Models of evolution by genome rearrangements are prone to two types of flaws: One is to ignore the diversity of susceptibility to breakage across genomic regions, and the other is to suppose that susceptibility values are given. Without necessarily supposing their precise localization, we call "solid" the regions that are improbably broken by rearrangements and "fragile" the regions outside sol...

Environmental philosophers spend considerable time drawing the divide between humans and the rest of nature. Some argue that humans and our actions are unnatural. Others allow that humans are natural, but maintain that humans are nevertheless distinct. The motivation for distinguishing humans from the rest of nature is the desire to determine what aspects of the environment should be preserved....

This study starts with the review on the role of external assistance to fragile states where the state lacks the capacity to provide better quality lives for its people. One of the tools being the Official Development Assistance, this paper focuses on the its disbursement patterns to fragile states that targets women's empowerment and gender equality to verify where donors stand on their action...

An important question in genome evolution is whether there exist fragile regions (rearrangement hotspots) where chromosomal rearrangements are happening over and over again. Although nearly all recent studies supported the existence of fragile regions in mammalian genomes, the most comprehensive phylogenomic study of mammals (Ma et al. (2006) Genome Research 16, 1557-1565) raised some doubts ab...

The mechanical characterization of mortars is problematic due to their sensitivity to stress concentration defects, namely pores and flaws. In this paper, data on three-point bending, Young’s modulus and fracture toughness of mortar beams are presented and discussed. Here, Weibull statistics is applied to analyse flexural strength of the developed mortar. Based on data obtained according to the...

The granular jamming transition is experimentally investigated in a two-dimensional system of frictional, bidispersed disks subject to quasistatic, uniaxial compression without vibrational disturbances (zero granular temperature). Three primary results are presented in this experimental study. First, using disks with different static friction coefficients (μ), we experimentally verify numerical...

We analyse the Coulomb cohesion of wet granular materials and its relationship with the distribution of capillary bonds between particles. We show that, within a harmonic representation of the bond and force states, the shear strength can be expressed as a state equation in terms of internal anisotropy parameters. This formulation involves a dependence of the shear strength on loading direction...