A paper of Michele Bartuccelli, Jonathan Deane and Guido Gentile appeared in the October issue of the Journal of Mathematical Physics.  The title of the paper is “Attractiveness of periodic orbits in parametrically-forced systems with time-increasing friction“.  The paper considers dissipative one-dimensional systems subject to a periodic force.  As a model system, particularly suited for numerical analysis, the driven cubic oscillator in the presence of friction is investigated, and the effect of time-varying friction is studied numerically.  The relevance of the results for the spin-orbit model in celestial mechanics is discussed in some detail.  The JMP webpage for the paper is here.