Cyclic volcanism at convergent margins: linked to aarth orbital parameters or climate changes?

EGU2010-13373 The frequency of volcanic activity varies on a wide rangeof spatial and temporal scales, from <1 yr. periodicities in single volcanic systems to periodicities of 106 yrs. in global volcanism. The causes of these periodicities are poorly understood although the long-term global variations are likely linked to plate-tectonic processes. Here we present evidence for temporal changes in eruption frequencies at an intermediate time scale (104 yrs.) using the Pleistocene to recent records of widespread tephras of sub-Plinian to Plinian, and occasionally co-ignimbrite origin, along the Pacific Ring of Fire, which accounts for about half of the global length of 44,000 km of active subduction. Eruptions at arc volcanoes tend to be highly explosive and the well-preserved tephra records from the ocean floor can be assumed to be representative of how eruption frequencies varied with time. Volcanic activity along the Pacific Ring of Fire evolved through alternating phases of high and low frequency; although there is modulation by local and regional geologic conditions, these variations have a statistically significant periodicity of 43 ka that overlaps with the temporal variation in the obliquity of the Earth’s rotation axis, an orbital parameter that also exerts a strong control on global climate changes. This may suggest that the frequency of volcanic activity is controlled by effects of global climate changes. However, the strongest physical effects of climate change occur at 100 ka periods which are not seen in the volcanic record. We therefore propose that the frequency of volcanic activity is directly influenced by minute changes in the tidal forces induced by the varying obliquity resulting in long-period gravitational disturbances acting on the upper mantle

Using Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) for the processing of marine MT data

Magnetotelluric (MT) method determines a frequency dependent impedance tensor using the spectra of associated time-varying horizontal electric and magnetic fields measured at the Earth’s surface. In this abstract, we present a dynamic time series analysis method dealing the non-stationary MT data to infer the impedance tensor. Most current methods to determine the spectra use Fourier transform based procedure and, therefore, assume that the signals are stationary over the record length. We introduce a new method for dealing with non-stationarity of the MT time series based upon empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method, a dynamic time series analysis method. Using EMD complicated data sets can be decomposed into a finite and small number of "intrinsic mode functions" (IMFs), which are mono-component signals and allow the calculation of physical meaningful instantaneous frequencies. EMD has no bias due to non-stationary of geomagnetic time series, since the IMFs are based entirely on signal characteristics and not on any given set of base functions such as sines and cosines in the Fourier transform or wavelets in the Wavelet transform. We use the EMD method to decompose MT data into IMFs and calculate the instantaneous frequencies and spectra to determine the impedance tensor. The method is tested in synthetic and real marine MT data sets, the obtained estimate results are reliable compared to frequently-used BIRRP processing method. Furthermore, new method has the possibility of noise visualization and filtering, which is especially important in marine applications, where noise free time segments maybe short

Adaption and GPU based parallelization of the code TEMDDD for the 3D modelling of CSEM data

The finite difference time domain code TEMDDD was modified for the 3D forward modeling of marine CSEM data. After changes in the code, which make it possible to create model geometries typically encountered in marine CSEM experiments, parts of the code have been parallelized using massive parallelization on graphic cards. Parts of the singular value decomposition, which is the most time consuming part of the code, have been successfully ported with massive speed-ups (8-12x faster) observed as compared to the standard code. The full parallelization of the code is still work in progress

Coerced Modernization in the Eastern European Countryside

Mungiu-Pippidi A. (2010), A Tale of Two Villages. Coerced Modernization in the East European Countryside, CEU: Budapest–New York, pp. 232

The Development and Validation of a Life-Change Checklist for Juvenile Delinquents

A method generated by psychophysics has been used to develop a Checklist consisting of 58 life-events that require varying degrees of readjustment on the part of adolescents experiencing them. A very high degree of concordance was found to exist among psychologists, social workers and probation officers with regard to the relative value of life-change required by those events. Information about the occurrence of the amount of life-change was subsequently gathered from a sample of 334 juvenile delinquents and 104 nondelinquents by administering the Checklist. A measure of the degree of severity of delinquency was also obtained for each delinquent subject. The magnitude of life-change experienced by the delinquent sample was found to be highly significantly related to the severity of delinquency and to types of delinquency. The greater the magnitude of life-change, the greater the severity of delinquency, and the more severe the type of delinquency, the greater the amount of experienced life-change. Partially specific relationships were also found with regard to life-events and categories of events. Forty-six of the 58 life-events were found to have discriminatory value for at least one of the four major types of delinquency. Additionally, status-offenders were found to be more similar to nondelinquents than to delinquents with respect to the kinds of life-events which affect them. Other types of delinquents were not significantly differentiated by categories of life-events

LABOUR TAXATION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

This article proposes an analysis, which we consider extremely useful in the current economic context, of the evolution of labour income fiscality, more precisely, the effect of the public debt growth on the tax wedge for the labour income. The share of fiscal revenues from direct taxes, indirect taxes and social contributions is relatively close in the old member states of the European Union in comparison with the new member states, which register a lower level of income from direct taxes. The low level of income from direct taxes is compensated by more significant shares of the social contributions or indirect taxes. The main motivations of cross-border migration are: a successful career in a multinational corporation, high variations of the tax rate, of the salary income between states and, last but not least, the level of the net salary. To this day, there are no plans to harmonize across the European Union the legislation regarding the taxes wages and the social security contributions. Still, the European Union had in view the coordination of the national tax systems to make sure that the employees and the employers do not pay several times the social contributions in their movement across the community space. Despite the fact that some states tax the labour income at a low level, the labour fiscality remains high in the European Union in comparison with other industrialized economies, probably also due to the fact that the majority of the member states have social market economies. The increase of the fiscality level for the labour income determines the decrease of the employment rate and the raise of the unemployement rate. The solution to guarantee a higher employment rate, which is a target of the European Union Strategy "Europe 2020" could be the relaxation of the labour income fiscality by transferring the tax wedge on the labour income towards property or energy taxation.labour income, social contributions, tax quotas, taxes

CURRENT TRENDS IN TAX HARMONIZATION AND COMPETITION WITHIN THE EUROPEAN UNION

This article treats on the fiscal harmonization process within the European Union being indispensable for assuring loyalty in the competition on its single market, given the fact that different system of taxation had direct and powerful impact on the prices level and on chosing the location for production and distribution activities. Both direct and indirect taxation distort the four fundamental freedoms of the single market. Most of the European Union´s regulations regarding fiscal harmonization resemble to the Directive regarding especially the indirect taxes: VAT, Excises. The fiscal reforms from the member states have to be conceived in such a manner that they take into account the necessity of fiscal harmonization on EU level, creating a reasonable compromise between each country˙s sovereignty and the desideratum of removing fiscal barriers from the normal functioning of the single market.fiscal harmonization, fiscal reform, VAT, income tax, fiscal europeanization

THE EVOLUTION OF FISCAL INDICATORS IN THE LAST YEARSIN ROMANIA

Tax revenues are an important part of budget revenues, and their structure represent the mirror of government\'s fiscal policy. Also their level and structure reflects the evolution of the economy in general. The evolution of tax revenues has been influenced by the financial crisis of this period. The tax revenue structure in Romania is characterized by relatively high share of indirect taxes revenues in comparison with another European Union states, where the share of revenues from direct, indirect taxes and social contribution is relatively close. Government expenditure is vital for the economy especially if they are focused on productive areas. They are the engine of economic developments and plays an important role in raising the standard of living of population in a state. In the last years, the growth rate of public expenditure was higher than the trend of tax revenues increase. Sizing revenue and public expenditure is essential for achieving the budget balance target and to meet the criterion stipulated in the Stability and Growth Pact. According to the Pact, the budget deficit may not exceed 3% of GDP. This development asymmetric led to increased deficits in the last years. The high level of structural deficit has canceled an initiative to tax relaxation in this recession period. The need for fiscal consolidation has been paramount in the context of chronic deficit and difficulties faced in financing it. The opportune solution to finance the high public deficit and to achieve the objective of financial stability of the economy was contracting of public debt from International Monetary Fund. Other measures to reduce the deficit were the reduction of public expenditure and increasing tax revenues. We propose in this paper to analyze the evolution of fiscal indicators in comparison with the evolution of macroeconomic indicators to capture the reaction of taxpayers and economic environment at measures adopted.fiscal, tax, fiscal revenues, budget, financial crisis

Mechanical Studies of Subperiosteal Implants

When designing subperiosteal implants, mechanical testing of the implant and abutment is inevitable. Subperiosteal implants and their abutments are medical devices made to order, so each implant requires a separate design, since each patient has a different bone surface, for which the implant must be designed. For the mechanical testing of subperiosteal implants, a new test apparatus was constructed, on which mechanical simulations were carried out, the subperiosteal implants were tested together with their abutments. In addition to the finite element analysis simulation, the test apparatus can also be used to determine how much force is generated by the chewing force on the subperiosteal implant and its abutment as a result of the chewing mechanism

Robust inversion based fault estimation for discrete-time LPV systems

The article presents a state-space based Fault Diagnosis (FD) method for discrete-time, affine Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) systems. The goal of the technical note is to develop a robust and dynamic inversion based technique for systems with parameter varying representations when an additive, exogenous disturbance signal perturbs the system. After applying geometric concepts for explicit fault inversion, a robust strategy is proposed to attenuate the effect of the unknown disturbance input signal on the fault estimation error. The proposed robust observer is derived as a solution of off-line Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) conditions. The technical note demonstrates the viability of the novel methodology through a numerical example