, the fine arts have left evocative pictures and architectonic images, which depicted a world that is the projection of a precise social and political reality and its underlying factors, such as the restlessness of a nomadic pattern of life and the culture of the Town and its urban life. Little is changed today despite the collapse of the Soviet empire and its order. Features and forms change, but in both cases they announce a different world with its order built on a robust syncretism, which is at the same time science, knowledge, harmony and religion (divine or human, or both). A world that is the projection of a precise political, social and economic reality. A reality that, at one and the same time, is the silent voice of a humanity often disregarded by contemporary writers, an ‘underground world’ that echoes traditional forms and their dynamics, and a no less authoritative de facto power that politically, economically and militarily conditions and dominates its times. A reality that finds an authoritative voice through the Silk Route.

'He did what the cipher could not, he rescued himself.' -- Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination (23) On many levels, the new Nine Inch Nails album The Fragile is a gritty meditation about different types of End: the eternal relationship cycle of 'fragility, tension, ordeal, fragmentation' (adapted, with apologies to Wilhelm Reich); fin-de-siècle anxiety; post-millennium foreboding; a spectre of the alien discontinuity that heralds an on-rushing future vastly different from the one envisaged by Enlightenment Project architects. In retrospect, it's easy for this perspective to be dismissed as jargon-filled cyber-crit hyperbole. Cyber-crit has always been at its best too when it invents pre-histories and finds hidden connections between different phenomena (like the work of Greil Marcus and early Mark Dery), and not when it is closer to Chinese Water Torture, name-checking the canon's icons (the 'Deleuze/Guattari' tag-team), texts and key terms. "The organization of sound is interpreted historically, politically, socially ... . It subdues music's ambition, reins it in, restores it to its proper place, reconciles it to its naturally belated fate", comments imagineer Kodwo Eshun (4) on how cyber-crit destroys albums and the innocence of the listening experience. This is how official histories are constructed a priori and freeze-dried according to personal tastes and prior memes: sometimes the most interesting experiments are Darwinian dead-ends that fail to make the canon, or don't register on the radar. Anyone approaching The Fragile must also contend with the music industry's harsh realities. For every 10 000 Goth fans who moshed to the primal 'kill-fuck-dance' rhythms of the hit single "Closer" (heeding its siren-call to fulfil basic physiological needs and build niche-space), maybe 20 noted that the same riff returned with a darker edge in the title track to The Downward Spiral, undermining the glorification of Indulgent hedonism. "The problem with such alternative audiences," notes Disinformation Creative Director Richard Metzger, "is that they are trying to be different -- just like everyone else." According to author Don Webb, "some mature Chaos and Black Magicians reject their earlier Nine Inch Nails-inspired Goth beginnings and are extremely critical towards new adopters because they are uncomfortable with the subculture's growing popularity, which threatens to taint their meticulously constructed 'mysterious' worlds. But by doing so, they are also rejecting their symbolic imprinting and some powerful Keys to unlocking their personal history." It is also difficult to separate Nine Inch Nails from the commercialisation and colossal money-making machine that inevitably ensued on the MTV tour circuit: do we blame Michael Trent Reznor because most of his audience are unlikely to be familiar with 'first-wave' industrial bands including Cabaret Voltaire and the experiments of Genesis P. Orridge in Throbbing Gristle? Do we accuse Reznor of being a plagiarist just because he wears some of his influences -- Dr. Dre, Daft Punk, Atari Teenage Riot, Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979), Tom Waits's Bone Machine (1992), David Bowie's Low (1977) -- on his sleeve? And do we accept no-brain rock critic album reviews who quote lines like 'All the pieces didn't fit/Though I really didn't give a shit' ("Where Is Everybody?") or 'And when I suck you off/Not a drop will go to waste' ("Starfuckers Inc") as representative of his true personality? Reznor evidently has his own thoughts on this subject, but we should let the music speak for itself. The album's epic production and technical complexity turned into a post-modern studio Vision Quest, assisted by producer Alan Moulder, eleventh-hour saviour Bob Ezrin (brought in by Reznor to 'block-out' conceptual and sonic continuity), and a group of assault-technicians. The fruit of these collaborations is an album where Reznor is playing with our organism's time-binding sense, modulating strange emotions through deeply embedded tonal angularities. During his five-year absence, Trent Reznor fought diverse forms of repetitious trauma, from endogenous depression caused by endless touring to the death of his beloved grandmother (who raised him throughout childhood). An end signals a new beginning, a spiral is an open-ended and ever-shifting structure, and so Reznor sought to re-discover the Elder Gods within, a shamanic approach to renewal and secular salvation utilised most effectively by music PR luminary and scientist Howard Bloom. Concerned with healing the human animal through Ordeals that hard-wire the physiological baselines of Love, Hate and Fear, Reznor also focusses on what happens when 'meaning-making' collapses and hope for the future cannot easily be found. He accurately captures the confusion that such dissolution of meaning and decline of social institutions brings to the world -- Francis Fukuyama calls this bifurcation 'The Great Disruption'. For a generation who experienced their late childhood and early adolescence in Reagan's America, Reznor and his influences (Marilyn Manson and Filter) capture the Dark Side of recent history, unleashed at Altamont and mutating into the Apocalyptic style of American politics (evident in the 'Star Wars'/SDI fascination). The personal 'psychotic core' that was crystallised by the collapse of the nuclear family unit and supportive social institutions has returned to haunt us with dystopian fantasies that are played out across Internet streaming media and visceral MTV film-clips. That such cathartic releases are useful -- and even necessary (to those whose lives have been formed by socio-economic 'life conditions') is a point that escapes critics like Roger Scruton, some Christian Evangelists and the New Right. The 'escapist' quality of early 1980s 'Rapture' and 'Cosmocide' (Hal Lindsey) prophecies has yielded strange fruit for the Children of Ezekiel, whom Reznor and Marilyn Manson are unofficial spokes-persons for. From a macro perspective, Reznor's post-human evolutionary nexus lies, like J.G. Ballard's tales, in a mythical near-future built upon past memory-shards. It is the kind of worldview that fuses organic and morphogenetic structures with industrial machines run amok, thus The Fragile is an artefact that captures the subjective contents of the different mind produced by different times. Sonic events are in-synch but out of phase. Samples subtly trigger and then scramble kinaesthetic-visceral and kinaesthetic-tactile memories, suggestive of dissociated affective states or body memories that are incapable of being retrieved (van der Kolk 294). Perhaps this is why after a Century of Identity Confusion some fans find it impossible to listen to a 102-minute album in one sitting. No wonder then that the double album is divided into 'left' and 'right' discs (a reference to split-brain research?). The real-time track-by-track interpretation below is necessarily subjective, and is intended to serve as a provisional listener's guide to the aural ur-text of 1999. The Fragile is full of encrypted tones and garbled frequencies that capture a world where the future is always bleeding into a non-recoverable past. Turbulent wave-forms fight for the listener's attention with prolonged static lulls. This does not make for comfortable or even 'nice' listening. The music's mind is a snapshot, a critical indicator, of the deep structures brewing within the Weltanschauung that could erupt at any moment. "Somewhat Damaged" opens the album's 'Left' disc with an oscillating acoustic strum that anchor's the listener's attention. Offset by pulsing beats and mallet percussion, Reznor builds up sound layers that contrast with lyrical epitaphs like 'Everything that swore it wouldn't change is different now'. Icarus iconography is invoked, but perhaps a more fitting mythopoeic symbol of the journey that lies ahead would be Nietzsche's pursuit of his Ariadne through the labyrinth of life, during which the hero is steadily consumed by his numbing psychosis. Reznor fittingly comments: 'Didn't quite/Fell Apart/Where were you?' If we consider that Reznor has been repeating the same cycle with different variations throughout all of his music to date, retro-fitting each new album into a seamless tapestry, then this track signals that he has begun to finally climb out of self-imposed exile in the Underworld. "The Day the World Went Away" has a tremendously eerie opening, with plucked mandolin effects entering at 0:40. The main slashing guitar riff was interpreted by some critics as Reznor's attempt to parody himself. For some reason, the eerie backdrop and fragmented acoustic guitar strums recalls to my mind civil defence nuclear war films. Reznor, like William S. Burroughs, has some powerful obsessions. The track builds up in intensity, with a 'Chorus of the Damned' singing 'na na nah' over apocalyptic end-times imagery. At 4:22 the track ends with an echo that loops and repeats. "The Frail" signals a shift to mournful introspectiveness with piano: a soundtrack to faded 8 mm films and dying memories. The piano builds up slowly with background echo, holds and segues into ... "The Wretched", beginning with a savage downbeat that recalls earlier material from Pretty Hate Machine. 'The Far Aways/Forget It' intones Reznor -- it's becoming clear that despite some claims to the contrary, there is redemption in this album, but it is one borne out of a relentless move forward, a strive-drive. 'You're finally free/You could be' suggest Reznor studied Existentialism during his psychotherapy visits. This song contains perhaps the ultimate post-relationship line: 'It didn't turn out the way you wanted it to, did it?' It's over, just not the way you wanted; you can always leave the partner you're with, but the ones you have already left will always stain your memories. The lines 'Back at the beginning/Sinking/Spinning' recall the claustrophobic trapped world and 'eternal Now' dislocation of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder victims. At 3:44 a plucked cello riff, filtered, segues into a sludge buzz-saw guitar solo. At 5:18 the cello riff loops and repeats. "We're in This Together Now" uses static as percussion, highlighting the influence of electricity flows instead of traditional rock instrument configurations. At 0:34 vocals enter, at 1:15 Reznor wails 'I'm impossible', showing he is the heir to Roger Waters's self-reflective rock-star angst. 'Until the very end of me, until the very end of you' reverts the traditional marriage vow, whilst 'You're the Queen and I'm the King' quotes David Bowie's "Heroes". Unlike earlier tracks like "Reptile", this track is far more positive about relationships, which have previously resembled toxic-dyads. Reznor signals a delta surge (breaking through barriers at any cost), despite a time-line morphing between present-past-future. At 5:30 synths and piano signal a shift, at 5:49 the outgoing piano riff begins. The film-clip is filled with redemptive water imagery. The soundtrack gradually gets more murky and at 7:05 a subterranean note signals closure. "The Fragile" is even more hopeful and life-affirming (some may even interpret it as devotional), but this love -- representative of the End-Times, alludes to the 'Glamour of Evil' (Nico) in the line 'Fragile/She doesn't see her beauty'. The fusion of synths and atonal guitars beginning at 2:13 summons forth film-clip imagery -- mazes, pageants, bald eagles, found sounds, cloaked figures, ruined statues, enveloping darkness. "Just like You Imagined" opens with Soundscapes worthy of Robert Fripp, doubled by piano and guitar at 0:39. Drums and muffled voices enter at 0:54 -- are we seeing a pattern to Reznor's writing here? Sonic debris guitar enters at 1:08, bringing forth intensities from white noise. This track is full of subtle joys like the 1:23-1:36 solo by David Bowie pianist Mike Garson and guitarist Adrian Belew's outgoing guitar solo at 2:43, shifting back to the underlying soundscapes at 3:07. The sounds are always on the dissipative edge of chaos. "Just like You Imagined" opens with Soundscapes worthy of Robert Fripp, doubled by piano and guitar at 0:39. Drums and muffled voices enter at 0:54 -- are we seeing a pattern to Reznor's writing here? Sonic debris guitar enters at 1:08, bringing forth intensities from white noise. This track is full of subtle joys like the 1:23-1:36 solo by David Bowie pianist Mike Garson and guitarist Adrian Belew's outgoing guitar solo at 2:43, shifting back to the underlying soundscapes at 3:07. The sounds are always on the dissipative edge of chaos. "Pilgrimage" utilises a persistent ostinato and beat, with a driving guitar overlay at 0:18. This is perhaps the most familiar track, using Reznor motifs like the doubling of the riff with acoustic guitars between 1:12-1:20, march cries, and pitch-shift effects on a 3:18 drumbeat/cymbal. Or at least I could claim it was familiar, if it were not that legendary hip-hop producer and 'edge-of-panic' tactilist Dr. Dre helped assemble the final track mix. "No, You Don't" has been interpreted as an attack on Marilyn Manson and Hole's Courntey Love, particularly the 0:47 line 'Got to keep it all on the outside/Because everything is dead on the inside' and the 2:33 final verse 'Just so you know, I did not believe you could sink so low'. The song's structure is familiar: a basic beat at 0:16, guitars building from 0:31 to sneering vocals, a 2:03 counter-riff that merges at 2:19 with vocals and ascending to the final verse and 3:26 final distortion... "La Mer" is the first major surprise, a beautiful and sweeping fusion of piano, keyboard and cello, reminiscent of Symbolist composer Debussy. At 1:07 Denise Milfort whispers, setting the stage for sometime Ministry drummer Bill Reiflin's jazz drumming at 1:22, and a funky 1:32 guitar/bass line. The pulsing synth guitar at 2:04 serves as anchoring percussion for a cinematic electronica mindscape, filtered through new layers of sonic chiaroscuro at 2:51. 3:06 phase shifting, 3:22 layer doubling, 3:37 outgoing solo, 3:50-3:54 more swirling vocal fragments, seguing into a fading cello quartet as shadows creep. David Carson's moody film-clip captures the end more ominously, depicting the beauty of drowning. This track contains the line 'Nothing can stop me now', which appears to be Reznor's personal mantra. This track rivals 'Hurt' and 'A Warm Place' from The Downward Spiral and 'Something I Can Never Have' from Pretty Hate Machine as perhaps the most emotionally revealing and delicate material that Reznor has written. "The Great Below" ends the first disc with more multi-layered textures fusing nostalgia and reverie: a twelve-second cello riff is counter-pointed by a plucked overlay, which builds to a 0:43 washed pulse effect, transformed by six second pulses between 1:04-1:19 and a further effects layer at 1:24. E-bow effects underscore lyrics like 'Currents have their say' (2:33) and 'Washes me away' (2:44), which a 3:33 sitar riff answers. These complexities are further transmuted by seemingly random events -- a 4:06 doubling of the sitar riff which 'glitches' and a 4:32 backbeat echo that drifts for four bars. While Reznor's lyrics suggest that he is unable to control subjective time-states (like The Joker in the Batman: Dark Knight series of Kali-yuga comic-books), the track constructions show that the Key to his hold over the listener is very carefully constructed songs whose spaces resemble Pythagorean mathematical formulas. Misdirecting the audience is the secret of many magicians. "The Way Out Is Through" opens the 'Right' disc with an industrial riff that builds at 0:19 to click-track and rhythm, the equivalent of a weaving spiral. Whispering 'All I've undergone/I will keep on' at 1:24, Reznor is backed at 1:38 by synths and drums coalescing into guitars, which take shape at 1:46 and turn into a torrential electrical current. The models are clearly natural morphogenetic structures. The track twists through inner storms and torments from 2:42 to 2:48, mirrored by vocal shards at 2:59 and soundscapes at 3:45, before piano fades in and out at 4:12. The title references peri-natal theories of development (particularly those of Stanislav Grof), which is the source of much of the album's imagery. "Into the Void" is not the Black Sabbath song of the same name, but a catchy track that uses the same unfolding formula (opening static, cello at 0:18, guitars at 0:31, drums and backbeat at 1:02, trademark industrial vocals and synth at 1:02, verse at 1:23), and would not appear out of place in a Survival Research Laboratories exhibition. At 3:42 Reznor plays with the edge of synth soundscapes, merging vocals at 4:02 and ending the track nicely at 4:44 alone. "Where Is Everybody?" emulates earlier structures, but relies from 2:01 on whirring effects and organic rhythms, including a flurry of eight beat pulses between 2:40-2:46 and a 3:33 spiralling guitar solo. The 4:26 guitar solo is pure Adrian Belew, and is suddenly ended by spluttering static and white noise at 5:13. "The Mark Has Been Made" signals another downshift into introspectiveness with 0:32 ghostly synth shimmers, echoed by cello at 1:04 which is the doubled at 1:55 by guitar. At 2:08 industrial riffs suddenly build up, weaving between 3:28 distorted guitars and the return of the repressed original layer at 4:16. The surprise is a mystery 32 second soundscape at the end with Reznor crooning 'I'm getting closer, all the time' like a zombie devil Elvis. "Please" highlights spacious noise at 0:48, and signals a central album motif at 1:04 with the line 'Time starts slowing down/Sink until I drown'. The psychic mood of the album shifts with the discovery of Imagination as a liberating force against oppression. The synth sound again is remarkably organic for an industrial album. "Starfuckers Inc" is the now infamous sneering attack on rock-stardom, perhaps at Marilyn Manson (at 3:08 Reznor quotes Carly Simon's 'You're So Vain'). Jungle beats and pulsing synths open the track, which features the sound-sculpting talent of Pop Will Eat Itself member Clint Mansell. Beginning at 0:26, Reznor's vocals appear to have been sampled, looped and cut up (apologies to Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs). The lines 'I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype/I listened to everyone now I know everyone was right' is a very savage and funny exposure of Manson's constant references to Friedrich Nietzsche's Herd-mentality: the Herd needs a bogey-man to whip it into submission, and Manson comes dangerous close to fulfilling this potential, thus becoming trapped by a 'Stacked Deck' paradox. The 4:08 lyric line 'Now I belong I'm one of the Chosen Ones/Now I belong I'm one of the Beautiful Ones' highlights the problem of being Elect and becoming intertwined with institutionalised group-think. The album version ditches the closing sample of Gene Simmons screaming "Thankyou and goodnight!" to an enraptured audience on the single from KISS Alive (1975), which was appropriately over-the-top (the alternate quiet version is worth hearing also). "The danger Marilyn Manson faces", notes Don Webb (current High Priest of the Temple of Set), "is that he may end up in twenty years time on the 'Tonight Show' safely singing our favourite songs like a Goth Frank Sinatra, and will have gradually lost his antinomian power. It's much harder to maintain the enigmatic aura of an Evil villain than it is to play the clown with society". Reznor's superior musicianship and sense of irony should keep him from falling into the same trap. "Complication" juggernauts in at 0:57 with screaming vocals and a barrage of white noise at 1:56. It's clear by now that Reznor has read his psychological operations (PSYOP) manuals pertaining to blasting the hell out of his audiences' psyche by any means necessary. Computer blip noise and black light flotation tank memories. Dislocating pauses and time-bends. The aural equivalent of Klein bottles. "Complication" juggernauts in at 0:57 with screaming vocals and a barrage of white noise at 1:56. It's clear by now that Reznor has read his psychological operations (PSYOP) manuals pertaining to blasting the hell out of his audiences' psyche by any means necessary. Computer blip noise and black light flotation tank memories. Dislocating pauses and time-bends. The aural equivalent of Klein bottles. "The Big Come Down" begins with a four-second synth/static intro that is smashed apart by a hard beat at 0:05 and kaleidoscope guitars at 0:16. Critics refer to the song's lyrics in an attempt to project a narcissistic Reznor personality, but don't comment on stylistic tweaks like the AM radio influenced backing vocals at 1:02 and 1:19, or the use of guitars as a percussion layer at 1:51. A further intriguing element is the return of the fly samples at 2:38, an effect heard on previous releases and a possible post-human sub-text. The alien mythos will eventually reign over the banal and empty human. At 3:07 the synths return with static, a further overlay adds more synths at 3:45 as the track spirals to its peak, before dissipating at 3:1 in a mesh of percussion and guitars. "Underneath It All" opens with a riff that signals we have reached the album's climatic turning point, with the recurring theme of fragmenting body-memories returning at 0:23 with the line 'All I can do/I can still feel you', and being echoed by pulsing static at 0:42 as electric percussion. A 'Messiah Complex' appears at 1:34 with the line 'Crucify/After all I've died/After all I've tried/You are still inside', or at least it appears to be that on the surface. This is the kind of line that typical rock critics will quote, but a careful re-reading suggests that Reznor is pointing to the painful nature of remanifesting. Our past shapes us more than we would like to admit particularly our first relationships. "Ripe (With Decay)" is the album's final statement, a complex weaving of passages over a repetitive mesh of guitars, pulsing echoes, back-beats, soundscapes, and a powerful Mike Garson piano solo (2:26). Earlier motifs including fly samples (3:00), mournful funeral violas (3:36) and slowing time effects (4:28) recur throughout the track. Having finally reached the psychotic core, Reznor is not content to let us rest, mixing funk bass riffs (4:46), vocal snatches (5:23) and oscillating guitars (5:39) that drag the listener forever onwards towards the edge of the abyss (5:58). The final sequence begins at 6:22, loses fidelity at 6:28, and ends abruptly at 6:35. At millennium's end there is a common-held perception that the world is in an irreversible state of decay, and that Culture is just a wafer-thin veneer over anarchy. Music like The Fragile suggests that we are still trying to assimilate into popular culture the 'war-on-Self' worldviews unleashed by the nineteenth-century 'Masters of Suspicion' (Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche). This 'assimilation gap' is evident in industrial music, which in the late 1970s was struggling to capture the mood of the Industrial Revolution and Charles Dickens, so the genre is ripe for further exploration of the scarred psyche. What the self-appointed moral guardians of the Herd fail to appreciate is that as the imprint baseline rises (reflective of socio-political realities), the kind of imagery prevalent throughout The Fragile and in films like Strange Days (1995), The Matrix (1999) and eXistenZ (1999) is going to get even darker. The solution is not censorship or repression in the name of pleasing an all-saving surrogate god-figure. No, these things have to be faced and embraced somehow. Such a process can only occur if there is space within for the Sadeian aesthetic that Nine Inch Nails embodies, and not a denial of Dark Eros. "We need a second Renaissance", notes Don Webb, "a rejuvenation of Culture on a significant scale". In other words, a global culture-shift of quantum (aeon or epoch-changing) proportions. The tools required will probably not come just from the over-wordy criticism of Cyber-culture and Cultural Studies or the logical-negative feeding frenzy of most Music Journalism. They will come from a dynamic synthesis of disciplines striving toward a unity of knowledge -- what socio-biologist Edward O. Wilson has described as 'Consilience'. Liberating tools and ideas will be conveyed to a wider public audience unfamiliar with such principles through predominantly science fiction visual imagery and industrial/electronica music. The Fragile serves as an invaluable model for how such artefacts could transmit their dreams and propagate their messages. For the hyper-alert listener, it will be the first step on a new journey. But sadly for the majority, it will be just another hysterical industrial album promoted as selection of the month. References Bester, Alfred. The Stars My Destination. London: Millennium Books, 1999. Eshun, Kodwo. More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction. London: Quartet Books, 1998. Van der Kolk, Bessel A. "Trauma and Memory." Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society. Eds. Bessel A. van der Kolk et al. New York: Guilford Press, 1996. Nine Inch Nails. Downward Spiral. Nothing/Interscope, 1994. ---. The Fragile. Nothing, 1999. ---. Pretty Hate Machine. TVT, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Alex Burns. "'This Machine Is Obsolete': A Listeners' Guide to Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/nine.php>. Chicago style: Alex Burns, "'This Machine Is Obsolete': A Listeners' Guide to Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/nine.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Alex Burns. (1999) 'This machine is obsolete': a listeners' guide to Nine Inch Nails' The fragile. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(8). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/nine.php> ([your date of access]).