Les cases en el record i el parentiu: una visió antropològica

Peer Reviewe

Long-time equilibration can determine transient thermality

When two initially thermal many-body systems start interacting strongly, their transient states quickly become non-Gibbsian, even if the systems eventually equilibrate. To see beyond this apparent lack of structure during the transient regime, we use a refined notion of thermality, which we call g-local. A system is g-locally thermal if the states of all its small subsystems are marginals of global thermal states. We numerically demonstrate for two harmonic lattices that whenever the total system equilibrates in the long run, each lattice remains g-locally thermal at all times, including the transient regime. This is true even when the lattices have long-range interactions within them. In all cases, we find that the equilibrium is described by the generalized Gibbs ensemble, with three-dimensional lattices requiring special treatment due to their extended set of conserved charges. We compare our findings with the well-known two-temperature model. While its standard form is not valid beyond weak coupling, we show that at strong coupling it can be partially salvaged by adopting the concept of a g-local temperature.Comment: 10+13 pages, 10+6 figures; close to published versio

Permafrost meta-omics and climate change

Permanently frozen soil, or permafrost, covers a large portion of the Earth's terrestrial surface and represents a unique environment for cold-adapted microorganisms. As permafrost thaws, previously protected organic matter becomes available for microbial degradation. Microbes that decompose soil carbon produce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, contributing substantially to climate change. Next-generation sequencing and other -omics technologies offer opportunities to discover the mechanisms by which microbial communities regulate the loss of carbon and the emission of greenhouse gases from thawing permafrost regions. Analysis of nucleic acids and proteins taken directly from permafrost-associated soils has provided new insights into microbial communities and their functions in Arctic environments that are increasingly impacted by climate change. In this article we review current information from various molecular -omics studies on permafrost microbial ecology and explore the relevance of these insights to our current understanding of the dynamics of permafrost loss due to climate change

Estimating the Technical Potential for Residential Demand Response in New Zealand

This report estimates the maximum technical potential for demand response (DR) for three appliances in New Zealand’s residential sector. On-demand electricity load reduction, particularly at times of peak demand, enhances the system operationality and reduces stress on the utility grid. This is increasingly important as the supply of variable renewables, such as solar and wind, increases. We focus on heat pumps, hot water heaters and refrigerators and find that DR could reduce load during the winter morning peak period by 20% and by 18% in the evening. This equates to an average daily energy reduction of 5,100 MWh in the morning peak and 4,900 MWh in the evening peak. In the summer, less utilisation of heat pumps in the morning peak decreases this proportion to 15% and 14% in the evening. In combination, the appliances modelled could provide a maximum aggregated demand response of 1,600 MW in the winter morning peak, and 1,200 MW in the evening peak. This technical potential amounts to roughly 2.5 times Transpower’s pro- posed DR programme of 635 MW from both industrial and residential sources and so could offer a substantial additional demand response source

Stabilization of mineral-associated organic carbon in Pleistocene permafrost

Ice-rich Pleistocene-age permafrost is particularly vulnerable to rapid thaw, which may quickly expose a large pool of sedimentary organic matter (OM) to microbial degradation and lead to emissions of climate-sensitive greenhouse gases. Protective physico-chemical mechanisms may, however, restrict microbial accessibility and reduce OM decomposition; mechanisms that may be influenced by changing environmental conditions during sediment deposition. Here we study different OM fractions in Siberian permafrost deposited during colder and warmer periods of the past 55,000 years. Among known stabilization mechanisms, the occlusion of OM in aggregates is of minor importance, while 33-74% of the organic carbon is associated with small, <6.3 µm mineral particles. Preservation of carbon in mineral-associated OM is enhanced by reactive iron minerals particularly during cold and dry climate, reflected by low microbial CO2 production in incubation experiments. Warmer and wetter conditions reduce OM stabilization, shown by more decomposed mineral-associated OM and up to 30% higher CO2 production. This shows that considering the stability and bioavailability of Pleistocene-age permafrost carbon is important for predicting future climate-carbon feedback

Crea.Blender: A Neural Network-Based Image Generation Game to Assess Creativity

We present a pilot study on crea.blender, a novel co-creative game designed for large-scale, systematic assessment of distinct constructs of human creativity. Co-creative systems are systems in which humans and computers (often with Machine Learning) collaborate on a creative task. This human-computer collaboration raises questions about the relevance and level of human creativity and involvement in the process. We expand on, and explore aspects of these questions in this pilot study. We observe participants play through three different play modes in crea.blender, each aligned with established creativity assessment methods. In these modes, players "blend" existing images into new images under varying constraints. Our study indicates that crea.blender provides a playful experience, affords players a sense of control over the interface, and elicits different types of player behavior, supporting further study of the tool for use in a scalable, playful, creativity assessment.Comment: 4 page, 6 figures, CHI Pla