PHYSICAL MODELING OF STEEL HOMOGENIZATION DURING FINISH ALLOYING IN THE MOLD

The article describes the method of finish alloying steel in molds in top and bottom casting. Due to the reduction of oxygen activity in the metal due to the relatively lower casting temperature than the previous stages of steelmaking redistribution, it is achieved the reduction of the ferroalloys loss and increasing the yield of useful elements of ferroalloys. An important indicator of the implementation of the proposed technology is the alloying of steel in the mold to obtain steel of a certain brand in small volumes. The aim of the study is to determine the rational place of addition of alloys into the volume of the melt and the method of casting, for the best dissolution of alloys in steel directly in the mold. To solve this problem, the method of physical modeling on a water transparent model using a fluorescent dye that glows brightly in ultraviolet light was used. The experiment consisted of three series of with different methods of casting and introduction of dye: 1) top casting with the introduction of dye into the mold; 2) bottom casting with the introduction of dye into the mold; 3) bottom casting with the introduction of dye in the trumpet. It was analyzed that the averaging of the dye is more efficient at a lower liquid level in the mold, because mixing occurs due to the flow of liquid in the mold, the higher the liquid level in the mold, the weaker the mixing flows. The research revealed minimization of averaging time at the optimal fluid level. For top and bottom casting with the addition of dye to the mold, the optimal level is 33%. When the dye is introduced into the center, there is a slight directly proportional increase in the time of complete homogenization with an increase in the liquid level in the mold. Among the analyzed methods of steel casting, the most effective in terms of homogenization of the alloying additive is bottom casting. The color of the liquid at different stages of filling the mold with the introduction of the dye at the level of 25% of the height of the mold is analyzed.

EU Institutional Politics of Secrecy and Transparency in Foreign Affairs: A Commentary

International diplomacy has long been regarded as the domain of an elite hand-picked few, instructed and groomed in something considered an art form. Both the secrecy and the pomp have their rational place. Political interventions from regime change through to more standard economic and social challenges cue both subtle and dramatic shifts in relationships and alignments and diplomats must rightly handle such situations with great delicacy. Premature or too much public disclosure about diplomatic exchanges could risk undermining the mutual trust and confidence on which the conduct of international relations and negotiations depends. The question of course concerns the determination of what constitutes ‘premature’ or ‘too much’ and who decides the point at which public access can or should occur. We have certainly seen a trend towards greater transparency in foreign affairs in recent times, but this will always remain one of the most sensitive areas for national governments and international organisations. Contributors to this publication pose important questions about transparency in the context of foreign affairs at EU level. The question ‘How much is enough?’ is particularly pertinent. I welcome the exploration of topics of secrecy and transparency in this thematic issue and look forward to further contributions as the theory and practice of the ideas put forward are developed.

The New Story in Physics: Mind, Matter, and the Nonlocal Universe

The capacity to acquire and use fully complex language systems made the members of our species fully conscious and self-aware beings in the vast cosmos. But this enormous privilege came with a price. After our ancestors began to live storied lives in a linguistically based symbolic universe, the world that previous generations experienced as an integrated and undivided whole split into two worlds—an inner world where the self that is aware of its own awareness exists and an outer world in which this self seeks to gratify its needs and establish a meaningful sense of connection with other selves. And this explains why the most fundamental impulse in the storied lives of fully modern humans has always been to close the gap between these inner and outer worlds by integrating all seemingly discordant parts of a symbolic universe into a meaningful and coherent whole. The narrative that has consistently served this function is religion. But during the first scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, another narrative emerged called Newtonian or classical physics that also promised to bridge the gap between self and world by integrating all of the seemingly discordant parts of the physical universe into a coherent and meaningful whole. In this physics, one universal force, gravity, governs the motion, interaction, and blending of indestructible atoms or mass points. And since the laws of gravity were completely deterministic, it was assumed that all events in the cosmos are predetermined by the forces associated with these laws and that the future of any physical system could be predicted with absolute certainty if initial conditions are known. In the worldview of classical physics, human beings were cogs in a giant machine and linked to other parts of this machine in only the most mundane material terms. The knowing self was separate, discrete, and isolated from the physical world, and all the creativity of the cosmos was exhausted in the first instant of creation. As physicist Henry Stapp points out, “Classical physics not only fails to demand the mental, it fails to even provide a rational place for the mental.

Commerce and Character in Maria Edgeworth

In her novels and didactic writing Maria Edgeworth links moral and financial credit in an attempt to turn a traditional idea of the corporate personality of the family into the foundation of commercial agency in a credit economy. Rejecting the individual as incapable of surviving in a credit-based market, Edgeworth's novels about the marriage market are fantasies of the larger marketplace, attempts to shape the kind of person required by England's credit-based market. The "charm of probability" with which Edgeworth enchanted her reviewers was both a formal device of realism and the foundation of the informal credit economy that she inhabited and advertised. Edgeworth's emphasis on rationality and predictability, however, excludes the irrationality inherent to consumer desire, one basis of the market itself. In Belinda, therefore, Edgeworth splits the commercial world into two separate and radically contradictory systems of representation-realist and Gothic. The marketplace is a benign and rational place governed by Adam Smith's laws, rules of probable behavior that are both moral and economic, and, at the same time, it is a realm of improbable behavior and insatiable consumer desires that are depicted through the conventions of the Gothic.