Mass Annihilation Research Articles

Implementation of positive psychology to surmount demoralization caused by a cataclysm in select works of Svetlana Alexievich.

Cataclysm refers to a large-scale and violent event involving disaster, catastrophe, calamity, and tragedy. The recent surge of a pandemic (coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)), humanitarian crisis in Sudan, civil unrest, and war, such as the attacks in Syria and Ukraine, reiterate the need to address the trauma attached to such catastrophes. This study focuses on adapting positive psychology, one of the newest branches of psychology to emerge, to help human beings prosper and lead healthy, happy lives. It also explores post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and means to overcome traumatizing psychological dejection caused by such mishaps. Demoralization is the immediate effect caused on victims and survivors of such devastations. A comprehensive study of cataclysm and demoralization is concomitant with the suffering produced by various factors pertaining to mass annihilation. A deductive methodology is incorporated into the qualitative data to analyze the oral testimonies of war and disaster survivors in Svetlana Alexievich's works titled Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War, Second Hand Time, The Unwomanly Face of War and Chernobyl Prayer. Interpretation of the polyphonic voices in the oral sagas of interviewees in Alexievich's works reveals an increased level of anxiety, stress, and trauma post-catastrophic events. The implementation of positive psychology has been identified as an appropriate psychological intervention to address the issues related to psychological devastation.

A fluid description based on the Bernoulli equation of the one-body stationary states of quantum mechanics with real valued wavefunctions

A formalism is developed, and applied, that describes a class of one-body quantum mechanical systems as fluids where each stationary state is a steady flow state. The time-independent Schrödinger equation for one-body stationary states with real-valued wavefunctions is shown to be equivalent to a compressible-flow generalization of the Bernoulli equation of fluid dynamics. The mass density, velocity and pressure are taken as functions that are determined by the probability density. The generalized Bernoulli equation describes compressible, irrotational, steady flow with variable mass and a constant specific total energy, i.e, a constant energy per mass for each fluid element. The generalized Bernoulli equation and a generalized continuity equation provide a fluid dynamic interpretation of a class of quantum mechanical stationary states that is an alternative to the unrealistic, static-fluid interpretation provided by the Madelung equations and quantum hydrodynamics. The total kinetic energy from the Bernoulli equation is shown to be equal to the expectation value of the kinetic energy, and the integrand of the expectation value of the kinetic energy is given an interpretation. It is also demonstrated that variable mass is necessary for a satisfactory fluid model of stationary states. However, over all space, the flows conserve mass, because the rate of mass creation from the sources are equal to the rate of mass annihilation from the sinks. The following flows are examined: the ground and first excited-states of a particle in a one-dimensional box, the harmonic oscillator, and the hydrogen s states.

Memory and Testimony in Extraordinary Times

This paper analyzes two parallel and opposed testimonies of mass annihilation in World War II: Primo Levi’s report of his gruesome experiences in Auschwitz, in The Drowned and the Saved; the testimony of the fire-bombing of Dresden, that killed 130,000 civilians in 1945, recorded by a young American POW, private Kurt Vonnegut Jr, in his novel Slaughterhouse-five. It is basically structured along the phases of the historiographic operation proposed by Paul Ricoeur – testimony and recording of testimonies; questioning of the records and written historical representation of the past – with the objective of drawing conclusions about the role of literature in keeping alive memories that might prevent further atrocities. Steppingstones include the urge to bear witness, the paradoxical links between victims and perpetrators and the choice of literary genders to convey messages. References are made to René Girard’s concept of the scapegoat mechanism as an explanation for the eruption of violence in social groups.

RETRACTED: Lepton number violation in a unified framework

Abstract We study the time evolution of lepton family number for a neutrino that forms an SU(2) doublet with a charged lepton. The lepton family number is defined through a weak basis of the SU(2) doublet in which the charged lepton mass matrix is a real and diagonal one. The lepton family number carried by the neutrino is defined with a left-handed current of the neutrino family. We study the time evolution of the lepton family number operator for the Majorana neutrino. To be definite, we introduce the mass term at $t=0$ and study the time evolution of the lepton family number for the later time. Since the operator in the flavor eigenstate is continuously connected to that of the mass eigenstate, the creation and annihilation operators for the flavor eigenstates are related to those of the mass eigenstates. The total lepton number of the Majorana neutrino is conserved. By choosing a specific flavor eigenstate of the neutrino as an initial state, we compute the time evolution of all lepton family numbers. They are sensitive to Majorana and Dirac phases and are also sensitive to the absolute mass and mass hierarchy of neutrinos.

Nuclear Weapon-free World: Reconciling Moral and Security Imperatives

The arms control approach of more than six decades to deal with the nuclear peril lies in shambles. Nuclear weapons remain in huge numbers, and the dire consequences of their use remain undiminished, with portents of a new era of deadlier weapons and a new spiral of arms race. Hence a detailed and deeper examination of all issues connected with nuclear weapons is called for. Key to this is centrality of nuclear disarmament and the overriding international commitment to abolish nuclear weapons and the premise that nuclear weapons are the instrument of mass annihilation and cannot be used as weapons of war. This basic premise was lost sight of in the political expediency and compulsions of the Cold War and the subsequent play of geopolitics. There is a need to return to this basic premise, which should not be subordinated to political management of a renewed nuclear arms race. In keeping with these basics the pathways to the ultimate goal of abolition have been delineated.

Evaluating the Co-dependence and Co-existence between Religion and Robots: Past, Present and Insights on the Future

The relationship between religions and science can be considered historically controversial in nature. In constantly evolving global societies, it is important to provide a new perspective on the past and present relationship between religions and technological developments in the different societies. In this regard, this paper will provide insights into the different ways in which ancient societies and their religious traditions helped in the development of technological progress. At one end, it will highlight some of the positive contributions of different religions towards technological progress in the past. At the other end, this discussion will aid in dispelling the viewpoint that perceived the ancient cultures and societies as bereft of technological knowledge and innovation. This paper will provide a historical perspective on the development of relationship between religion and robotics in the past. A brief look at the existing scenario within the contemporary societies will also be examined, along with discussion of socio-cultural norms and values related to perception of robots in different Eastern and Western cultures. The discussion will conclude with some predictions regarding the future, along with the different ways in which the relationship of co-existence and co-dependence is expected to evolve between religion and robotics in the future, which goes beyond the predictions of mass annihilation and mass enslavement by sentient AI-based robots.

Kejahatan Bertopeng Agama: Sebuah Tinjauan Sosiologi Agama

Religion wherever it is, always being replaced in high state of human life. Religion, as the source of all sources, is used as a tool to role human either vertically or horizontally. Karl Marx said that religion is a blessed heart against a cold and heartless world. Religion is a human medium to have more sympathy and empathy for others to live a warmer and friendlier life in peace. However, it cannot be denied that religion was once a sword used to commit genocide or mass annihilation by a group of humans against other human groups either directly or indirectly. Crusades, the middle-east war that is still going on are two examples of the dark events of human destruction wrapped by religion. Terrorism that occurs today is a deviation that is also wrapped by religion. These crimes are the result of a distortion of religious doctrine. Not only are physical destructive but also psychological and materialistic crimes. Cases of misappropriation of funds like the First Travel case are one of them. This paper will attempt to explore the phenomenon of crime in the name of Islam that happened lately in Indonesia. This paper will explore the phenomenon with a philosophical and social approach.

Trauma and Counter-Trauma in the Book of Esther: Reading the Megillah in the Face of the Post-Shoah Sabra

Sociologist Kai Erikson defines collective trauma as a blow to one’s collective identity and social life. He writes, “It is a form of shock...a gradual realization that the community no longer exists as an effective source of support and that an important part of the self has disappeared.” We catch glimpses of a culture’s memories of trauma and survival of them in an array of discursive formations, including narrative. By naming, shaping, and giving words to traumatic experience, storytelling becomes an act of processing—an act that seeks to make sense of and survive the many haunting associations and dissociations that, paradoxically, signify events that exceed categorized signification. Though typically not utilizing trauma theory, scholars indirectly describe the book of Esther as taking part in this process. As Timothy Beal writes, Esther is a book “about living beyond the end,” often doing so by utilizing humor to lampoon the powers that be. However, rather than simply undermine the enemy via subversive jest, the Jews eventually turn the tables completely as they call for a mass annihilation of Jewish foes. As such, the creation of a new Jewish identity—one that appropriates Amalekite power and force—becomes another glimpse of the culture’s attempt to process, survive, and counter trauma. These tactics become even clearer, however, when cross-read intertextually with the celebration of Purim throughout the Shoah followed by the construction of the Israeli Sabra and IDF culture post-WWII. Whereas the celebration of Purim functioned more regularly as hidden resistance, the establishment of the Israeli sabra created space for both revenge fantasy and revenge reality against any and all lingering “Amaleks.” Though differing in strategy, context, and, arguably, productivity, these responses nevertheless illustrate a range of survival strategies employed in the face of communal suffering. Reading the book of Esther alongside these examples of counter trauma exposes Esther’s use of humor and appropriation of enemy ideology as articulations of post-traumatic wish-fulfillment. In short, by reading Esther as haunted by the Holocaust and the creation of the post-Shoah Sabra, we may better recognize the range of survival tactics employed in the text.

Infochemicals: An effective and environment friendly management of insect pests for sustainable agriculture

Chemical signals and cues have been collectively called semiochemicals or infochemicals referring to “a chemical substance, which in a natural context, is implicated in the transfer of information from one individual to other that results certain behavioral and physiological changes in response in one or both. Infochemicals that mediate interactions between members of the same species are collectively referred to as pheromones, and can be classified as sex pheromone, aggregation pheromone, alarm pheromone, trail marking pheromone on the basis of their functions etc. Allelochemicals are also infochemicals which cause an insect to respond interspecifically. They include a more number of chemicals than pheromones, and can be grouped into: allomones, kairomones, apneumones and synomones. The idea of infochemicals using for management of insect pests in agricultural, horticultural, forestry and storage has been a driving ambition through few decades of pheromone research. Several chemicals have been identified from insects that can be used in monitoring of native and invasive pest and also to protect the plants against herbivores. They can also be used as mass trapping, annihilation, and behavior manipulation of insect in host finding. Since these compounds are species specific, highly biodegradable and require in minute quantity, they could be exploited as green alternative to insecticides for ecofriendly management of insect pest for sustaining agriculture growth.

Resolving the electron-positron mass annihilation mystery

<p class="abstract"><span lang="EN-US">Mutual annihilation of low energy electrons and positrons results in two photons of equal energy. The annihilation is consistent with charge conservation but both particles have positive mass, so how do two positive masses annihilate? The issue is resolved by considering particles electromagnetic (EM) energy localized by curvature of the space-time metric. The curvature extends into the surrounding metric forming the particle’s gravitational field, usually attributed as due to mass by the observer, but only the curved space-time metric exists. In principle both positive and negative metric curvatures could exist and display positive and negative masses respectively, but both would possess positive energy. For the electron EM energy circulates in the observer domain and outside but close to an event horizon (EH), the positive metric curvature results in the impression of positive mass. Symmetry suggests positron energy circulates inside an EH and should have negative curvature. It is posited metric field curvature reverses on passage through an event horizon, thus the positron positive mass apparent to the observer arises from negative metric curvature inside the particle EH. The opposite metric curvatures of the electron and positron cancel on annihilation, eliminating their gravitational effects and thereby their apparent masses.</span></p>

Bunnies, Bilbies, and the Ethic of Ecological Remembrance

Bunnies, Bilbies, and the Ethic of Ecological Remembrance

On the Repeating History of Destruction: Media and the Observer in Sebald and Ransmayr

In his essay collection from 1999 Luftkrieg und Literatur (On the Natural History of Destruction in the English translation), W.G. Sebald addresses a decisive gap he sees in the chronicles on destruction in the twentieth century.1 The mass annihilation of German cities by Allied air raids in World War II was a catastrophe of epic proportion, he claims, that has never crossed the threshold of sensory understanding. Bolstering his argument with the words of Alexander Kluge, Sebald concludes with the historian that "[d]ie in der Geschichte bis dahin einzigartige [End Page 699] Vernichtungsaktion . . . ist nie zu einer öffentlich lesbaren Chiffre geworden" (12).2 Throughout the essays, Sebald further elaborates on his central thesis that the lack of overt, legible signs is the real tragedy of the air raids.3 In fact, for him the material destruction of German cities by the British bombers was only marginally as destructive as the German post-war culture that met the ruins with silence rather than speech, with blindness rather than vision, and with denial rather than conscious reflection, a culture that thereby successfully eliminated all readable traces of the annihilation. This erasure played out on multiple levels of the post-war German landscape. The thriving German work ethic, Sebald claims, quickly covered over the visible signs of destruction by rebuilding the destroyed cities; similarly, the post-war German culture of shame and self-censorship (one borne of the sheer shock and trauma of experiencing such destruction) prevented conscious and public acknowledgment of the loss at the psychological level. Finally and most significantly, Sebald concludes, the post-war literary culture completed the liquidation of the past by blocking speech itself: it responded to the events either with complete silence or with accounts so tainted by political, economic, and personal motivations that they failed to provide, and in fact even obstructed, an adequate understanding of the destruction. According to Sebald's arguments, the gap in the sensory landscape of post-war Germany is ultimately a product of the post-war representations themselves. In his essays, Sebald uses repeated references to sources such as Kluge to argue how the few existing accounts conceal rather than expose the impact of the events. Whether they are comprised [End Page 700] of first-hand sources—such as statistical accounts, British video footage, photographs or memoirs of survivors—or whether they are after-the-fact reconstructions of the events in historical and literary representations, the accounts cover the past atrocities with a subversive erasure of their own. Substituting direct acknowledgement with undecipherable abstractions, these representations complete the erasure of the past and thus perpetuate the cycle of destruction. The essays in Luftkrieg und Literatur present this drive to rebuild and thereby to erase and to silence not only as paradigmatic for the firestorms but indeed for all of World War II's destruction.4 Calling the air war "[ein] Krieg in purer, unverhohlener Form" (27), Sebald suggests that all annihilation in and following war subscribes to the same form. The pattern exhibited in the material destruction that reduced German cities to mere ash and stone reverberates in the rapid reconstruction that destroyed visible signs of the ruins by quickly covering over the rubble. This selfsame cycle of destruction recurs in the representations of the events themselves: they obscure the ruins with new forms that are, however, mere ciphers and in and of themselves unreadable.5 In Sebald's essays, the repeating "form" of destruction is more than the mere object of his rebuke on the silent gaps in literature. In fact, Sebald performs this very act of literary erasure through the repeated references to the destructive representations. Continually pointing to and citing from the unreadable ciphers in a wide range of media, Sebald ultimately uses the references themselves to comment on the forms of destruction as well as to demonstrate and to perpetuate the continuing cycle of...

The best defence against bioweapons has already been invented by evolution

Bioweapons are considered from the viewpoint of the mutual evolution of microbe/victim ecological systems. Cases considered include accidental, experimental, and real exploitation of bioweapons as well as other cases in the history of epidemics, and also experimental investigations. It is proposed here that speculations about bioweapon’s very high mass annihilating ability are based on over-extrapolation from limited data selected from the ancient history of epidemics and on a false supposition that all people are susceptible to any bioweapon’s infectious agent. The history of epidemics, clinical and genetic observations, data from experimental investigations, and results of accidental, experimental, and real exploitation of bioweapons do not confirm the mass annihilating capability of bioweapons. Many people possess constitutional (genetic) immunity presumably formed by natural selection over many human generations. This genetic protection exists in an individual prior to infection. The power of constitutional immunity played an important role during all human evolution. Its protective capability continues to defend humanity from mass annihilation by both epidemics and bioweapons. In this context of constitutional immunity for the majority of individuals, the main goal of modern medicine is to identify and defend the defenseless ones.

Markovian bulk-arriving queues with state-dependent control at idle time

This paper considers a Markovian bulk-arriving queue modified to allow both mass arrivals when the queue is idle and mass departures which allow for the possibility of removing the entire workload. Properties of queues which terminate when the server becomes idle are developed first, since these play a key role in later developments. Results for the case of mass arrivals, but no mass annihilation, are then constructed with specific attention being paid to recurrence properties, equilibrium queue-size structure, and waiting-time distribution. A closed-form expression for the expected queue size and its Laplace transform are also established. All of these results are then generalised to allow for the removal of the entire workload, with closed-form expressions being developed for the equilibrium size and waiting-time distributions.

Markovian bulk-arriving queues with state-dependent control at idle time

This paper considers a Markovian bulk-arriving queue modified to allow both mass arrivals when the queue is idle and mass departures which allow for the possibility of removing the entire workload. Properties of queues which terminate when the server becomes idle are developed first, since these play a key role in later developments. Results for the case of mass arrivals, but no mass annihilation, are then constructed with specific attention being paid to recurrence properties, equilibrium queue-size structure, and waiting-time distribution. A closed-form expression for the expected queue size and its Laplace transform are also established. All of these results are then generalised to allow for the removal of the entire workload, with closed-form expressions being developed for the equilibrium size and waiting-time distributions.

The best defence against bioweapons has already been invented by evolution

Bioweapons are considered from the viewpoint of the mutual evolution of microbe/victim ecological systems. Cases considered include accidental, experimental, and real exploitation of bioweapons as well as other cases in the history of epidemics, and also experimental investigations. It is proposed here that speculations about bioweapon’s very high mass annihilating ability are based on over-extrapolation from limited data selected from the ancient history of epidemics and on a false supposition that all people are susceptible to any bioweapon’s infectious agent. The history of epidemics, clinical and genetic observations, data from experimental investigations, and results of accidental, experimental, and real exploitation of bioweapons do not confirm the mass annihilating capability of bioweapons. Many people possess constitutional (genetic) immunity presumably formed by natural selection over many human generations. This genetic protection exists in an individual prior to infection. The power of constitutional immunity played an important role during all human evolution. Its protective capability continues to defend humanity from mass annihilation by both epidemics and bioweapons. In this context of constitutional immunity for the majority of individuals, the main goal of modern medicine is to identify and defend the defenseless ones.

Metropolis–Hastings from a stochastic population dynamics perspective

The development and application of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods based on the celebrated Metropolis-Hastings algorithm has played a major role in the recent advancement of statistical procedures. However, the approach has made relatively little impact on stochastic population modelling in spite of this field being central to many processes studied in biology, physics and chemistry. Attention is almost exclusively focussed on sampling and the construction of distributions and parameter estimates, with virtually no consideration being given to the structure of the process trajectories. This paper therefore tackles the inverse problem of determining whether there is an optimal method of selecting a proposal matrix corresponding to a given set of equilibrium probabilities, both in terms of trajectory characteristics and the coverage of the range of support. Using the discrete Cauchy distribution as a benchmark, simple and general random walk schemes are compared with the ‘small world’ scenario. It is then shown that these are all outperformed by a direct P-matrix approach based on a mass annihilation and immigration process.

Posterity lost: progress, ideology, and the decline of the American family

Chapter 1 Foreword Chapter 2 Preface Chapter 3 Introduction Part 4 Part I. The Problem: Family Breakdown and Its Relation to Progress Chapter 5 In Disarray: The American Family Approaching Year 2000 Chapter 6 The Future at Risk: The Consequences of Family Breakdown Chapter 7 Why Conventional Explanations Are Incomplete Chapter 8 The Crucial Role of the Ideology of Progress Part 9 Part II. The Paradox: Rise and Fall of the Idea of Progress Chapter 10 How the Process Gave Rise to the Idea Chapter 11 The First Great Predicament of Progress Chapter 12 A Horrible Capacity for Mass Annihilation Chapter 13 Limits-to-Growth Predicaments Chapter 14 The Fundamental Predicament of Progress Chapter 15 Decline and Fall of the Idea of Progress Part 16 Part III. The Battle: The War Over Family Values Chapter 17 Family Values: Evolution or Revolution? A Major Battleground: Self vs. Posterity Chapter 18 Equality, Family Advantages, and Moral Relativism Chapter 19 Reclaiming the Family: Principles and Programs Chapter 20 We Can Act, But Will We?

Birth-death processes with mass annihilation and state-dependent immigration

A birth-death process is subject to mass annihilation at rate β with subsequent mass immigration occurring into state j at rateα j . This structure enables the process to jump from one sector of state space to another one (via state 0) with transition rate independent of population size. First, we highlight the difficulties encountered when using standard techniques to construct both time-dependent and equilibrium probabilities. Then we show how to overcome such analytic difficulties by means of a tool developed in Chen and Renshaw (1990, 1993b); this approach is applicable to many processes whose underlying generator on E\\{0} has known probability structure. Here we demonstrate the technique through application to the linear birth-death generator on which is superimposed an annihilation/immigration process

Counting on volunteers: Arizona's Titan Missile Museum

It is a frightening relic of the Cold War, an underground monument to mass annihilation, and a popular Arizona tourist attraction. It is the Titan Missile Museum, the unlikely result of cooperation between the United States Air Force, an aircraft museum in Tucson, and the Government of the former Soviet Union. And it is operated almost entirely by a staff of volunteers.