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National anthems are occasionally quoted, mostly based on anecdotal evidence or arguments, to be correlated with societal features. The present study aims to identify the pervasive topics in national anthems, and then to establish whether connections may be established between these topics and some basic societal features. Upon examination of ~200 anthems, such recurring themes were identified: ancestry/past, beauty, build/work, country name, courage, democracy, enemy, ethnicity, family, man, woman, fight, flag/colours, forever/never, future, geographical references, glory, independence/freedom, joy/happiness, home/mother/father-land, law/governance, leader, love, loyalty, peace, poverty/wealth, pride, religion, revolution, sacred, sacrifice, salvation, sorrow, treason, tyrant/chains, unity, win/victory. The number of topics, as well as their bias (e.g., towards identity, or towards fight, or towards general well-being), vary widely between anthems; groups of anthems may be identified based on these tendencies. Moreover, the number of topics, their bias, and/or the date of adoption can be proven to correlate to some extent to more general societal features such as date of adoption, age of country, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, Gini coefficient, size of armed forces, inequality, inequality-adjusted human development index, and a number of parameters from the World Values Survey (WVS) database (related to religion, gender equality, attitude towards other nationalities/races, attitude towards work, attachment to democratic values etc). This set of data and the herein identified correlations may offer grounds for further, more detailed exploration of a variety of correlations between societal features and official narratives, starting with the national anthems as prime example.

A recent expansion of anticorruption campaigns in Romania finds such media coverage, that parts of the society appear to be oversaturated. Together with doubts raised on the legitimacy of several of the higher-profile cases put forth by the prosecutors, this has led to an ironic public proposal that prison terms be compulsory for all citizens as a means of public education – in an arguably kafkian parallel to the concept of compulsory military service.

Polylactic acid (PLA) may be regarded as an analogue of a poly-alanine oligo/polypeptide, where the amino group has been replaced by a hydroxyl. As a consequence, a series of studies have explored the possibility that PLA can adopt peptide-type secondary structures – i.e., repetitive structural patterns characterized by intramolecular hydrogen bonds between neighboring functional groups. To this end, computational techniques (molecular mechanics, semiempirical, Hartree-Fock, density functional theory DFT) geometry optimizations of isolated oligomers of lactic acid (generally ten-unit oligomers), or oligomers attached to solid surfaces, or dimers have been reported, as well as spectral simulations thereof - looking at relative stabilities of helices (α, π, 310), and β sheets. A significant variation in the predicted structures and spectra was noted, depending on the computational method employed. With the most accurate method available (a DFT functional parametrized especially for describing non-covalent interactions), in isolated PLA models the π helix was found to be the most likely structure, closely followed by the 310 helix, and β sheets being the least stable. We review here these data and add two important elements: (1) first, a comparison with an experimentally-derived model of PLA, proposed by De Santis, and (2) second, a Ramachandran analysis of the Φ and Ψ angles in the optimized geometries. It is shown that (1) the De Santis structure is in fact slightly more stable than the helices, and (2) the optimized geometries in fact stray far from the initial Φ, Ψ values – to the extent that all of the peptide-like secondary structures in fact end up as turns (mostly type III β turns), while the DFT-optimized De Santis structure has no classical correspondent in the Ramachandran series of secondary structures.