Relations between traditional statistical and recently emerging sociophysics paradigms in the social sciences are considered. Similarities and differences between them are analyzed, resulting in a list of the qualitative differences to modeling appro

The processes of mass communications in complicated social or sociobiological systems such as marketing, economics, politics, animal populations, etc. as a subject for the special scientific subbranch—“mediaphysics”—are considered in its relation with sociophysics. A new statistical physics approach to analyze these phenomena is proposed. A keystone of the approach is an analysis of population distribution between two or many alternatives: brands, political affiliations, or opinions. Relative distances between a state of a “person's mind” and the alternatives are measures of propensity to buy (to affiliate, or to have a certain opinion). The distribution of population by those relative distances is time dependent and affected by external (economic, social, marketing, natural) and internal (influential propagation of opinions, “word of mouth”, etc.) factors, considered as fields. Specifically, the interaction and opinion-influence field can be generalized to incorporate important elements of Ising-spin-based sociophysical models and kinetic-equation ones. The distributions were described by a Schrödinger-type equation in terms of Green's functions. The developed approach has been applied to a real mass-media efficiency problem for a large company and generally demonstrated very good results despite low initial correlations of factors and the target variable.

Processes of mass communications in complicated social or sociobiological systems such as marketing, economics, politics, animal populations, etc. as a subject for the special scientific discipline - "mediaphysics" - are considered in its relation with sociophysics. A new statistical physics approach to analyze these phenomena is proposed. A keystone of the approach is an analysis of population distribution between two or many alternatives: brands, political affiliations, or opinions. Relative distances between a state of a "person's mind" and the alternatives are measures of propensity to buy (to affiliate, or to have a certain opinion). The distribution of population by those relative distances is time dependent and affected by external (economic, social, marketing, natural) and internal (mean-field influential propagation of opinions, synergy effects, etc.) factors, considered as fields. Specifically, the interaction and opinion-influence field can be generalized to incorporate important elements of Ising-spin based sociophysical models and kinetic-equation ones. The distributions were described by a Schrodinger-type equation in terms of Green's functions. The developed approach has been applied to a real mass-media efficiency problem for a large company and generally demonstrated very good results despite low initial correlations of factors and the target variable.

We consider a dilute or semidilute polymer solution with localized attracting centers near a flat phase boundary and assume it driven by both stochastic and periodic forces. The attracting inhomogeneities restrict the free motion of macromolecules and play the role of fixed pinning centers. The flat boundary is modeled by a bistable potential whose minima attract the movable polymer segments between neighboring pinning points. We study the motion of these segments. The stochastic forces lead to stochastic oscillations of the polymer parts between the two potential wells near the phase boundary. Application of a small temporal periodic force can synchronize these oscillations and leads to the phenomenon of stochastic resonance for a nonvanishing noise intensity. As an outcome of our theory in agreement with numerical simulations, the resonance is stronger for wider and/or less deep potentials and observed at smaller values of the noise intensity. Additionally, we discuss under what conditions doubly stochastic resonance of the macromolecular motion occurs, that is, if bistability of the potential near the boundary originates in the action of multiplicative noise.

A model for the motion of an elastic string is studied numerically and analytically. An elastic string in two dimensions and restricted by two pinning centers is considered. We consider two stable configurations (positively or negatively curved) with pinned ends due to the action of a bistable potential. It is further assumed that the string is driven externally by periodic and white noisy forces. The noise enables the string to flip between the two configurations. The small temporally periodic force synchronizes these flippings and the phenomenon of stochastic resonance is observed. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the output is investigated and shows a maximum for a nonvanishing intensity of the applied noise. Its dependence on the stiffness of the string is studied. The peak of SNR versus the noise intensity D is found to be more pronounced and to be shifted to small values of D with an increase in the effective stiffness of a string. The calculation is extended to stochastic resonance of vortex motion in a type II superconductor. For vortices restricted by two pinning centers, the characteristic time scale τR relevant to the vortex dynamics is shown to depend crucially on the effective vortex stiffness, with the time τR being extremely small for flexible vortices. Therefore, the effects of noise color on the vortex dynamics should be taken into account in many practical situations.

We present a simple scaling theory to describe the conformational properties of semiflexible polymers grafted on a flat surface. For orientation-dependent interactions between polymer segments, we analyzed the physical properties of a polymer brush from the collapsed to strongly stretched regimes. Our analysis predicts first-order isotropic–nematic phase transitions between isotropically and nematically collapsed brushes, and between stretched and nematically collapsed brushes. It is also found that the orientational interactions would raise the effective θ temperature as compared with the isotropic counterparts.

ADVERTISEMENT RETURN TO ISSUEPREVCommunication to the...Communication to the EditorNEXTSemiflexible Polymers near Attracting SurfacesDmitri V. Kuznetsov and W. SungView Author Information Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang 790-784, Korea Cite this: Macromolecules 1998, 31, 8, 2679–2682Publication Date (Web):March 31, 1998Publication History Received10 June 1997Revised10 February 1998Published online31 March 1998Published inissue 1 April 1998https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ma970827mhttps://doi.org/10.1021/ma970827mrapid-communicationACS PublicationsCopyright © 1998 American Chemical SocietyRequest reuse permissionsArticle Views154Altmetric-Citations22LEARN ABOUT THESE METRICSArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated. Share Add toView InAdd Full Text with ReferenceAdd Description ExportRISCitationCitation and abstractCitation and referencesMore Options Share onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InRedditEmail Other access optionsGet e-Alertsclose SUBJECTS:Electron correlation,Free energy,Phase transitions,Polymers,Stiffness Get e-Alerts

The chain stiffness is an important characteristic that affects the properties of many biological and synthetic polymers. We develop a perturbation theory in the framework of a Green’s-function approach to treat the chain stiffness effects systematically. This scheme incorporates the standard flexible-chain Edwards equation in the zeroth order. When applied to the chains on the surface, the theory predicts novel features in adsorption–desorption transitions coupled with types of isotropic to nematic ordering transitions, giving a rigorous quantitative basis for our previous scaling theory results. We analyze the phase diagrams, and various quantities that detail the chain distribution including orientation-order-parameter distribution of the adsorbed semiflexible polymers.

A lack of equilibrium of twisted magnetic flux tubes emerging from the photosphere into the corona is considered. Assuming mass and flux conservation in the tube and an isothermal tube that is in thermal equilibrium with the surrounding plasma, it is shown that a sufficently rapid temperature increase through the transition zone may lead to the loss of magnetohydrostatic equilibrium of the emerging flux tube due to the enhancement of the plasma pressure inside the tube. The non-equilibrium leads to a rapid expansion of the tube to reach a new equilibrium state. The rise and expansion of the tube before and after the non-equilibrium are accompanied by an increase in the twist of the magnetic field. This may lead to the field exceeding the threshold for the onset of the kink instability and a subsequent explosive release of magnetic energy.

Onsager-type (Khokhlov–Semenov) theory of the nematic ordering in an athermic system of long polymers, which accounts for two-body interactions only, is extended to take into account three-body interactions. The orientation distribution function, the free energy, the isotropic-nematic coexistence and the spinodal conditions are computed numerically for both persistent wormlike chains and chains with freely joint rigid segments. Even though second virial approximation is known to be asymptotically correct at large values of the polymer segment asymmetry l/d, three-body interactions are shown to cause the nontrivial dependence of the nematic ordering critical concentrations on l/d for the realistic values of l/d. Conditions of applicability of the second virial approximation are analyzed quantitatively.