Regional Dimension Research Articles

Contribution of Climate Scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 to the Study of Climate Change Impacts on Cocoa Farming in Côte d’Ivoire

In the particular context of climate change in Côte d’Ivoire and the vulnerability of farmers to its effects, one of the major issues is how these changes could impact cocoa yields of cocoa production areas. Thus, the objective of this study is to sustainably increase the resilience of all cocoa farming stakeholders to the impacts of climate change. The study was carried out in the central and southern areas of Côte d’Ivoire with a focus on eleven localities that have many communities of cocoa producers and a humid climate. The rainfall and temperature observation data using come from the CRU, they cover the historical period from 1971 to 2000 at 0.5o × 0.5o horizontal scale. As for the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 climate scenarios, they come from the CORDEX database and cover the 2021-2050 period. The methodology is based on the calculation of climatic indices sensitive to cocoa cultivation which are the number of consecutive dry days (CDD), the number of consecutive wet days (CWD), the amount of rain during the rainy season and the maximum temperature above 33℃. The results show that for all the localities studied, indices such as CDD and CWD could experience an increase. In addition, the total amount of rain during the long rainy season (April to June) is calculated on the basis of the threshold of 700 mm representing the minimum annual precipitation during the rainy season necessary for good growth of the cocoa tree. It reveals that for the two scenarios the cumulative rainfall will all be greater than 700 mm. Regarding temperatures, the central and southern areas could have a low number of hot days (temperature greater than or equal to 33℃ which is the tolerable threshold for cocoa cultivation). The eleven localities, therefore, remain favorable areas for cocoa cultivation in terms of climatic conditions based on temperature and rainfall, despite the regional dimension of the effects of climate change and the associated constraints.

Conflict Entrepreneurs in Prolonged Civil War in South Sudan

South Sudan has travelled a long and difficult journey in its quest to seek lasting peace which has been jeopardized by multifaceted factors and a multiplicity of actors including state and non-state operatives. Such determinants of internal peace processes, which have stood along the way, have been firmed up by deep and powerful players in this youngest state in Africa. Much clarity on what continues to transpire in South Sudan is grounded on scholarship which accounts for the roles of regional dimensions and international dynamics of conflict and peace processes in Sudan and South Sudan. Literature indicates that ethnonationalism, greed, grievance drivers, the Islamisation of politics when the south was part of the north, and the high-handedness of the Khartoum regime was central in the polarization of the state. We also examine the effect of natural resources particularly oil and militia factions in protracted conflicts in South Sudan. When South Sudan seceded in 2011, the state started from a fluid beginning, with weak institutionalization and the problem of ethnicization of the government and its related agencies. Although the explanations grounded on the conventional understanding of ethnicization of politics and loyalty deficits towards authority are critical, the state as an entity is bound by other activities that it maintains with external agents such as trade entrepreneurs who partly invest and occupy a wide economic space and agendas of wealth creation which informs the regimes economic wellbeing. This subject is understudied especially considering the contemporary peace processes and conflict resolution in South Sudan. In this study, I seek to explain the significance of conflict entrepreneurs in the peace process in South Sudan. Conflict Entrepreneurs consist of diverse actors including entities with commercial interests, MNCs, political elites, and states who directly and indirectly are involved in plundering resources and economic opportunities in civil war-torn South Sudan. The question is: which actors can be regarded as conflict entrepreneurs in South Sudan’s conflict context and why? Second, what roles do these entrepreneurs play in South Sudan’s peace process? Using governmental reports, newspaper analysis, and secondary research, these questions are addressed throughout this paper.

Regionalna ekonomska transformacija

Modern economies and their smaller units – regions, regardless of their development level, witness significant inequalities. European regions differ significantly in their economic structure, history, available workforce skills, technological profiles, institutional and managerial capacities, and many other aspects. Most Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) are not an exception. Specifically, differences exist between national economies and between NUTS 3 regions within national economies, with some regions lagging behind. The inequality problem is addressed by the EU's Cohesion Policy in the CEECs, keeping in mind that CEECs are less developed than the average of the EU28 (27). Through its Cohesion Policy, the EU is seeking to reduce economic disparities between regions. An important issue is to create region-specific policies to foster regional growth. Therefore, Cohesion Policy instruments should be used in Central and Eastern European countries to tackle regional divergences and assist them in balancing their regional development as they formulate sectoral policies. Many analysts argue that the higher the movement towards a post-industrial (information, service) society, the more outdated the growth, production, and productivity inherited from industrial capitalism will be. Technological innovation has always been a crucial driver of progress, but over the last 50 years, its pace and significance have been growing. Technologically leading regions have long embraced innovation and are forging ahead, whereas lagging regions require a complete transformation of their economic (industrial) structure. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze Cohesion Policy in the CEECs by analyzing the relationship between GDP per capita and spending of EU funds. Moreover, the aim is to investigate the importance of vertical and horizontal industry policy in CEECs. To do that, the paper analyzes the total output growth and inter (intra) industry exchanges of Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs). More specifically, an analysis of the changes in intra-industry trade (two-way trade) is performed, which shows how far bilateral imports and exports match within sectors. The paper reviews current theoretical knowledge and empirical research on the importance of the regional dimension of industrial policy, respecting the paradigm of innovative sustainability. The main methods used in the paper comprise a comparative analysis based on earlier theoretical and empirical studies in the field of regional economic development, as well as an analysis of industrial performance.

To hele them of somme sekenesses and maladyes and all illness of the stomach. On the rivalry between illness, sickness and malady in Middle English

The present paper analyses the fates of the native nouns illness and sickness and those of the French borrowing malady in Middle English. Focusing on the regional and temporal dimensions of their rivalry, the study uses the evidence from the Innsbruck Corpus of Middle English Prose (ICMEP, Markus 2008), a collection of 129 works of Middle English prose. The analysis also makes use of other databases such as Collins English Dictionary (CED), the Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE), Middle English Dictionary online (MED), Merriam-Webster Dictionary (MWD), and the Oxford English Dictionary online (OED). The degree of the adaptability of the terms in question is best reflected in their varied frequency in the ICMEP’s texts. The tentative research results place malady (107 attestations in total) far behind its Germanic equivalent sickness (701 attestations). A single instance of illness testifies to its low recognisability in the Innsbruck Corpus of Middle English Prose, probably due to its being often replaced by sickness, which leads to a considerable reduction in the use of the term.

Place of linguistic and country studies in the process of socio-cultural adaptation of foreign higher education applicants

The article deals with the peculiarities of the socio-cultural adaptation of foreign higher education applicants. The relevance of the study has to do with the significant flow of educational migrants to Ukraine. Most of them experienced “culture shock” due to the discrepancy between imaginary and real life in a foreign-speaking country with a history, culture, lifestyle, and traditions different from their own. Their socialization and language training are integral components of adaptation in a foreign-language educational and socio-cultural environment, of the process of personal growth. The author describes the peculiarities of communicative and sociocultural competences formation in the process of learning Ukrainian as a foreign language and considers the advisability of using sources that reveal the evolution of the country’s history and culture in the regional dimension. Knowledge of the region or city where foreigners study helps them navigate unfamiliar places better. The paper offers a view on the role and place of linguistic and country studies competence in the process of socio-cultural adaptation. The study of local history materials by foreign students should be accompanied by visual displays of examples of material and spiritual culture. It is advisable to conduct thematic excursions (real and virtual), round tables, contests, business games, and conferences. Foreign students should be involved in various communicative situations, which would allow them to remember the vocabulary and grammar of the Ukrainian language faster and better. It has been proved that studying the history and culture of another nation using language training of foreign citizens contributes to the formation of not only communicative competence but also a versatile personality. Understanding the differences in the historical processes, cultural and socio-economic development of individual countries and peoples contributes to the formation of the foundations of humanism and tolerance. The process of adaptation to a new foreign language environment promotes awareness of one’s own identity. Prospects for further research are seen in the improvement of forms and methods of classroom and extracurricular work, the use of new country studies materials to develop and increase the level of mastery of foreign students in all types of speech activities, to promote soft adaptation to new living conditions, and personal growth.

Temporary trends and factors of birth rate in Ukraine: regional dimension

The demographic problem is surprisingly acute for Ukraine. Research trends factors and structural and dynamic features of birth rate will allow determining socio-economic and demographic trends, including their variations across regions. The purpose of the article is to establish regional features of modern trends and factors of fertility in Ukraine in the 21st century. The article presents an analysis of the dynamics of the birth rate in Ukraine based on the analysis of official statistics. Periods of minimum and maximum values have been established taking into account the leading factors and differences by type of settlements. The characteristics of changes in the sex-age structure of the population of Ukraine and the age-related fertility rate in the context of leading factors and differences by types of settlements are given. Based on the standardization of demographic coefficients, the degree of influence of internal factors affecting the birth rate in the regions of Ukraine was determined. A significant share of births in older fertility groups was identified, which confirms the trends of the second demographic transition, the spread of the phenomenon of "late motherhood" and the so-called "pro-European" model of reproductive behavior, which is more characteristic of highly urbanized regions of Ukraine. On the basis of cluster analysis, regional peculiarities of trends and factors of fertility in Ukraine in the 21st century were revealed, as a result, five clusters were identified. The first cluster includes the capital. The second cluster includes Zakarpattya, Rivne, and Volyn regions, which have the most lively demographic behavior of the population and the preservation of traditional factors. The third cluster united Kharkiv, Sumy, Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Poltava, Zaporizhzhya and Dnipropetrovsk regions. The fourth cluster is represented by Odesa, Lviv, Chernivtsi and Ivano-Frankivsk regions. The fifth cluster includes Mykolaiv, Kirovohrad, Ternopil, Kyiv, Kherson, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi, and Vinnytsia regions. Thus, internal territorial differences in the birth rate, in terms of regions of Ukraine, as well as urban and rural areas, are the result of the action of external and internal factors that had an impact during the studied period and were reflected in the course of demographic processes.

An evolution of global and regional banking networks: A focus on Japanese banks’ international expansion

The significant increase in cross-border lending of Japanese banks since the Great Financial Crisis of 2007–2009 is documented to have both a global and regional dimension. This paper investigates how this expansion affects domestic financial stability. Based, on a network-based approach we show that Japanese banks have a prominent role in the global banking network in providing liquidity via cross-border lending. We also apply the Spinglass methodology to detect communities formed within the network and show that Japan is highly connected and has a central role in the East-Asian regional banking network. As a further step in the analysis, we employ a novel spatial econometric approach, namely, a time-varying spatial autoregressive (SAR) model to analyze the evolution of the network’s spillover effects over time. Our empirical analysis points to the positive spillover effects of banking stability arising from cross-border lending activities. However, the results suggest that the spillovers are more pronounced at the global level than regional. Furthermore, we find that the role of Japanese banks in the global banking network has more than doubled since 2014.

Understanding Contemporary Security: A Prolegomenon to the Interplay Between Technology, Innovation and Policy Responses

Contemporary security is shaped by a variety of factors which determine the changing dynamics of connections and interdependencies within and between social groups and political actors. The growing importance of technology and innovation for states and societies has been a critical factor in the infrastructural, organizational and decision-making dimensions. This article aims to integrate some aspects of contemporary security into current dynamics of technology and innovation as vehicles of rapid and substantial changes in security policies and actions. Designed as an essay based on qualitative method in social sciences, this paper raises theoretical and empirical questions concerning modernization and innovation as determinants of contemporary security structures and policies. The empirical dimension of technology, innovation and politics are presented in the microscale (local security), in the mesoscale (state security, national security, sectoral security) and in the macroscale (international security in regional and global dimensions), as well as from the cross-sectional (transversal) perspective.

Russian Regions in Political Research and Identity Studies: Introducing the Issue

The editorial board presents an issue dedicated to the analysis of politics in the regions of Russia. Two interrelated paradigms of the political design of Russia’s regional diversity are to trace - territorial and ethno-national. They have become not only options for state registration of a space diversified by political, economic and ethno-cultural grounds, but also the subject of ideological battles, including assessments and the degree of preference of management strategies and political priorities. In the political and institutional context, the regional dimension of Russia implies an emphasis on the correlation of particular features and universalizing intentions. Such a ratio of the general and the special is included in the subject pool associated with understanding and ensuring the completeness of Russia’s sovereignty.

Construing Climate Change Adaptation as Global Public Good Under International Law: Problems and Prospects.

Article 7 of the Paris Agreement recognizes that adaptation is a 'global challenge faced by all with local, regional and international dimensions.' It further establishes the 'global goal on adaptation focusing on enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change, with a view to contributing to sustainable development.' However, the lack of international cooperation between the global north and global south challenge the formulation and implementation of climate change adaptation strategies. This paper brings in the concept of global public goods (GPGs) to the lexicon of climate adaptation and highlights that adverse impacts of climate change such as climate-induced global migration are global public bad. Hence, the measures taken to respond to such impacts, which consequently enhance the resilience of affected countries, make them more adaptive to those adverse impacts, and deliver common values of universal character, should be construed as the global public good. The paper argues that that the idea of GPGs with its universality offers a normative and practical foundation for understanding, addressing, and strengthening the international community's climate adaptation actions and cooperation.

Discrete-time stabilization of wave phenomena engineering of network-like continuum transfer processes

This work is a natural continuation of the authors’ research of flow phenomena in the direction of increasing the dimension of the network-like region of change in the spatial variable. The possibility of practical use of the stability analysis of the differential-difference scheme to solve the problem of stabilization of wave phenomena in the engineering of the process of transfer of continuous media through network-like carriers (pipelines, gas and oil pipelines, industrial carriers of gas and petroleum products) is shown. Namely, if the scheme is stable, then sufficiently small changes in the initial data of the mathematical model of the process under study entail small changes in the solution of the difference problem, i.e. in practice do not lead to undesirable consequences; if the scheme is unstable, then small changes in the initial data can lead to arbitrarily large changes in the solution. During the operation of the above-mentioned industrial structures, wave phenomena inevitably arise, the consequence of which are various kinds of instabilities, entailing destruction of one or another nature. The results obtained are used in the digitalization of modern technological processes for the movement of liquid media and gases.

Integrated development of digital and energy industries: Paving the way for carbon emission reduction

The fusion of digital and energy industries is an efficacious route to advance the high-quality development of the energy system and ensure energy security. This study explored the fusion mechanism of digital and energy industries and built an evaluation index system for the fusion of digital and energy industries from four dimensions: fusion basis, fusion conditions, fusion application, and fusion performance. Next, the fusion level of digital and energy industries and their performance in different dimensions in China and various regions were calculated using the global principal component analysis. Subsequently, the panel data model was used to quantitatively study the influence factors of the integrated development of China's digital and energy industries. The study revealed that the fusion level of China's digital and energy industries has continuously improved from 2002 to 2018, but the gap between different regions in 2017 was still large. The integrated development of digital and energy industries is positively correlated with the development level of digital and energy industries, scientific and technological innovation, environmental regulation, and urbanization.

Classifying China-India Relationships: Cooperation, Competition and Conflict

As major neighbors, Sino-Indian relations affects both countries’ development and security interests and impacts stability and development on a global and regional scale. This relationship is the product of bilateral strategic perceptions and policy choices coupled by active engagement and interaction. This study scrutinizes the classification of China-India relationship types and the various factors affecting them from multiple perspectives through a literature review to ascertains the characteristics and nature of strategic interactions between Sino-Indian relations at the global, regional and bilateral levels. China-India relationships can be divided into three types, namely cooperation, competition and conflict, which determine the development trend of long-term relations. At the global level, China and India share common development demands and a common desire to restore their status as great powers, leading them to have consistent strategic interests and common positions on specific global affairs. At the regional level, the strategic spaces of the two countries overlap in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region, and strategic competition is prone to occur. At the bilateral level, mainly border conflicts and trade imbalances make it difficult to deepen bilateral cooperation. The strategic foundation of the China-India cooperative relationship at the global, regional, and bilateral dimensions is also weakening, with trends showing leaning toward competition and conflict escalation. Keywords: China-India relationships; relationship types; competition; cooperation; conflict

National, regional, and global cardiomyopathy burden from 1990 to 2019.

To examine the incidence of cardiomyopathy including both alcoholic cardiomyopathy (AC) and other cardiomyopathy (OC) in 204 nations and regions over the 1990-2019 period. The present study was conducted using data derived from the GBD 2019 study coordinated by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). The GBD 2019 study included epidemiological data pertaining to 369 diseases/injuries, 286 causes of death, and 87 risk factors in 204 nations and regions. For this study, we adopt published estimates pertaining to the prevalence rates, mortality rates, and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) associated with cardiomyopathy. The Bayesian mixed-effects DisMod-MR 2.1 meta-regression tool, which was designed to analyze GBD data, was used to estimate the prevalence of OC and AC. The GBD data are subdivided into 21 global regions based on characteristics such as geographical proximity and epidemiological similarity. The overall burden of cardiomyopathy was assessed by combining AC- and OC-related data, 95% confidence intervals were calculated based on standardized error values determined based upon the width of the 95% UI divided by 1.96 × 2. Globally, there were an estimated 0.71 million (95% UI: 0.55-0.92) AC cases and 3.73 million (95% UI: 2.92-4.72) OC cases in 2019. The age-standardized cardiomyopathy, AC, and OC prevalence rates (per 100,000 persons) in 2019 were 56.0 (95% CI: 43.82-71.17), 8.51 (95% UI: 6.6-11.01), and 47.49 (95% UI: 37.22-60.16), respectively. In total, the respective numbers of global deaths attributed to AC and OC were 0.07 million (95% UI: 0.06-0.08) and 0.24 million (95% UI: 0.19-0.26). The age-standardized mortality rate for cardiomyopathy in 2019 was 3.97 (95% CI: 3.29-4.39), with respective mortality rates of 0.86 (95% UI: 0.72-0.99) and 3.11 (95% UI: 2.57-3.4) for AC and OC. At the global level in 2019, 2.44 million (95% UI: 2.04-2.78) DALYs were attributed to AC, while 5.72 million (95% UI: 4.89-6.33) DALYs were attributed to OC. From 1990 to 2019, cardiomyopathy age-standardized prevalence rates declined by -0.49% (95% CI: -0.57 to -0.41), with those for AC and OC having respectively declined by -0.32% (95% UI: -0.36 to -0.28) and -0.17% (95% UI: -0.21 to -0.13). The age-standardized AC and OC mortality rates declined by -0.36% (95% UI: -0.5 to -0.26) and -0.39% (95% UI: -0.44 to -0.29), despite 24.8 and 30.2% increases, respectively, in the numbers of AC- and OC-related deaths during the same period. Previous studies have estimated the risk factors that influence the burden of multiple cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Among them, some studies related to the GBD database on cardiomyopathy data suggest that alcohol intake, gender are factors in the development of AC, and the burden of AC and OC is not limited to developed or less developed countries. Otherwise, this study mainly focused on cardiomyopathy, and analyzed multiple indicators from national, regional, and age-standard dimensions to identify potential risk factors including prevalence, deaths, years lived with Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) that influence the development of AC and OC. To our knowledge, this study is the first to have systematically assessed the burden of AC and OC as of 2019 at the national, regional, and global levels and calculated DALYs to achieve a better evaluation of disease risk and quality of life of the population. The number of cases, deaths and DALYs of cardiomyopathy showed an overall increasing trend and obvious geographical differences in the past three decades. The burden of cardiomyopathy remains a persistent threat to global public health. These results provide an epidemiological foundation that can guide public health efforts and policymakers.

Genetic, Epigenetic and Environmental Factors Influence the Phenotype of Tooth Number, Size and Shape: Anterior Maxillary Supernumeraries and the Morphology of Mandibular Incisors

The aim of this study is to investigate whether the genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors that give rise to supernumeraries in the maxillary incisor region and larger dimensions of the adjacent maxillary incisors are also associated with variations in the morphology of the mandibular incisors. If so, this would contribute to understanding the distribution and interactions of factors during dental development and how these can be modelled. The sample consisted of 34 patients with supernumerary teeth in the maxillary anterior region, matched for gender, age and White Caucasian ethnicity with 34 control subjects. The average ages of the supernumerary and control groups were 12.8 and 12.2 years, respectively. Study models of all subjects were constructed and imaged using a previously validated system. Using custom software, each of the mandibular incisor teeth were measured to obtain 17 parameters from the labial view and 17 from the occlusal view. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to summarize the measurements into a smaller set representing distinct features of the clinical crowns, followed by a comparison between the supernumerary and control groups using 2-way ANOVA. Seven factors of tooth size of the mandibular central incisors and six factors of the mandibular lateral incisors were identified as major features of the clinical crowns. All parameters of both mandibular incisors were greater in the supernumerary group than in the control, with three of these, located in the incisal and cervical regions of the mandibular lateral incisors, being statistically significantly larger. The findings of this study indicate that the aetiological factors associated with supernumerary teeth in the maxillary anterior region also affect tooth crown dimensions of mandibular incisors. This new evidence enhances several models of the interactions of genetic, epigenetic and environmental components of dental development and supports a multi-model approach to increase understanding of this process and its variations.

Source-sink dynamics drove punctuated adoption of early pottery in Arctic Europe under diverging socioecological conditions

What drives the adoption of pottery amongst prehistoric foragers in high-latitude environments? Following the long-running interests of archaeology in explaining the origin and dispersal of new technologies, recent years have seen growing efforts to understand what drove the emergence and expansion of early hunter-gatherer pottery use across northern Eurasia. However, many regional dimensions to this continental-scale phenomenon remain poorly understood. Initial pottery adoption has often been explained as a generic cultural response to warming climates and the growing diversity of food resources, yet resolving challenges of food security during seasonal shortfalls or general climatic downturns may have provided alternative motivations. It is also becoming clear that many regions experienced more complex patterns of pottery adoption and that many resist simplistic monocausal interpretations. In this paper we deploy a Human Ecodynamics framework to examine what drove the punctuated adoption of two early pottery traditions into Arctic Maritime Europe, which were separated by a multi-millennial ceramic hiatus – Early Northern Comb Ware (ENCW) and Asbestos Tempered Ware (ATW). Our multi-proxy approach involves the revision of pottery chronologies to clarify the timing and ecological context for each dispersal, combined with analysis of technological and functional dimensions of the ceramic traditions to understand the contrasting social organization of these technologies. Our results confirm that ENCW expanded at a time of increased locational investment and ecological abundance in the region, while ATW spread in a series of smaller and more intermittent waves in the context of a major ecological downturn and alongside a return to a high-mobility lifestyle. Finally, we use the concept of “source-sink dynamics” to suggest that both dispersals were driven by the same underlying process. This involved major climatic fluctuations triggering small-scale population transfers from lake and riverine settings of western Russia, Finland and the Eastern Baltic region via interior areas and through to the Arctic Norwegian coastline, a persistent process that is also well-documented in later historical periods. Our results highlight the crucial importance of bridging-scale case studies as these have the “unsettling” potential to highlight deeper problems of equifinality. In this case, they reveal that two broadly similar material traditions spread into the same regions, albeit in the context of strikingly different environmental and behavioural conditions.

The hydro-racial fix in infrastructural regions: Atlanta’s situation in a regional water governance conflict

ABSTRACT Globally, rapid population growth in cities, regulatory and governance failures, poor infrastructure, inadequate funding for urban water systems, and the impacts of climate change are each rapidly reconfiguring regional hydrosocial relations. In the United States, these hydrosocial reconfigurations tend to reinforce racial inequalities tied to infrastructure, exacerbating environmental injustices. More generally, according to a framework of racial capitalism, infrastructural regions and hydrosocial relations are always already racialized and structured simultaneously by capitalism and racism. In this paper, we integrate hydrosocial and racial justice perspectives with the literature on infrastructural regionalism to examine Atlanta’s position in the so-called tri-state water wars between Alabama, Georgia and Florida. Combining analysis of academic, policy, and legal documents, journalistic accounts, and semi-structured interviews with water conservationists and managers working in Atlanta, we examine conflicts over water use in the infrastructural region of the Apalachicola–Chattahoochee–Flint (ACF) river system. We emphasize that the ACF conflict reworks regional hydrosocial relations through territorializations of racial capitalism. We demonstrate how particular discourses that reify Atlanta as a monolith overly simplify the regional dimensions of the crisis, diminishing the views, roles and interventions of diverse actors in the ACF region. We argue that work on infrastructure regionalism and water governance can be deepened through attention to the hydro-racial fix.

The Analysis of the Continuous Fracture Process of the Steam-Turbine Rotor with the Local Defect

Main factors that determine the steam-turbine rotors work lifetime which work in a long-term load circumstances under an influence of high temperatures are the accumulation of creep deformations and the concomitant accumulation of the damage of the material. The heterogeneity of the material leads to the nascence of the defect that is the concentrator of stresses. To describe the dispersed damages impact on the construction material strength the function of the damage is applied the value of what changes during the operation process. To perform the research discrete models with N = 235, N = 731 and N = 2047 are considered. Using thicker discrete models allows clarifying the rotor basic lifetime value on 2% and 1% respectively. For the finite-element model with N = 731 the rotor basic lifetime value in the presence of the defect is 104000 hours that is less by 15% than in the absence of the defect. The rotor additional lifetime value is 6000 hours. The maximum value of the damage parameter can be observed on isolines nearby the defect at the moment of time 2200 hours and the difference between maximum values of the damage parameter for the rotor with the defect and hereunto is 30% that increases over time to 70%. After 104000 hours the accumulation region of the maximum values of the damage parameter increases in both directions of the rotor cross-section over time in such way that the augment of the maximum values of the damage parameter occurs more intensively in the rotation axis direction. At the moment of time 107000 hours the correlation between dimensions of the continuous fracture region in axes directions is 2/3 and to the moment of time 110000 hours is about 1/2. The value of the damage parameter in finite elements those border with the fracture region doesn’t exceed 0,3 scilicet the accumulation of the damage is local.

A deterministic gradient-based approach to avoid saddle points

AbstractLoss functions with a large number of saddle points are one of the major obstacles for training modern machine learning (ML) models efficiently. First-order methods such as gradient descent (GD) are usually the methods of choice for training ML models. However, these methods converge to saddle points for certain choices of initial guesses. In this paper, we propose a modification of the recently proposed Laplacian smoothing gradient descent (LSGD) [Osher et al., arXiv:1806.06317], called modified LSGD (mLSGD), and demonstrate its potential to avoid saddle points without sacrificing the convergence rate. Our analysis is based on the attraction region, formed by all starting points for which the considered numerical scheme converges to a saddle point. We investigate the attraction region’s dimension both analytically and numerically. For a canonical class of quadratic functions, we show that the dimension of the attraction region for mLSGD is $\lfloor (n-1)/2\rfloor$ , and hence it is significantly smaller than that of GD whose dimension is $n-1$ .

Australian Foreign Policy during the World War II

The article is related to the establishment of Australian foreign policy tradition and becoming of Australia as a subject of international relations. The significant role of the dominions during First World War Great and their help for Great Britain victory, intensified their struggle for independence. As the result of long-term efforts, dominions reached the proclamation of the Balfour Declaration in 1926 by London, which was later confirmed by the Statute of Westminster (1931), which established the authority for dominions for an independent foreign policy. The development of Australian foreign policy before and during World War II was analyzed. The evolution of the relations of the Australia and Great Britain in the context of the events of the World War II is traced, in particular the peculiarities of the allied relations of the two countries. There is shown the regional dimension of the World War II within the Asia-Pacific region, in the context of Australia and the United States actions against Japanese aggression. There are analyzed the peculiarities of external threats effect on the transformation of the Australian foreign policy strategy, in particular in the national security sphere. The main threat for Australia in that period become Japanise aggressive and expansionist policy in the Asia-Pacific region. A lot of Australian soldiers and military equipment were sent to Great Britain to support traditional allie. But in actual strategic situation in Europe there were great doubts that British troops and the navy would be able to effectively help Australians in case of an attack by Japan. Politics of national security and defense of Australia in the context of its participation in World War II is considered. In the conditions of real threat of Japanese invasion, as well as the lack of sure to receive necessary support from Great Britain, the Australian government start to find a military alliance with the USA. There were identified the key implications of World War II for Australian socio-economic system.