For the past quarter-century, physicists have suspected that a subatomic particle unlike any other must exist?one made of the very glue that holds matter together at the most fundamental level. This glue acts within the nucleus of every atom, binding together charged particles that would otherwise repel one another. But might this force itself exist as a form of matter? Recently, the search for...

Páscoa and Seghir (2009) noticed that when collateralized promises become subject to utility penalties on default, Ponzi schemes may occur. However, equilibrium exists in some interesting cases. Under low penalties, equilibrium exists if the collateral does not yield utility (for example, when it is a productive asset or a security). Equilibrium exists also under more severe penalties and colla...

http://pliny.cch.kcl.ac.uk Our Digital Humanities community has been arguably in existence for about 50 years, and its pioneers – people like JB Smith and Rosanne Potter – expected right from the start that computing would have an enormous effect on scholarship. In fact, however, our effect on how most scholars work has been very small. Although tremendously innovative techniques have been deve...

Physics of radioactive nuclear beams is one of the main frontiers of nuclear science today. Experimentally, thanks to technological developments, we are on the verge of invading the territory of extreme N/Z ratios in an unprecedented way. Theoretically, nuclear exotica represent a formidable challenge for the nuclear many-body theories and their power to predict nuclear properties in nuclear te...

City road verges often represent existing green space and provide opportunities for ecological enhancement. Urban greenspace improvement initiatives at the residential verge scale require genuine community support engagement success. We examined a community-based voluntary assisted greening program designed to enhance connectivity using native plants in local municipality Perth, Western Austral...

Traditional mechanisms that spread mortality and longevity risk across a population group are increasingly being replaced by saving vehicles that leave this obligation in the hands of individual households. We explore the question of whether households are adequately saving for their future retirement by reviewing recent literature that examines household behavior in preparing for retirement – ...

¶1 On Sunday morning, Ms. B. dials into Prodigy, then logs on to the Prayer Line, a bulletin board storing messages from around the world. She scans a list of the most recent entries: Learning how to lean; Let me pray for you; My father; My mother’s stroke; National day of prayer; Please pray; Prayer for health; Ralph needs prayer; The father’s heart.1 These are the supplications of a group tha...

The question of whether there are links between our genetic makeup and the way we behave has long puzzled humans. With the publication of the human genome we may finally be on the verge of answering this tantalising question. Some scientists hope ultimately to be able to predict behaviour by simply looking at our genetic makeup. Unfortunately, humans are probably too complex to begin answering ...

The immense economic inequality we observe in the world today didn’t happen overnight, or even in the past century. It is the path dependent outcome of a multitude of historical processes, one of the most important of which has been European colonialism. Retracing our steps 500 years, or back to the verge of this colonial project, we see little inequality and small differences between poor and ...

We are now on the verge of the next technical revolution – robots are going to invade our lives. However, to interact with humans or to be incorporated into a human “collective” robots have to be provided with some human-like cognitive abilities. What does it mean? – Nobody knows. But, robotics research communities are trying hard to find out a way to cope with this problem. Meanwhile, despite ...