Centuries-old Problem Research Articles

The Use of the Knight's Tour to Create Abstract Art

History is replete with artists who have used mathematical relationships and/or grid systems to produce their art. Here the author introduces a system based on a centuries-old problem related to the chessboard. After a brief summary of the ‘knight’s tour’ problem, the author describes the methods by which his artworks are generated.

Research That Succeeds, Policies That Fail

The battering of women in intimate relationships has existed for thousands of years. Until early in the twentieth century, women were considered chattel, and it was legally and socially tolerated for husbands to use violence against their wives unless some permanent injury be inflicted or there be an excess of violence.' Although there were various attempts through the years to challenge the legal and social support for this violence, not until the 1970s did the efforts of the feminist movement and battered women themselves result in significant change. These early calls for change were hardly shocking. Advocates for change asked only that battered women be treated with fairness and be provided an opportunity forjustice. 2 They questioned why a woman beaten in her own home by her husband was denied this justice, while someone assaulted in the street was recognized as a legitimate victim of a crime. 3 No one argued that our system ofjustice was perfect or that exercising legal authority over these offenders would magically solve a centuries-old problem. Advocates believed, however, that treating victims of domestic violence as seriously as other victims of violent crime would, if nothing else, communicate that the behavior was no longer socially or legally

Concerning the nonlinear behaviour of the forced spherical pendulum including the dowsing pendulum

A spherical pendulum whose support is oscillated sinusoidally in a straight horizontal line will, close to resonance, develop a component of motion transverse to the driver plane. The physics of this phenomenon is discussed, supplemented by observations of transverse motion and by measurements of resonance curves for motion constrained to the driver plane. A discrepancy with the theory of Miles (1984) is noted. The study of the mechanically forced pendulum provides useful insight into the centuries-old problem concerning the dynamics of the hand-forced pendulum as employed by dowsers.

Rural social policy in a strategy of sustained development

This article discusses the changes observed during recent years in the social, demographic and occupational fields in the rural world, which, when they are added to the centuries-old problems of the sector, foreshadow severe imbalances in the context of the new modalities of functioning of Latin American economies that arise from the present crisis. It advances the thesis that in most of the countries of the region the solution of the problem of the peasantry and the achievement of a higher degree of equity in rural society, as well as between the rural and urban societies, constitute inescapable imperatives for any viable strategy of national development in the 1990s.

Mathematics

Current research in mathematics involves a wide variety of interlocking ideas, old and new. For example, results about the curves and surfaces defined by polynomial equations, as in algebraic geometry, appear in the study of solitary waves and also in the gauge theories in physics. Centuries-old problems in number theory have been solved, while others have been revealed as insoluble. The classification of all finite simple groups is nearly achieved (and the full treatment will be voluminous); the representation of groups aids in their application to the study of symmetry. These developments, and many others, attest to the vitality of mathematics.

Patterns in International Warfare, 1816-1965

Patterns in international violence are discovered through the quantitative analysis of international wars which resulted in more than 1,000 battle-connected deaths. Between 1816 and 1965, members of the state system participated in 50 such interstate wars and 43 such colonial and imperial conflicts. Although no secular trends are evident in terms of the fre quency, magnitude, severity, and intensity of these wars, the data suggest a twenty-year cycle in the magnitude of systemic war. Over two thirds of all of the wars began in either the spring or the autumn. Major powers have engaged in a dis proportionate number of wars and have suffered the most bat tle-connected deaths. These same powers, however, have won most of their wars. Those on the victorious side have often been the initiators of military hostilities. Enduring military friendships and enmities have been uncommon over the 150- year period. Further use of these basic war data should be helpful in the assault upon the centuries-old problem of the causes of war.

The Future of the Jewish Populations of Europe

Students of society and well-meaning sympathizers with the centuriesold problem of Jewish expulsions and persecutions differing in intensity and sordidness wherever Jews have lived, perennially raise the question: why not assimilation? A vast literature scholarly and otherwise examines the problem of a people which has become a living legend of the eternally wandering Jew. Successively, keen minds have raised the question of assimilation as the only adequate way out. Recent history may have thrown some serious doubt on this suggested solution; surely it shocked some 290,000 Germans who were suddenly classified as 50 or 25 per cent Jewish according to the Nazi decrees, and some 150,000 halfor quarter-Jews in Austria where conversions have been much more frequent in the past half century. Similar unheralded and excruciating experiences have befallen some Magyars, Italians, Frenchmen and others all over continental Europe wherever Nazi lawlessness decrees its peculiar brand of laws.