Regional economic integration via detection of circular flow in international value-added network

Global value chains are formed through value-added trade, and some regions promote economic integration by concluding regional trade agreements to promote these chains. However, it has not been established to quantitatively assess the scope and extent of economic integration involving various sectors in multiple countries. In this study, we used the World Input–Output Database to create a cross-border sector-wise network of trade in value-added (international value-added network) covering the period of 2000–2014 and evaluated them using network science methods. By applying Infomap to the international value-added network, we confirmed two regional communities: Europe and the Pacific Rim. We applied Helmholtz–Hodge decomposition to the value-added flows within the region into potential and circular flows, and clarified the annual evolution of the potential and circular relationships between countries and sectors. The circular flow component of the decomposition was used to define an economic integration index. Findings confirmed that the degree of economic integration in Europe declined sharply after the economic crisis in 2009 to a level lower than that in the Pacific Rim. The European economic integration index recovered in 2011 but again fell below that of the Pacific Rim in 2013. Moreover, sectoral economic integration indices suggest what Europe depends on Russia in natural resources makes the European economic integration index unstable. On the other hand, the indices of the Pacific Rim suggest the steady economic integration index of the Pacific Rim captures the stable global value chains from natural resources to construction and manufactures of motor vehicles and high-tech products.

Determining the Circular Flow Number of a Cubic Graph

A circular nowhere-zero $r$-flow on a bridgeless graph $G$ is an orientation of the edges and an assignment of real values from $[1, r-1]$ to the edges in such a way that the sum of incoming values equals the sum of outgoing values for every vertex. The circular flow number, $\phi_c(G)$, of $G$ is the infimum over all values $r$ such that $G$ admits a nowhere-zero $r$-flow. A flow has its underlying orientation. If we subtract the number of incoming and the number of outgoing edges for each vertex, we get a mapping $V(G) \to \mathbb{Z}$, which is its underlying balanced valuation. In this paper we describe efficient and practical polynomial algorithms to turn balanced valuations and orientations into circular nowhere zero $r$-flows they underlie with minimal $r$. Using this algorithm one can determine the circular flow number of a graph by enumerating balanced valuations. For cubic graphs we present an algorithm that determines $\phi_c(G)$ in case that $\phi_c(G) \leqslant 5$ in time $O(2^{0.6\cdot|V(G)|})$. If $\phi_c(G) > 5$, then the algorithm determines that $\phi_c(G) > 5$ and thus the graph is a counterexample to Tutte's $5$-flow conjecture. The key part is a procedure that generates all (not necessarily proper) $2$-vertex-colourings without a monochromatic path on three vertices in $O(2^{0.6\cdot|V(G)|})$ time. We also prove that there is at most $2^{0.6\cdot|V(G)|}$ of them.

(De)Facing Time

The title of John Ashbery’s 1965 poem “Clepsydra” alludes to Charles Baudelaire’s “L’Horloge,” from Les Fleurs du mal, and reading Ashbery’s poem as a response to “L’Horloge” helps refine our understanding of his place in literary history, a process this essay pursues by considering “Clepsydra” in relation to influential readings of poetry offered by some of Ashbery’s major contemporaries (Marjorie Perloff, Paul de Man, and Harold Bloom). Exemplifying the allegorical mode of modernism that the young Ashbery resists, Baudelaire’s poem manifests the triumph of linear time; “Clepsydra” imagines time as circular flow, averting allegorical time chiefly by means of prosopopoeia and metalepsis. The most old-fashioned of allegorical devices, prosopopoeia abounds in “Clepsydra,” but Ashbery repeatedly endeavors to counteract it, and metalepsis by its nature resists linearity. Despite the poem’s astonishing inventiveness, however, in the poem the resilience of allegory and of linear time is ultimately reaffirmed.

Mantle-flow diversion beneath the Iranian plateau induced by Zagros’ lithospheric keel

Previous investigation of seismic anisotropy indicates the presence of a simple mantle flow regime beneath the Turkish-Anatolian Plateau and Arabian Plate. Numerical modeling suggests that this simple flow is a component of a large-scale global mantle flow associated with the African superplume, which plays a key role in the geodynamic framework of the Arabia-Eurasia continental collision zone. However, the extent and impact of the flow pattern farther east beneath the Iranian Plateau and Zagros remains unclear. While the relatively smoothly varying lithospheric thickness beneath the Anatolian Plateau and Arabian Plate allows progress of the simple mantle flow, the variable lithospheric thickness across the Iranian Plateau is expected to impose additional boundary conditions on the mantle flow field. In this study, for the first time, we use an unprecedented data set of seismic waveforms from a network of 245 seismic stations to examine the mantle flow pattern and lithospheric deformation over the entire region of the Iranian Plateau and Zagros by investigation of seismic anisotropy. We also examine the correlation between the pattern of seismic anisotropy, plate motion using GPS velocities and surface strain fields. Our study reveals a complex pattern of seismic anisotropy that implies a similarly complex mantle flow field. The pattern of seismic anisotropy suggests that the regional simple mantle flow beneath the Arabian Platform and eastern Turkey deflects as a circular flow around the thick Zagros lithosphere. This circular flow merges into a toroidal component beneath the NW Zagros that is likely an indicator of a lateral discontinuity in the lithosphere. Our examination also suggests that the main lithospheric deformation in the Zagros occurs as an axial shortening across the belt, whereas in the eastern Alborz and Kopeh-Dagh a belt-parallel horizontal lithospheric deformation plays a major role.

A chemical circular communication network at the nanoscale

A community of three nanodevices communicates through a hierarchically programmed circular flow of chemical information between members.