Computational Methods for Parameter Estimation in Climate Models

Intensive computational methods have been used by Earth scientists in a wide range of problems in data inversion and uncertainty quantification such as earthquake epicenter location and climate projections. To quantify the uncertainties resulting from a range of plausible model configurations it is necessary to estimate a multidimensional probability distribution. The computational cost of estimating these distributions for geoscience applications is impractical using traditional methods such as Metropolis/Gibbs algorithms as simulation costs limit the number of experiments that can be obtained reasonably. Several alternate sampling strategies have been proposed that could improve on the sampling efficiency including Multiple Very Fast Simulated Annealing (MVFSA) and Adaptive Metropolis algorithms. The performance of these proposed sampling strategies are evaluated with a surrogate climate model that is able to approximate the noise and response behavior of a realistic atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM). The surrogate model is fast enough that its evaluation can be embedded in these Monte Carlo algorithms. We show that adaptive methods can be superior to MVFSA to approximate the known posterior distribution with fewer forward evaluations. However the adaptive methods can also be limited by inadequate sample mixing. The Single Component and Delayed Rejection Adaptive Metropolis algorithms were found to resolve these limitations, although challenges remain to approximating multi-modal distributions. The results show that these advanced methods of statistical inference can provide practical solutions to the climate model calibration problem and challenges in quantifying climate projection uncertainties. The computational methods would also be useful to problems outside climate prediction, particularly those where sampling is limited by availability of computational resources.National Science Foundation OCE-0415251CONACyT-Mexico 159764Institute for Geophysic

Transient cognitive dynamics, metastability, and decision making

Transient Cognitive Dynamics, Metastability, and Decision Making. Rabinovich et al. PLoS Computational Biology. 2008. 4(5) doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000072The idea that cognitive activity can be understood using nonlinear dynamics has been intensively discussed at length for the last 15 years. One of the popular points of view is that metastable states play a key role in the execution of cognitive functions. Experimental and modeling studies suggest that most of these functions are the result of transient activity of large-scale brain networks in the presence of noise. Such transients may consist of a sequential switching between different metastable cognitive states. The main problem faced when using dynamical theory to describe transient cognitive processes is the fundamental contradiction between reproducibility and flexibility of transient behavior. In this paper, we propose a theoretical description of transient cognitive dynamics based on the interaction of functionally dependent metastable cognitive states. The mathematical image of such transient activity is a stable heteroclinic channel, i.e., a set of trajectories in the vicinity of a heteroclinic skeleton that consists of saddles and unstable separatrices that connect their surroundings. We suggest a basic mathematical model, a strongly dissipative dynamical system, and formulate the conditions for the robustness and reproducibility of cognitive transients that satisfy the competing requirements for stability and flexibility. Based on this approach, we describe here an effective solution for the problem of sequential decision making, represented as a fixed time game: a player takes sequential actions in a changing noisy environment so as to maximize a cumulative reward. As we predict and verify in computer simulations, noise plays an important role in optimizing the gain.This work was supported by ONR N00014-07-1-0741. PV acknowledges support from Spanish BFU2006-07902/BFI and CAM S-SEM-0255-2006

Clinical vignette: An atypical case of Sweet\u27s syndrome presenting as facial cellulitis

A 73 year old female presented with acute onset fever and right -sided facial swelling, erythema and pain. She was initially diagnosed with facial cellulitis. The patient was placed on a course of cephalexin; however, her symptoms worsened, and she developed bilateral facial edema. Routine laboratory data was not indicative of leukocytosis. An incision and drainage was performed and minimal aspirate was retrieved; aspirate cultures were negative for bacterial and fungal growth. The patients facial swelling continued to progress; she developed bilateral peri-orbital edema, and she was intubated for airway protection. The patient\u27s antibiotics were then broadened to vancomycin and piperacillin-tazobactam, but after Infectious disease consultation, they were changed to ampicillin-sulbactam and fluconazole. Repeat cultures performed were again negative for any microorganisms. However, her symptoms did not improve with antimicrobial therapy, so it was discontinued and a non-infectious etiology was considered more likely. Rheumatology was consulted, but the rheumatologic workup was negative. Then, Dermatology was consulted; they performed a left cheek biopsy which showed perivascular and interstitial acute and chronic inflammation of the dermis, and a diagnosis of febrile neutrophilic dermatosis was made. Consequently, she was started on high-dose corticosteroids, and her symptoms dramatically and rapidly improved.\u2

Towards an ecological index for tropical soil quality based on soil macrofauna

The objective of this work was to construct a simple index based on the presence/absence of different groups of soil macrofauna to determine the ecological quality of soils. The index was tested with data from 20 sites in South and Central Tabasco, Mexico, and a positive relation between the model and the field observations was detected. The index showed that diverse agroforestry systems had the highest soil quality index (1.00), and monocrops without trees, such as pineapple, showed the lowest soil quality index (0.08). Further research is required to improve this model for natural systems that have very low earthworm biomass

Revisiting the optical PTPT-symmetric dimer

Optics has proved a fertile ground for the experimental simulation of quantum mechanics. Most recently, optical realizations of $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric quantum mechanics have been shown, both theoretically and experimentally, opening the door to international efforts aiming at the design of practical optical devices exploiting this symmetry. Here, we focus on the optical $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric dimer, a two-waveguide coupler were the materials show symmetric effective gain and loss, and provide a review of the linear and nonlinear optical realizations from a symmetry based point of view. We go beyond a simple review of the literature and show that the dimer is just the smallest of a class of planar $N$-waveguide couplers that are the optical realization of Lorentz group in 2+1 dimensions. Furthermore, we provide a formulation to describe light propagation through waveguide couplers described by non-Hermitian mode coupling matrices based on a non-Hermitian generalization of Ehrenfest theorem.Comment: 25 pages, 12 figure

Intermediate-mass-ratio-inspirals in the Einstein Telescope: I. Signal-to-noise ratio calculations

The Einstein Telescope (ET) is a proposed third generation ground-based interferometer, for which the target is a sensitivity that is a factor of ten better than Advanced LIGO and a frequency range that extends down to about 1Hz. ET will provide opportunities to test Einstein's theory of relativity in the strong field and will realize precision gravitational wave astronomy with a thousandfold increase in the expected number of events over the advanced ground-based detectors. A design study for ET is currently underway, so it is timely to assess the science that could be done with such an instrument. This paper is the first in a series that will carry out a detailed study of intermediate-mass-ratio inspirals (IMRIs) for ET. In the context of ET, an IMRI is the inspiral of a neutron star or stellar-mass black hole into an intermediate mass black hole (IMBH). In this paper we focus on the development of IMRI waveform models for circular and equatorial inspirals. We consider two approximations for the waveforms, which both incorporate the inspiral, merger and ringdown phases in a consistent way. One approximation, valid for IMBHs of arbitrary spin, uses the transition model of Ori and Thorne [1] to describe the merger, and this is then matched smoothly onto a ringdown waveform. The second approximation uses the Effective One Body (EOB) approach to model the merger phase of the waveform and is valid for non-spinning IMBHs. In this paper, we use both waveform models to compute signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) for IMRI sources detectable by ET. At a redshift of z=1, we find typical SNRs for IMRI systems with masses 1.4+100 solar masses, 10+100 solar masses, 1.4+500 solar masses and 10+500 solar masses of about 10-25, 40-80, 3-15 and 10-60, respectively. We also find that the two models make predictions for non-spinning inspirals that are consistent to about ten percent.Comment: 27 pages, 9 figures, v3 has an updated reference for consistency with accepted versio

Proper generalized decomposition for parameterized Helmholtz problems in heterogeneous and unbounded domains: Application to harbor agitation

Solving the Helmholtz equation for a large number of input data in an heterogeneous media and unbounded domain still represents a challenge. This is due to the particular nature of the Helmholtz operator and the sensibility of the solution to small variations of the data. Here a reduced order model is used to determine the scattered solution everywhere in the domain for any incoming wave direction and frequency. Moreover, this is applied to a real engineering problem: water agitation inside real harbors for low to mid-high frequencies. The Proper Generalized Decomposition (PGD) model reduction approach is used to obtain a separable representation of the solution at any point and for any incoming wave direction and frequency. Here, its applicability to such a problem is discussed and demonstrated. More precisely, the separability of the operator is addressed taking into account both the non-constant co

Dialectal oronyms and historical morphosyntax: the method of Menéndez Pidal and adverbial formations with “cima” and “somo”

Debemos a Ramón Menéndez Pidal el diseño de un método de comparación de los topónimos actuales con las áreas dialectales de carácter léxico en los primeros siglos de los romances peninsulares. En este trabajo, mostramos que el método pidalino puede aplicarse a las secuencias gramaticales, en concreto a los relacionantes locativos formados a partir de los orónimos cima y somo. Tras trazar el ámbito geográfico de dichos orónimos y sus términos afines en la actualidad, lo comparamos con la ubicación de los datos de esas secuencias que ofrecen los textos antiguos: la uniformidad de ambas distribuciones es muy alta, hecho que abona el método e invita a ahondar en los aspectos dialectales de la (morfo)sintaxis histórica del españolWe owe to Ramón Menéndez Pidal the design of a comparative method that brings together present-day toponyms and Medieval Ibero-Romance lexical dialectal areas. In this contribution, we claim the method can be applied to grammatical sequences, such as the locative adverbials formed from the oronyms cima / somo [‘summit’]. After tracing the geographic extension of these oronyms and their related terms, we compare it with the location of those adverbials as attested in Medieval charters and literary texts: the uniformity of both distributions is very high, thus supporting the validity of the method and serving to spur on research on Spanish historical (morpho) syntax from a dialectal standpoin