Accounting for Forest Degradation in the Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIOM)

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) is a hot political and scientific topic. Deforestation is largely driven by the competition for land. Forest degradation is often attributable to the way forest resources are managed and utilized. The Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIOM), developed at IIASA, is a tool for assessing the carbon impacts of the land use competition of major land-based production sectors and different policy options influencing it. Currently the model can identify deforestation risks, but cannot account for degradation processes within forests. Here, I propose a solution to how forest degradation could be integrated into the GLOBIOM, especially in the context of the Congo Basin region where the economic activities of the informal sector are an important driver of forest degradation. The solution is based on two interacting modules that simulate the processes of forest degradation. The Informal Sector Module (ISM) simulates the procurement of fuel wood and timber by the informal sector, and the allocation of its harvests into forests based on a cost-minimization principle. The Forest Structure Module (FSM) simulates the development of forest structure over time in unsustainably managed forests and accounts for the impacts of the Informal Sectors harvests and rotating subsistence agriculture

N-body simulations in reconstruction of the kinematics of young stars in the Galaxy

We try to determine the Galactic structure by comparing the observed and modeled velocities of OB-associations in the 3 kpc solar neighborhood. We made N-body simulations with a rotating stellar bar. The galactic disk in our model includes gas and stellar subsystems. The velocities of gas particles averaged over large time intervals ($\sim 8$ bar rotation periods) are compared with the observed velocities of the OB-associations. Our models reproduce the directions of the radial and azimuthal components of the observed residual velocities in the Perseus and Sagittarius regions and in the Local system. The mean difference between the model and observed velocities is $\Delta V=3.3$ km s$^{-1}$. The optimal value of the solar position angle $\theta_b$ providing the best agreement between the model and observed velocities is $\theta_b=45\pm5^\circ$, in good accordance with several recent estimates. The self-gravitating stellar subsystem forms a bar, an outer ring of subclass $R_1$, and slower spiral modes. Their combined gravitational perturbation leads to time-dependent morphology in the gas subsystem, which forms outer rings with elements of the $R_1$- and $R_2$-morphology. The success of N-body simulations in the Local System is likely due to the gravity of the stellar $R_1$-ring, which is omitted in models with analytical bars.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, accepted to Astronomy and Astrophysic

Ice Age Epochs and the Sun's Path Through the Galaxy

We present a calculation of the Sun's motion through the Milky Way Galaxy over the last 500 million years. The integration is based upon estimates of the Sun's current position and speed from measurements with Hipparcos and upon a realistic model for the Galactic gravitational potential. We estimate the times of the Sun's past spiral arm crossings for a range in assumed values of the spiral pattern angular speed. We find that for a difference between the mean solar and pattern speed of Omega_Sun - Omega_p = 11.9 +/- 0.7 km/s/kpc the Sun has traversed four spiral arms at times that appear to correspond well with long duration cold periods on Earth. This supports the idea that extended exposure to the higher cosmic ray flux associated with spiral arms can lead to increased cloud cover and long ice age epochs on Earth.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Gold Coating of Respiratory Cilia for Scanning Electron Microscopy

The optimal thickness of gold coating of cilia for scanning electron microscopy was studied using respiratory mucosa obtained from pigs. We tested 8 different coating times, from 10 seconds to 4 minutes, which resulted in gold layer thicknesses varying from 16 ± 1 nm to 100 ± 3 nm. The thickness of the gold layer with a coating time of 60 seconds and voltage of 2.5 kV was 43 ± 5 nm. This thickness of gold layer gave good image quality without causing any electric charging. With thinner gold films, the amount of electric charging increased. When the coating time was longer, the gold layer was thicker but image quality did not improve. The thicknesses of the gold layers were measured using transmission electron microscopy (TEM)

History teaching in Finnish general upper secondary schools: Objectives and practices

In Finland, the trend towards a new kind of history teaching emphasizing the understanding of historical knowledge and historical thinking skills began in the mid-1990s, when history teaching objectives were defined much more broadly in the curriculum than previously. In this article, we examine how, in over twenty years since the changes in curriculum objectives were made, general upper secondary school teachers have come to value the curriculum objectives of history teaching and how these have impacted on their teaching. The data for this article were collected by a semi-structured survey in 2016. Using counts, percentages, means, standard deviations and medians, a descriptive exploration was made of history teachers’ perceptions of the essential objectives in teaching history and how often they were put into practice in related student activities. To investigate the balance between the objectives the teachers emphasized as the most essential and the teaching methods they actually used, we applied the Kruskal–Wallis test and the Friedman test. According to the results, what the teachers considered essential for teaching history did not correlate with their teaching methods. In addition, according to the results, this state of affairs is still undergoing change; old traditions and new objectives of history teaching are creating tensions. The results were interpreted in the light of the cultural viewpoints of Finnish teaching, the position of matriculation examinations in Finnish general upper secondary schools and the challenges the curriculum is setting for history teacher

Remotely-Sensed Early Warning Signals of a Critical Transition in a Wetland Ecosystem

The response of an ecosystem to external drivers may not always be gradual and reversible. Discontinuous and sometimes irreversible changes, called 'regime shifts' or 'Critical transitions', can occur. The likelihood of such shifts is expected to increase for a variety of ecosystems, and it is difficult to predict how close an ecosystem is to a critical transition. Recent modelling studies identified indicators of impending regime shifts that can be used to provide early warning signals of a critical transition. The identification of such transitions crucially depends on the ability to monitor key ecosystem variables, and their success may be limited by lack of appropriate data. Moreover, empirical demonstrations of the actual functioning of these indicators in real-world ecosystems are rare. This paper presents the first study which uses remote sensing data to identify a critical transition in a wetland ecosystem. In this study, we argue that a time series of remote sensing data can help to characterize and determine the timing of a critical transition. This can enhance our abilities to detect and anticipate them. We explored the potentials of remotely sensed vegetation (NDVI), water (MNDWI), and vegetation- water (VWR) indices, obtained from time series of MODIS satellite images to characterize the stability of a wetland ecosystem, Dorge Sangi, near the lake Urmia, Iran, that experienced a regime shift recently. In addition, as a control case, we applied the same methods to another wetland ecosystem in Lake Arpi, Armenia which did not experience a regime shift. We propose a new composite index (MVWR) based on combining vegetation and water indices, which can improve the ability to anticipate a critical transition in a wetland ecosystem. Our results revealed that MVWR in combination with autocorrelation at-lag-1 could successfully provide early warning signals for a critical transition in a wetland ecosystem, and showed a significantly improved performance compared to either vegetation (NDVI) or water (MNDWI) indices alone.Peer reviewe

Автоматическая генерация логического знания

We study problems which arise deriving generating automatically logical knowledge in systems of artificial intellect, first of all in systems of automatic theorem proving. Three necessary conditions for a generator of logical knowledge are proposed and a verification of these ones is presented.В статье рассмотрены вопросы, которые возникают при попытке генерации автоматическим образом логического знания в системах искусственного интеллекта, в первую очередь, в системах машинного доказательства теорем. Сформулированы три необходимых требования к подобному генератору и рассмотрено, как их можно выполнить

Occupational injuries and diseases among commercial fishers in Finland 1996-2015

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