Mathematical modelling and numerical simulation of physical cloud processes in a wide range of spatiotemporal scales

The mathematical modelling and numerical simulation of clouds and climate include numerous phenomena that are tough nuts to crack as they cover a wide range of spatiotemporal scales. In many ways, time is a vital factor, for instance, predicting the significance of a millisecond phenomenon for the future century is a major undertaking. Additionally, the computational time required by numerical models is a challenge. Luckily, we have a fine set of tools in our mathematical backpack. Here, we explore how a detailed cloud model can be improved to simulate the interactions with ice crystals. A new ice microphysics module is validated against a set of similar cloud models. Further on, the cloud model is shown to be an improvement over the previous generation of cloud models as it incorporates detailed aerosol-cloud interactions, which in our study is shown to impact cloud lifetime through ice nuclei recycling and marine ice nuclei import via updrafts. Additionally, the cloud model, which has a fine resolution in the order of meters, is harnessed to develop three different emulators to represent selected cloud processes in an improved detailed way. Emulators can be called also parametrisation or a machine learning model. Further on, created parameterisations are implemented within a global climate model, which has a much coarser resolution in the order of 10–100 kilometres. The implementation enables more precise climate simulations by having a more detailed subgrid scale description of cloud processes. As an adventurous side quest, we elaborate on how the proof-of-concept emulator could be embellished by showing an optimised way of creating the design of the simulation experiment in our applied case and we compare our results with the proof-of-concept method used in the study where the emulators were created

Towards an Integrated Model of the Mental Lexicon

Several models have been proposed attempting to describe the mental lexicon-the abstract organization of words in the human mind. Numerous studies have shown that by representing the mental lexicon as a network, where nodes represent words and edges connect similar words using a metric based on some word feature, a small-world structure is formed. This property, pervasive in many real-world networks, implies processing efficiency and resiliency to node deletion within the system, explaining the need for such a robust network as the mental lexicon. However, each model considered a single word feature at a time, such as semantic or phonological information. Moreover, these studies modeled the mental lexicon as an unweighted graph. In this thesis, I expand upon these works by proposing a model that incorporates several word features into a weighted network. Analyses on this model applied to the English lexicon show that while this model does not exhibit the same small-world characteristics as a weighted graph, by setting a minimum threshold on the weights (reminiscent of action potential thresholds in neural networks), the resulting unweighted counterpart is a small-world network. These results suggest that a more integrated model of the mental lexicon can be adopted while affording the same computational benefits of a small-world network. An increased understanding of the structure of the mental lexicon can provide a stronger foundation for more accurate computational models of speech and text processing and word-learning

Charms of the Cynical Reason: Tricksters in Soviet and Post-Soviet Culture

The impetus for Charms of the Cynical Reason is the phenomenal and little-explored popularity of various tricksters flourishing in official and unofficial Soviet culture, as well as in the post-Soviet era. Mark Lipovetsky interprets this puzzling phenomenon through analysis of the most remarkable and fascinating literary and cinematic images of soviet and post-Soviet tricksters, including such “cultural idioms” as Ostap Bender, Buratino, Vasilii Tyorkin, Stierlitz, and others. Soviet tricksters present survival in a cynical, contradictory, and inadequate world, not as a necessity, but as a field for creativity, play, and freedom. Through an analysis of the representation of tricksters in Soviet and post-Soviet culture, Lipovetsky attempts to draw a virtual map of the soviet and post-Soviet cynical reason: to identify its symbols, discourses, and contradictions, and by these means its historical development from the 1920s to the 2000s

Syntax with oscillators and energy levels

This book presents a new approach to studying the syntax of human language, one which emphasizes how we think about time. Tilsen argues that many current theories are unsatisfactory because those theories conceptualize syntactic patterns with spatially arranged structures of objects. These object-structures are atemporal and do not lend well to reasoning about time. The book develops an alternative conceptual model in which oscillatory systems of various types interact with each other through coupling forces, and in which the relative energies of those systems are organized in particular ways. Tilsen emphasizes that the two primary mechanisms of the approach – oscillators and energy levels – require alternative ways of thinking about time. Furthermore, his theory leads to a new way of thinking about grammaticality and the recursive nature of language. The theory is applied to a variety of syntactic phenomena: word order, phrase structure, morphosyntax, constituency, case systems, ellipsis, anaphora, and islands. The book also presents a general program for the study of language in which the construction of linguistic theories is itself an object of theoretical analysis. Reviewed by John Goldsmith, Mark Gibson and an anonymous reviewer. Signed reports are openly available in the downloads session