Total Figure: Pandemic as a Portal to the Future

Review of 2020 strategic trends presents an analysis of the key components of the country's integral power — economy, foreign policy, armed forces, territory, natural resources, culture and religion, science and education, population, governance - according to the original methodology developed by specialists of the Institute for Economic Strategies.

The New Method Using Shannon Entropy to Decide the Power Exponents on JMAK Equation †

The JMAK (Johnson–Mehl–Avrami–Kolmogorov) equation is exponential equation inserted power-law behavior on the parameter, and is widely utilized to describe the relaxation process, the nucleation process, the deformation of materials and so on. Theoretically the power exponent is occasionally associated with the geometrical factor of the nucleus, which gives the integral power exponent. However, non-integral power exponents occasionally appear and they are sometimes considered as phenomenological in the experiment. On the other hand, the power exponent decides the distribution of step time when the equation is considered as the superposition of the step function. This work intends to extend the interpretation of the power exponent by the new method associating Shannon entropy of distribution of step time with the method of Lagrange multiplier in which cumulants or moments obtained from the distribution function are preserved. This method intends to decide the distribution of step time through the power exponent, in which certain statistical values are fixed. The Shannon entropy to which the second cumulant is introduced gives fractional power exponents that reveal the symmetrical distribution function that can be compared with the experimental results. Various power exponents in which another statistical value is fixed are discussed with physical interpretation. This work gives new insight into the JMAK function and the method of Shannon entropy in general.

The obsolescence of politics: Rereading Günther Anders’s critique of cybernetic governance and integral power in the digital age

Following media-theoretical studies that have characterized digitization as a process of all-encompassing cybernetization, this paper will examine the timely and critical potential of Günther Anders’s oeuvre vis-à-vis the ever-increasing power of cybernetic devices and networks. Anders has witnessed and negotiated the process of cybernetization from its very beginning, having criticized its tendency to automate and expand, as well as its circular logic and ‘integral power’, including disruptive consequences for the constitution of the political and the social. In this vein, Anders’s works, particularly his magnum opus Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen [The Obsolescence of Man], sheds new light on the technologically organized milieus of the contemporary digital regime and also highlights a new form of cybernetic ‘conformism’. The goal of the essay is therefore, not only to emphasize the contemporary nature of Anders’s thought but also to use it to frame a critique of current neo-technocratic and, ultimately, post-political concepts, such as ‘algorithmic regulation’, ‘smart states’, ‘direct technocracy’, and ‘government as platform’. This essay argues that cybernetic capitalism is causing what Anders terms ‘ Unfestgelegtheit’ to disappear; that is, we are losing the originary possibility of technologically (re-)structuring our world in alternative ways, particularly given the determinist character of current technologies.

Локализованная вторая оптическая гармоника в нелинейно-оптической керамике при фемтосекундном лазерном возбуждении

Second harmonic generation is studied in samples of LiTaO_3 powder ceramics with different lithium concentrations (48.8 and 49.3%) under excitation by a femtosecond laser at a wavelength of 1.026 nm. The dependence of the second harmonic integral power on the incident radiation power is measured, and a method for estimating the nonlinearity coefficient and its homogeneity in green-body ceramics is proposed.