The Silent Arms Race: The Role of the Supercomputer During the Cold War, 1947-1963

One of the central features of the Cold War is the Arms Race. The United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist republics vied for supremacy over the globe for a fifty-year period in which there were several arms races; atomic weapons, thermonuclear weapons and various kinds of conventional weapons. However, there is another arms race that goes unsung during this period of history and that is in the area of supercomputing. The other types of arms races are taken for granted by historians and others, but the technological competition between the superpowers would have been impossible without the historically silent arms race in the area of supercomputers. The construction of missiles, jets as well as the testing of nuclear weapons had serious implications for international relations. Often perception is more important than fact. Perceived power maintained a deterrent effect on the two superpowers. If one superpower suspected that they, in fact, had an advantage over the other then the balance of power would be upset and more aggressive measures might have been taken in various fronts of the conflict, perhaps leading to war. Due to this, it was necessary to maintain a balance of power not only in weapons but in supercomputing as well. Considering the role that the computers played, it is time for closer historical scrutiny

Can managers accept that employees train in e-learning ?

Document de travail LESTE-learning was initially considered as the “silver bullet” of training. This new education pattern would allow to go beyond the limits of more classical "classroom-based" training sessions. However, it seems to us that one characteristic has not been considered well enough. Employees in e-learning train in the workplace, often on their own computer. Such a situation generates a role ambiguity: is the employee training or working? This is delicate for managers to handle, since in the first case, they exercise no direct hierarchical authority, whereas in the second case, they must. First we have reviewed the literature to analyse the complex relation between e-learning and hierarchical responsibility. It shows that the question of socialisation has clearly been identified as being a major obstacle to the development of e-learning. Most authors thus plead in favour of a change from e-learning to blended learning, which means developing training processes that combine e-learning sessions with more classical “classroom-based” sessions allowing trainees to exchange ideas and help one another. However, the literature does not mention the question of the relation existing between trainees and their own manager. We have then analysed the literature on organisational socialisation to try and find an answer to this question. Though this notion is rapidly developing nowadays, we noticed that it had not yet considered this theme. Thus we end this article by offering a specific conceptual framework allowing to analyse it and do a first test from data collected in four major French banks. This exploratory work therefore leads to the idea that managers' positioning towards e-learning is a question that is to be taken into account if we really wish to develop e-learning in organisations

Can managers accept that employees train in e-learning ?

Document de travail LESTE-learning was initially considered as the “silver bullet” of training. This new education pattern would allow to go beyond the limits of more classical "classroom-based" training sessions. However, it seems to us that one characteristic has not been considered well enough. Employees in e-learning train in the workplace, often on their own computer. Such a situation generates a role ambiguity: is the employee training or working? This is delicate for managers to handle, since in the first case, they exercise no direct hierarchical authority, whereas in the second case, they must. First we have reviewed the literature to analyse the complex relation between e-learning and hierarchical responsibility. It shows that the question of socialisation has clearly been identified as being a major obstacle to the development of e-learning. Most authors thus plead in favour of a change from e-learning to blended learning, which means developing training processes that combine e-learning sessions with more classical “classroom-based” sessions allowing trainees to exchange ideas and help one another. However, the literature does not mention the question of the relation existing between trainees and their own manager. We have then analysed the literature on organisational socialisation to try and find an answer to this question. Though this notion is rapidly developing nowadays, we noticed that it had not yet considered this theme. Thus we end this article by offering a specific conceptual framework allowing to analyse it and do a first test from data collected in four major French banks. This exploratory work therefore leads to the idea that managers' positioning towards e-learning is a question that is to be taken into account if we really wish to develop e-learning in organisations

The art and science of climate model tuning

PublishedThis is the final version of the article. Available from American Meteorological Society via the DOI in this record.We survey the rationale and diversity of approaches for tuning, a fundamental aspect of climate modeling which should be more systematically documented and taken into account in multi-model analysis. The process of parameter estimation targeting a chosen set of observations is an essential aspect of numerical modeling. This process is usually named tuning in the climate modeling community. In climate models, the variety and complexity of physical processes involved, and their interplay through a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, must be summarized in a series of approximate sub-models. Most sub-models depend on uncertain parameters. Tuning consists of adjusting the values of these parameters to bring the solution as a whole into line with aspects of the observed climate. Tuning is an essential aspect of climate modeling with its own scientific issues, which is probably not advertised enough outside the community of model developers. Optimization of climate models raises important questions about whether tuning methods a priori constrain the model results in unintended ways that would affect our confidence in climate projections. Here we present the definition and rationale behind model tuning, review specific methodological aspects, and survey the diversity of tuning approaches used in current climate models. We also discuss the challenges and opportunities in applying so-called ‘objective‘ methods in climate model tuning. We discuss how tuning methodologies may affect fundamental results of climate models, such as climate sensitivity. The article concludes with a series of recommendations to make the process of climate model tuning more transparent.The authors would like to thank the World Climate Research Program and its Working Group on Coupled Modeling for initiating and helping organize the workshop on model tuning in October 2014 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. Work at LLNL was performed under the auspices the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract No. DE-AC52-07NA27344. The National Center for Atmospheric Research is sup- ported by the U.S. National Science Foundation. The contribution of Yun Qian was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science as part of the Earth System Modeling Program. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is operated for DOE by Battelle Memorial Institute under contract DE-AC05-76RL0183

Hurricanes and Climate: The U.S. CLIVAR Working Group on Hurricanes

While a quantitative climate theory of tropical cyclone formation remains elusive, considerable progress has been made recently in our ability to simulate tropical cyclone climatologies and to understand the relationship between climate and tropical cyclone formation. Climate models are now able to simulate a realistic rate of global tropical cyclone formation, although simulation of the Atlantic tropical cyclone climatology remains challenging unless horizontal resolutions finer than 50 km are employed. This article summarizes published research from the idealized experiments of the Hurricane Working Group of U.S. Climate and Ocean: Variability, Predictability and Change (CLIVAR). This work, combined with results from other model simulations, has strengthened relationships between tropical cyclone formation rates and climate variables such as midtropospheric vertical velocity, with decreased climatological vertical velocities leading to decreased tropical cyclone formation. Systematic differences are shown between experiments in which only sea surface temperature is increased compared with experiments where only atmospheric carbon dioxide is increased. Experiments where only carbon dioxide is increased are more likely to demonstrate a decrease in tropical cyclone numbers, similar to the decreases simulated by many climate models for a future, warmer climate. Experiments where the two effects are combined also show decreases in numbers, but these tend to be less for models that demonstrate a strong tropical cyclone response to increased sea surface temperatures. Further experiments are proposed that may improve our understanding of the relationship between climate and tropical cyclone formation, including experiments with two-way interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere and variations in atmospheric aerosols

Special Libraries, Winter 1995

Volume 86, Issue 1https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1995/1000/thumbnail.jp