Financial Risk, Innovation and Alternative Pathways to Decarbonising the Energy System in 2050

There is a lot of forward looking work attempting to envisage the decarbonised energy system of the future as reflected with current interest in 'smart grids'. A central tenet behind most visions of the 'smart grids' of the future are the price signals that financial and commodity markets will deliver to facilitate effective and efficient resource allocation. Most of these visions take stylised and static views of financial and commodity markets despite the fact that these markets are experiencing dramatic change due to innovation and regulation. Accordingly, the paper maps the risks associated in the fusion of financial innovation with innovation in the energy system through a theoretical framework that draws on evolutionary models of paradigm shift. Risks to both the financial and energy systems are characterised as either emanating from primary or secondary markets and these are explored in terms of alternative visions of the energy system in the long run

Percolation for the stable marriage of Poisson and Lebesgue with random appetites

Let $\Xi$ be a set of centers chosen according to a Poisson point process in $\mathbb R^d$. Consider the allocation of $\mathbb R^d$ to $\Xi$ which is stable in the sense of the Gale-Shapley marriage problem, with the additional feature that every center $\xi\in\Xi$ has a random appetite $\alpha V$, where $\alpha$ is a nonnegative scale constant and $V$ is a nonnegative random variable. Generalizing previous results by Freire, Popov and Vachkovskaia (\cite{FPV}), we show the absence of percolation when $\alpha$ is small enough, depending on certain characteristics of the moment of $V$.Comment: 12 pages. Final versio

Parallel local search for solving Constraint Problems on the Cell Broadband Engine (Preliminary Results)

We explore the use of the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/BE for short) for combinatorial optimization applications: we present a parallel version of a constraint-based local search algorithm that has been implemented on a multiprocessor BladeCenter machine with twin Cell/BE processors (total of 16 SPUs per blade). This algorithm was chosen because it fits very well the Cell/BE architecture and requires neither shared memory nor communication between processors, while retaining a compact memory footprint. We study the performance on several large optimization benchmarks and show that this achieves mostly linear time speedups, even sometimes super-linear. This is possible because the parallel implementation might explore simultaneously different parts of the search space and therefore converge faster towards the best sub-space and thus towards a solution. Besides getting speedups, the resulting times exhibit a much smaller variance, which benefits applications where a timely reply is critical

Marmots do not consistently use their left eye to respond to an approaching threat but those that did fled sooner.

In many vertebrates, the brain's right hemisphere which is connected to the left visual field specializes in the processing of information about threats while the left hemisphere which is connected to the right visual field specializes in the processing of information about conspecifics. This is referred to as hemispheric lateralization. But individuals that are too predictable in their response to predators could have reduced survival and we may expect selection for somewhat unpredictable responses. We studied hemispheric lateralization in yellow-bellied marmots Marmota flaviventer, a social rodent that falls prey to a variety of terrestrial and aerial predators. We first asked if they have lateralized responses to a predatory threat. We then asked if the eye that they used to assess risk influenced their perceptions of risk. We recorded the direction marmots were initially looking and then walked toward them until they fled. We recorded the distance that they responded to our experimental approach by looking, the eye with which they looked at us, and the distance at which they fled (i.e., flight initiation distance; FID). We found that marmots had no eye preference with which they looked at an approaching threat. Furthermore, the population was not comprised of individuals that responded in consistent ways. However, we found that marmots that looked at the approaching person with their left eye had larger FIDs suggesting that risk assessment was influenced by the eye used to monitor the threat. These findings are consistent with selection to make prey less predictable for their predators, despite underlying lateralization

Towards End-to-End Acoustic Localization using Deep Learning: from Audio Signal to Source Position Coordinates

This paper presents a novel approach for indoor acoustic source localization using microphone arrays and based on a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The proposed solution is, to the best of our knowledge, the first published work in which the CNN is designed to directly estimate the three dimensional position of an acoustic source, using the raw audio signal as the input information avoiding the use of hand crafted audio features. Given the limited amount of available localization data, we propose in this paper a training strategy based on two steps. We first train our network using semi-synthetic data, generated from close talk speech recordings, and where we simulate the time delays and distortion suffered in the signal that propagates from the source to the array of microphones. We then fine tune this network using a small amount of real data. Our experimental results show that this strategy is able to produce networks that significantly improve existing localization methods based on \textit{SRP-PHAT} strategies. In addition, our experiments show that our CNN method exhibits better resistance against varying gender of the speaker and different window sizes compared with the other methods.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures, 8 table

Magnonic Quadrupole Topological Insulator in Antiskyrmion Crystals

When the crystalline symmetries that protect a higher-order topological phase are not preserved at the boundaries of the sample, gapless hinge modes or in-gap corner states cannot be stabilized. Therefore, careful engineering of the sample termination is required. Similarly, magnetic textures, whose quantum fluctuations determine the supported magnonic excitations, tend to relax to new configurations that may also break crystalline symmetries when boundaries are introduced. Here we uncover that antiskyrmion crystals provide an experimentally accessible platform to realize a magnonic topological quadrupole insulator, whose hallmark signature are robust magnonic corner states. Furthermore, we show that tuning an applied magnetic field can trigger the self-assembly of antiskyrmions carrying a fractional topological charge along the sample edges. Crucially, these fractional antiskyrmions restore the symmetries needed to enforce the emergence of the magnonic corner states. Using the machinery of nested Wilson loops, adapted to magnonic systems supported by noncollinear magnetic textures, we demonstrate the quantization of the bulk quadrupole moment, edge dipole moments, and corner charges

Voting vs. Non-Voting and its Impact on Developing Countries: Empirical Application of Latent Class Models and Nested Multinomial Logit Models

The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of non-voters in elections in Africa and Latin America. We were looking to assess the factors that influence voting behavior and the decision to abstain. Further, we measured the impact of the voting motives on government performance and their influence on the policy making process. To carry out the analysis, we used voter survey data. The main contribution of this work was the inclusion of Abstention. Another innovative aspect was the design and implementation of a political experiment. It consisted in the delivery of information about the performance of the incumbent, to see changes in voter behavior. To this end, we estimated latent class and nested multinomial logit models. We concluded that a factor considered by voters to either vote or abstain, is their level of satisfaction with the president. Also, less informed people seem to be less motivated to vote. In addition, the non-policy component is always the most relevant, implying that governments are not accountable towards voters. However, some minority groups choose more policy oriented, which means that they could have more influence in the policy making process. Further, we observed that those who do not support the incumbent hold it more accountable. Thus, if governments fail to achieve their goals, these voters are more likely to abstain or choose an opposition party. Moreover, abstainers and non-government voters have a higher political weight. This implies, that they could put pressure on the governments to choose and implement better policies. We also demonstrated that, voter behavior can be influenced by means of information signals. Although the impact on party choice was not very strong, the relative importance of the voting components changed significantly. Finally, the opposition parties are perceived to be closer to the optimal policy positions, which gives an incentive to the ruling parties to change their policy positions

The Synthesis and Enzymatic Characterization of 6-Amino-FMN with BluB; The Last Unsolved Biosynthetic Module of Vitamin B12

The last unsolved module for the biosynthetic pathway of vitamin B12 is the biosynthesis of the lower axial ligand, dimethylbenzimidazole (DMB). Recently, the oxygen-dependent enzyme, BluB, has been shown to catalyze the oxidative fragmentation of coenzyme B2, FMN, and produces dimethylbenzimidazole (DMB), erythrose-4-phosphate, and alloxan. BluB is the first enzyme shown to utilize FMN as a substrate rather than as a coenzyme. Our goal is to elucidate the mechanism by which BluB catalyzes the oxidative fragmentation of FMN with molecular oxygen. Previous studies, done by our group, with numerous substrate analogues have shown no enzymatic activity with BluB and conclude that the active site of BluB is highly selective for the native substrate. In this study, the synthesis of 6-amino-FMN and its activity with BluB are described. LCMS analysis of the enzymatic assays confirmed the production of 4-amino-DMB. This discovery suggests that active site of BluB tolerates substrate analogues with substituents at the 6-position and additional 6-substituted substrate analogues can be designed to provide mechanistic insight