A systematic review of local vulnerability to climate change: in search of transparency, coherence and comparability

Because vulnerability is a conceptual construct rather than a directly observable phenomenon, most vulnerability assessments measure a set of “vulnerability indicators”. In order to identify the core approaches and range of variation in the field, we conducted a systematic literature review on local vulnerability to climate change. The systematic review entailed an identification of frameworks, concepts, and operationalizations and a transparency assessment of their reporting. Three fully defined relevant frameworks of vulnerability were identified: IPCC, Patterns of Smallholder Vulnerability and Vulnerability as Expected Poverty. Comparative analysis found substantial heterogeneity in frameworks, concepts and operationalizations, making it impossible to identify patterns of climate vulnerability indicators and determinants that have robust empirical support. If research measuring farmers’ vulnerability to climate change is to have any comparability, it needs greater conceptual coherence and empirical validity. We recommend a systematic program of testing and validating vulnerability measures before institutionalizing them in programmatic contexts

Identifying constraining and enabling factors to the uptake of medium- and long-term climate information in decision making

We apply a systematic review of peer-reviewed literature to assess constraining and enabling factors to the uptake of medium- to long-term climate information in a wide range of sectoral investment and planning decisions. Common applications of climate information are shown to relate to adaptation of environmental policy and planning, urban planning and infrastructure, as well as flood and coastal management. Analysis of identified literature highlights five categories of enablers to the uptake of medium- to long-term climate information in decision-making, the most of frequent of which relates to greater collaboration and bridging between producers and users of climate information. Five categories of constraints are also identified, the largest comprising of scientific and technical limitations associated with available medium- to long-term climate information

Report on discussion of Pinex experiment with J-12 group at Los Alamos

Plans for participation in Operation Hardtack include performance of a Pinex experiment on three barge-based events: Nutmeg, Hickory, and Juniper. The J-12 group at Los Alamos has been planning for a group of similar experiments. Inclusion of Pinex in the Hardtack diagnostic program occurred considerably later; also, J-12 has successfully carried out two Pinex experiments during Operation Plumbbob. This visit was made to take the fullest possible advantage of their experience to date. Discussion of the experiment at these meetings is summarized under five convenient headings: Detector; Pinhole and Collimator Assembly; Alignment; Data Analysis; and Recovery

Immunological Control of Polyoma Virus Oncogenesis in Mice

Adult CBA mice thymectomized, treated with antilymphocytic globulin (ALG) and inoculated with human leprosy organisms were accidentally infected with polyoma virus and all developed tumours. After cessation of ALG administration, some animals were given spleen cells from syngeneic donors immunized with polyoma virus; none developed tumours. Similar results were obtained in mice deliberately infected with polyoma virus but not with leprosy organisms. Passive transfer of antibody before but not after virus inoculation prevented tumour formation in immunosuppressed recipients. Virus infection in thymectomized, lethally irradiated and bone marrow reconstituted mice resulted in only a very low incidence of tumours. These results emphasize the role of immunological surveillance in preventing polyoma tumour formation under natural conditions

Relating Green-Schwarz and Extended Pure Spinor Formalisms by Similarity Transformation

In order to gain deeper understanding of pure-spinor-based formalisms of superstring, an explicit similarity transformation is constructed which provides operator mapping between the light-cone Green-Schwarz (LCGS) formalism and the extended pure spinor (EPS) formalism, a recently proposed generalization of the Berkovits' formalism in an enlarged space. By applying a systematic procedure developed in our previous work, we first construct an analogous mapping in the bosonic string relating the BRST and the light-cone formulations. This provides sufficient insights and allows us to construct the desired mapping in the more intricate case of superstring as well. The success of the construction owes much to the enlarged field space where pure spinor constraints are removed and to the existence of the ``B-ghost'' in the EPS formalism.Comment: 37pages, no figur

Lower-dimensional pure-spinor superstrings

We study to what extent it is possible to generalise Berkovits' pure-spinor construction in d=10 to lower dimensions. Using a suitable definition of a ``pure'' spinor in d=4,6, we propose models analogous to the d=10 pure-spinor superstring in these dimensions. Similar models in d=2,3 are also briefly discussed.Comment: 17 page

Vertex Operators for Closed Superstrings

We construct an iterative procedure to compute the vertex operators of the closed superstring in the covariant formalism given a solution of IIA/IIB supergravity. The manifest supersymmetry allows us to construct vertex operators for any generic background in presence of Ramond-Ramond (RR) fields. We extend the procedure to all massive states of open and closed superstrings and we identify two new nilpotent charges which are used to impose the gauge fixing on the physical states. We solve iteratively the equations of the vertex for linear x-dependent RR field strengths. This vertex plays a role in studying non-constant C-deformations of superspace. Finally, we construct an action for the free massless sector of closed strings, and we propose a form for the kinetic term for closed string field theory in the pure spinor formalism.Comment: TeX, harvmac, amssym.tex, 41 pp; references adde

Overview of normal behavior modeling approaches for SCADA-based wind turbine condition monitoring demonstrated on data from operational wind farms

Condition monitoring and failure prediction for wind turbines currently comprise a hot research topic. This follows from the fact that investments in the wind energy sector have increased dramatically due to the transition to renewable energy production. This paper reviews and implements several techniques from state-of-the-art research on condition monitoring for wind turbines using SCADA data and the normal behavior modeling framework. The first part of the paper consists of an in-depth overview of the current state of the art. In the second part, several techniques from the overview are implemented and compared using data (SCADA and failure data) from five operational wind farms. To this end, six demonstration experiments are designed. The first five experiments test different techniques for the modeling of normal behavior. The sixth experiment compares several techniques that can be used for identifying anomalous patterns in the prediction error. The selection of the tested techniques is driven by requirements from industrial partners, e.g., a limited number of training data and low training and maintenance costs of the models. The paper concludes with several directions for future work.</p

Language intermediaries and local agency: peacebuilding, translation/interpreting and political disempowerment in 'mature' post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina

The peace negotiations that ended the 1992–95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina established a constitutional system of ethnic power-sharing that satisfied its signatories (the presidents of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia) enough for war to cease and provided for international military and civilian peacebuilding to play a significant role in post-conflict Bosnia’s governance and economy. This indefinite peacebuilding mission, still ongoing in a downsized form, depended – like any other form of intervention where foreigners work across linguistic boundaries – on interlinguistic mediation by locally-recruited translators/interpreters, an aspect of knowledge production that even current peace and conflict research into peacebuilding’s micropolitics often neglects. On an individual level, locally-recruited interpreters’ frequently-overlooked agency was integral to peacebuilding practice. Yet theorising their agency must also acknowledge the macrosocial level, where the post-war constitutional system has often been argued to have stripped Bosnians of political agency, since it foreclosed political participation as anything but an ethnic subject corresponding to the three institutionalised ethnic identities (Bosniak, Croat or Serb). The entrenched and growing disconnect between political elites and the public, expressed through social protest in 2014, foregrounds the problem of agency and dis/empowerment in Bosnian society more sharply than research on the politics of translation/interpreting and peacebuilding in Bosnia before 2014 took into account, yet reveals further articulations of how international peacebuilding and domestic political contestation were intertwined