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Our physical universe is 1.5×10¹⁰ years old. It began with the Big Bang. There is some debate about what happened in the first tenth of a second! The first 3×10⁵ years were radiation dominated. Since then it has been matter dominated. (This in accordance with the first law of thermodynamics which states that total mass-energy is conserved.) The universe has continuously expanded in space and in the future either this may continue, or expansion may stabilise at a fixed size or the universe may contract in the Big Crunch (depending on the spatial curvature). At a certain scale the universe is spatially isotropic and homogeneous. Its trajectory exhibits increasing entropy in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics. These statements are in accordance with certain models and empirical data: distant galaxies are receding from us at a velocity proportional to their distance; there is greater spatial uniformity at greater distances from us; there is uniform presence in space of radiation with a temperature of 2.7K; etc.

Ostensibly the Carverian argument is based on the following premise, which is treated as an axiom:Human beings like other living creatures seem to be driven by a force that they neither understand nor care to resist, to keep on living, to consume food and transform it into human energy, and to increase their numbers, thus, in every way, enlarging the stream of human energy. In short, they act unconsciously, driven by their own nature, precisely as they would act consciously if they were convinced by unanswerable logic that the most valuable thing in the world was human energy or human life, and the most profitable thing in the world was to transform the largest possible sum of solar energy into human energy. (p. 12)

Love and force are thought of as the ultimate antithesis in human relations; the substitution of love for force is the utopian dream, the consummation devoutly to be wished but hardly hoped for, the far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves – perhaps – slowly if at all. It may therefore seem perverse to raise a question as to whether there is any fundamental or real difference between love and force. Yet consideration of that question will show that from a scientific, logical point of view, love is equivalent to force in human relations, and is in fact but a variety of force. It will show too, that force in the world in general, to be given any meaning at all, has to be regarded as a kind of love, as Empedocles contended long ago. This is no mere speculation or word-play; the point is of the most fundamental and practical significance in the field of social science, regarded as a project for improving the quality of social life.

In the view of a more or less characteristic attitude toward “arm-chair stuff,” it is fair to say that this paper is frankly of that variety, it does not present the results, tabulated or otherwise, of any inductive investigation, under controlled conditions and no apology will be made to anybody on that score. Nor will much time be taken in arguing the worth-whileness of abstract thinking on the question of methods, or in settling the place of deduction in relation to induction. One way to study the problem of methods would be to try all possible methods on all possible problems and see which gave useful or satisfying results. In the same way, one way to study any science would be to try all possible experiments and see which ones succeed. (mushrooms and toadstools). I shall simply assume without much discussion that while the only way to settle any question in case of persistent uncertainty of disagreement is to try it, on the other hand two things are true; in the first place much labor can be saved by getting as clear an understanding of any problem as possible in advance of inductive study that blind trial and error methods are wasteful; and moreover, inductive investigation itself rarely proves anything unless it is intelligently planned and carried out with a view to proving or disproving some hypothesis which has seemed in the light of careful previous analysis to be worth testing. And of course I assume that these principles hold in relation to the study of methods as well as in other lines of inquiry. It is true that much a priori discussion is inconclusive, misdirected, and futile; it is often true that it is needlessly prolonged, carried beyond the point necessary to define the issues and serve as a guide in an investigation of facts. It is even true, though very exceptionally, that in some cases it is entirely helpless and the only thing to do is to begin experimentation blindly or wait for some accidental coincidence to suggest a solution of a problem. For example, the discovery of effective catalyzers in chemistry, or perhaps the stains to differentiate a suspected bacterium or the treatment for a new disease. But is also true that an enormous proportion of inductive scientific study is misdirected and futile because the problem was not adequately analyzed to begin with. In the field of social science, with which I am fairly familiar it is triturating the obvious to say that the greater part of the statistical studies either prove only what everybody already knew and which called for no proof or else seem to prove something that everyone knows is false. And when the result of statistics conflicts with the convictions of common sense, which is really well-informed judgment, it is a trite observation that it is usually the statistics which are wrong (Pearson). The man in the street has only too much justification for the common belief that anything can be proved by statistics, and for the well-known division of liars into the three grades: plain liars, damned liars, and statisticians.

The correlations between mechanical behaviour, tensile strength, and rock parameters of metasedimentary rock samples in Karak, Pahang’s New Austrian Tunnelling Method (NATM) were statistically evaluated from the rock mechanic laboratory works at the selected sections around 2,000 m of the tunnel (named as NATM-1). According to a statistical analysis, lithotypes, geological structures, and region geology have a significant impact on the mechanical behaviour of the metasedimentary rock. In the Brazilian test, the fracture behaviour of the disc specimens was highly related to the reliability and precision of the experimental data by validations of methods. In this work, the impact of different loading methods and rock lithotypes on the failure mechanism of Brazilian discs was examined utilising five different metasedimentary rock types and three different loading methods. During the loading operation, the strain and displacement fields of the specimens were recorded and evaluated using a computerised strain gauge system. The rock types, according to experimental data, have a significant impact on the peak load and deformation properties of Brazilian discs. With the method below, tensile strength point of a disc specimen is clearly regulated by the material stiffness and tensile–compression ratio. Seismic occurrences have had a substantial impact on changing the rock and exerting forces that may affect its mechanical characteristics as well as its vulnerability to weathering effects or discontinuities. As a result, the goal of this study is to look into the connection between rock mechanics and metasedimentary rock stress analysis in NATM-1, Karak, Pahang.

Despite efforts to reduce environmental pollution and wasteful fossil fuel use, electric vehicles (EVs) are still rare on the road. Why is it so challenging to get widespread EV adoption? One significant factor on which it heavily depends is one's awareness and understanding of EVs. However, due to an absolute lack of knowledge on the part of the populace, this factor becomes a huge impediment to the uptake of EVs. A systematic review of the electronic database Scopus for the years 2003–2022 was carried out on ‘EV awareness and adoption of EV’ while considering the ‘Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis’ (PRISMA) standards. A three-step identification process resulted in the ultimate detection of 41 papers, which were then thoroughly examined. A conceptual framework that encompasses the three key awareness aspects that influence EV adoption is developed. To encourage greater uniformity among EV researchers, this study's conclusions serve as a foundation for operationalising upcoming research efforts within a predetermined framework. The authors must therefore be optimistic that lingering technological, legislative, cultural, behavioural and business-model barriers may be overcome over time through widespread dissemination of knowledge and awareness related to EVs, making it possible for everyone to switch to greener, more economical and more efficient transportation solutions.

Climate change is a vortical situation of increasing turbulent conditions called the “sixth extinction.” In this chapter I begin with the two-dimensional Archimedean spiral (the coiling rope), move on to the three-dimensional corkscrew spiral (or threaded screw), and on to the three-dimensional double spiral of upward and descending movement with many nested vortices. The latter is more necessary to understand climate change, and our possible future in it, than the flat spirals. Ironically, Plato wrote about the double-twisted spiral with its nested vortices long ago. We are in a double-spiralic helice, a vortical phenomenon with centripetal and centrifugal, upward-ascending and downward-descending waves, and left and right turning whorls. It is worse than this. We need to challenge spiral symmetry thinking. There is no reality axis around which the spiralic helice is spinning, and there is no symmetry. There is no uniformity to the spiralic vortices of turbulence of the sixth extinction.