update.403 (fwd)

[Jim Choate]

Forwarded message:

> Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 11:40:29 -0500 (EST)
> From: physnews at aip.org (AIP listserver)
> Subject: update.403

> CLUSTERING AND COLLAPSE IN GRANULAR MATERIAL. 

> DOES CHAOS AFFECT THE COURSE OF AN ARMS RACE? 
> Yes, it may, particularly when great disparities exist between two
> nations' economies (as is the case with the US and Iraq), according
> to a new mathematical model developed by researchers in Japan
> (Mitsuo Kono, Chuo University, kono at fps.chuo-u.ac.jp, 011-81-
> 426-74-4161).  In an attempt to mathematically model the feedback
> between two adversarial nations as each builds up arms stocks,
> British scientist Lewis F. Richardson published in 1949 a well-
> known set of equations with variables describing such things as a
> nation's military spending levels and parameters quantifying factors
> such as a nation's internal pressure against military spending.  This
> model suffered from shortcomings, most notably that its linear
> equations provided all too predictable results; critics noted that
> many arms races spiral unpredictably out of control.   In the
> Japanese researchers' model a nation's reaction to an enemy's
> weapons buildup is not automatically to build more weapons but is
> instead a function of the difference in weapons and military
> spending between two nations.  This approach leads to more
> realistic nonlinear differential equations which quantify concepts
> normally unknown to physics, concepts such as fear, threat,
> grievance, and fatigue.  Their model shows an arms race can
> progress in a mathematically chaotic fashion when the economic
> situation of the two countries is different, but is more predictable
> when the economies are more comparable (Tomochi and Kono in
> the journal Chaos, December 1998.)

> CORRECTION.  A typo affecting a single letter can completely
> reverse the meaning of a sentence. Thus in Update 402 in the
> sentence "It is not thought that physics does differentiate between
> the forward or backward movement of time," "not" should be
> changed to "now."


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