5,766 research outputs found
Reconstructing the climate of the 250 years of instrumental records at the northern border of the Mediterranean (the Alps)
The paper provides a selection of first results based on a newly developed instrumental climate database for the European Alps and their wider surroundings. After an outline on data availability, network density, series durations and quality aspects some examples for the two main climate elements temperature and precipitation show some principal features of climate variability and trends in
the region. Regional as well as seasonal differences are discussed. The overview closes with examples dealing with changes of climate variability: For temperature as well as for precipitation (the former stronger, the latter weaker and with regional modifications) inter-annual (-seasonal, -monthly) variability has not increased but decreased during the past two centuries of well-proved instrumental data in the study region
Is the Sun Lighter than the Earth? Isotopic CO in the Photosphere, Viewed through the Lens of 3D Spectrum Synthesis
We consider the formation of solar infrared (2-6 micron) rovibrational bands
of carbon monoxide (CO) in CO5BOLD 3D convection models, with the aim to refine
abundances of the heavy isotopes of carbon (13C) and oxygen (18O,17O), to
compare with direct capture measurements of solar wind light ions by the
Genesis Discovery Mission. We find that previous, mainly 1D, analyses were
systematically biased toward lower isotopic ratios (e.g., R23= 12C/13C),
suggesting an isotopically "heavy" Sun contrary to accepted fractionation
processes thought to have operated in the primitive solar nebula. The new 3D
ratios for 13C and 18O are: R23= 91.4 +/- 1.3 (Rsun= 89.2); and R68= 511 +/- 10
(Rsun= 499), where the uncertainties are 1 sigma and "optimistic." We also
obtained R67= 2738 +/- 118 (Rsun= 2632), but we caution that the observed
12C17O features are extremely weak. The new solar ratios for the oxygen
isotopes fall between the terrestrial values and those reported by Genesis
(R68= 530, R6= 2798), although including both within 2 sigma error flags, and
go in the direction favoring recent theories for the oxygen isotope composition
of Ca-Al inclusions (CAI) in primitive meteorites. While not a major focus of
this work, we derive an oxygen abundance of 603 +/- 9 ppm (relative to
hydrogen; 8.78 on the logarithmic H= 12 scale). That the Sun likely is lighter
than the Earth, isotopically speaking, removes the necessity to invoke exotic
fractionation processes during the early construction of the inner solar
system
Excitation of stellar p-modes by turbulent convection: 1. Theoretical formulation
Stochatic excitation of stellar oscillations by turbulent convection is
investigated and an expression for the power injected into the oscillations by
the turbulent convection of the outer layers is derived which takes into
account excitation through turbulent Reynolds stresses and turbulent entropy
fluctuations. This formulation generalizes results from previous works and is
built so as to enable investigations of various possible spatial and temporal
spectra of stellar turbulent convection. For the Reynolds stress contribution
and assuming the Kolmogorov spectrum we obtain a similar formulation than those
derived by previous authors. The entropy contribution to excitation is found to
originate from the advection of the Eulerian entropy fluctuations by the
turbulent velocity field. Numerical computations in the solar case in a
companion paper indicate that the entropy source term is dominant over Reynold
stress contribution to mode excitation, except at high frequencies.Comment: 14 pages, accepted for publication in A&
Vortices, shocks, and heating in the solar photosphere: effect of a magnetic field
Aims: We study the differences between non-magnetic and magnetic regions in
the flow and thermal structure of the upper solar photosphere. Methods:
Radiative MHD simulations representing a quiet region and a plage region,
respectively, which extend into the layers around the temperature minimum, are
analyzed. Results: The flow structure in the upper photospheric layers of the
two simulations is considerably different: the non-magnetic simulation is
dominated by a pattern of moving shock fronts while the magnetic simulation
shows vertically extended vortices associated with magnetic flux
concentrations. Both kinds of structures induce substantial local heating. The
resulting average temperature profiles are characterized by a steep rise above
the temperature minimum due to shock heating in the non-magnetic case and by a
flat photospheric temperature gradient mainly caused by Ohmic dissipation in
the magnetic run. Conclusions: Shocks in the quiet Sun and vortices in the
strongly magnetized regions represent the dominant flow structures in the
layers around the temperature minimum. They are closely connected with
dissipation processes providing localized heating.Comment: Accepted for publicaton in A&
Parochial Versus Universal Cooperation: Introducing a Novel Economic Game of Within- and Between-Group Interaction
On Colorful Bin Packing Games
We consider colorful bin packing games in which selfish players control a set
of items which are to be packed into a minimum number of unit capacity bins.
Each item has one of colors and cannot be packed next to an item of
the same color. All bins have the same unitary cost which is shared among the
items it contains, so that players are interested in selecting a bin of minimum
shared cost. We adopt two standard cost sharing functions: the egalitarian cost
function which equally shares the cost of a bin among the items it contains,
and the proportional cost function which shares the cost of a bin among the
items it contains proportionally to their sizes. Although, under both cost
functions, colorful bin packing games do not converge in general to a (pure)
Nash equilibrium, we show that Nash equilibria are guaranteed to exist and we
design an algorithm for computing a Nash equilibrium whose running time is
polynomial under the egalitarian cost function and pseudo-polynomial for a
constant number of colors under the proportional one. We also provide a
complete characterization of the efficiency of Nash equilibria under both cost
functions for general games, by showing that the prices of anarchy and
stability are unbounded when while they are equal to 3 for black and
white games, where . We finally focus on games with uniform sizes (i.e.,
all items have the same size) for which the two cost functions coincide. We
show again a tight characterization of the efficiency of Nash equilibria and
design an algorithm which returns Nash equilibria with best achievable
performance
On the 2-categories of weak distributive laws
A weak mixed distributive law (also called weak entwining structure) in a
2-category consists of a monad and a comonad, together with a 2-cell relating
them in a way which generalizes a mixed distributive law due to Beck. We show
that a weak mixed distributive law can be described as a compatible pair of a
monad and a comonad, in 2-categories extending, respectively, the 2-category of
comonads and the 2-category of monads. Based on this observation, we define a
2-category whose 0-cells are weak mixed distributive laws. In a 2-category K
which admits Eilenberg-Moore constructions both for monads and comonads, and in
which idempotent 2-cells split, we construct a fully faithful 2-functor from
this 2-category of weak mixed distributive laws to K^{2 x 2}.Comment: 15 pages LaTeX source, final version to appear in Comm. Algebr
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