Modeling population dynamics and economic growth as competing species: An application to CO2 global emissions

Since the beginning of the last century the world is experiencing an important demographic transition, which will probably impact on economic growth. Many demographers and social scientists are trying to understand the key drivers of such transition as well as its profound implications. A correct understanding will help to predict other important trends of the world primary energy demand and the carbon emission to the atmosphere, which may be leading to an important climate change. This paper proposes a set of coupled differential equations to describe the changes of population, gross domestic product, primary energy consumption and carbon emissions, modeled as competing-species as in Lokta-Volterra prey-predator relations. The predator–prey model is well known in the biological, ecological and environmental literature and has also been applied successfully in other fields. This model proposes a new and simple conceptual explanation of the interactions and feedbacks among the principal driving forces leading to the present transition. The estimated results for the temporal evolution of world population, gross domestic product, primary energy consumption and carbon emissions are calculated from year 1850 to year 2150. The calculated scenarios are in good agreement with common world data and projections for the next 100 years.Population dynamics, economic growth, primary energy consumption, carbon emission model, Lokta-Volterra Equations, Prey-predator model.

Studying Gender in Conference Talks -- data from the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society

We present a study on the gender balance, in speakers and attendees, at the recent major astronomical conference, the American Astronomical Society meeting 223, in Washington, DC. We conducted an informal survey, yielding over 300 responses by volunteers at the meeting. Each response included gender data about a single talk given at the meeting, recording the gender of the speaker and all question-askers. In total, 225 individual AAS talks were sampled. We analyze basic statistical properties of this sample. We find that the gender ratio of the speakers closely matched the gender ratio of the conference attendees. The audience asked an average of 2.8 questions per talk. Talks given by women had a slightly higher number of questions asked (3.2$\pm$0.2) than talks given by men (2.6$\pm$0.1). The most significant result from this study is that while the gender ratio of speakers very closely mirrors that of conference attendees, women are under-represented in the question-asker category. We interpret this to be an age-effect, as senior scientists may be more likely to ask questions, and are more commonly men. A strong dependence on the gender of session chairs is found, whereby women ask disproportionately fewer questions in sessions chaired by men. While our results point to laudable progress in gender-balanced speaker selection, we believe future surveys of this kind would help ensure that collaboration at such meetings is as inclusive as possible.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. Comments welcome

Leslie E. Tassell: Fun-loving Entrepreneur

Biography of Michigan entrepreneur Leslie E. Tassell. Tassell provided funding for the Fred M. Keller Engineering Laboratories Building and the Engineering programs at Grand Valley.https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/reports/1014/thumbnail.jp

Shear-Wave Splitting and Mantle Flow Beneath the Colorado Plateau and its Boundary with the Great Basin

Shear-wave splitting measurements from SKS and SKKS phases show fast polarization azimuths that are subparallel to North American absolute plate motion within the central Rio Grande Rift (RGR) and Colorado Plateau (CP) through to the western rim of the CP, with anisotropy beneath the CP and central RGR showing a remarkably consistent pattern with a mean fast azimuth of 4 degrees +/- degrees 6 E of N. Approaching the rim from the southeast, fast anisotropic directions become north-northeast-south-southwest (NNE-SSW), rotate counter clockwise to north-south in the CP-GB transition, and then to NNW-SSE in the western Great Basin ( GB). This change is coincident with uppermost mantle S-wave velocity perturbations that vary from +4% beneath the western CP and the eastern edge of the Marysvale volcanic field to about -8% beneath the GB. Corresponding delay times average 1.5 sec beneath the central CP, decrease to approximately 0.8 sec near the CP-GB transition, and increase to about 1.2 sec beneath the GB. For the central CP, we suggest anisotropy predominantly controlled by North American plate motion above the asthenosphere. The observed pattern of westward-rotating anisotropy from the western CP through the CP-GB transition may be influenced to asthenospheric flow around a CP lithospheric keel and/or by vertical flow arising from edge-driven small-scale convection. The anisotropic transition from the CP to the GB thus marks a first-order change from absolute plate motion dominated lithosphere-asthenosphere shear to a new regime controlled by regional flow processes. The NNW-SSE anisotropic fast directions of split SKS waves in the eastern GB area are part of a broad circular pattern of seismic anisotropic fast direction in the central GB that has recently been hypothesized to be due to toroidal flow around the sinking Juan de Fuca-Gorda slab.National Science Foundation EAR 9706094, 9707188, 9707190, 0207812Los Alamos National Laboratory Institute of Geophysics and Planetary PhysicsNational Science Foundation Cooperative EAR-000430Department of Energy National Nuclear Security AdministrationGeological Science

Evidence of ongoing radial migration in NGC 6754: Azimuthal variations of the gas properties

Understanding the nature of spiral structure in disk galaxies is one of the main, and still unsolved questions in galactic astronomy. However, theoretical works are proposing new testable predictions whose detection is becoming feasible with recent development in instrumentation. In particular, streaming motions along spiral arms are expected to induce azimuthal variations in the chemical composition of a galaxy at a given galactic radius. In this letter we analyse the gas content in NGC 6754 with VLT/MUSE data to characterise its 2D chemical composition and H$\alpha$ line-of-sight velocity distribution. We find that the trailing (leading) edge of the NGC 6754 spiral arms show signatures of tangentially-slower, radially-outward (tangentially-faster, radially-inward) streaming motions of metal-rich (poor) gas over a large range of radii. These results show direct evidence of gas radial migration for the first time. We compare our results with the gas behaviour in a $N$-body disk simulation showing spiral morphological features rotating with a similar speed as the gas at every radius, in good agreement with the observed trend. This indicates that the spiral arm features in NGC 6754 may be transient and rotate similarly as the gas does at a large range of radii.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in ApJL 2016 September 2

Molecular pathology of hereditary cerebral hemorrhage with amyloidosis-Dutch type

Hereditary cerebral hemorrhage with amyloidosis–Dutch type (HCHWA-D) is an early onset hereditary form of Cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) caused by a point mutation of the Amyloid Precursor protein (APP). CAA refers to the accumulation of Amyloid β (Aβ) peptide, resulting from APP protein cleavage, in intracerebral vessels. CAA pathology is present in the majority of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) brains and is associated with intracerebral hemorrhages in the elderly. The general aim of this thesis is to decipher the molecular pathogenesis of HCHWA-D. Since no proven therapeutic treatment exists to prevent or even delay the disease onset, the understanding of underlying pathomechanisms in HCHWA-D is important. It may help discovering new therapeutic targets and biomarkers that can be used to assess the efficacy of candidate drugs in treatment trials. The main finding of this thesis is that Transforming growth factor β (TGFβ) deregulation plays a central role in HCHWA-D pathogenesis. In the final chapter, the beneficial and detrimental aspects of TGFβ on the vascular and parenchymal brain components are reviewed and the possible causes of TGFβ activation in HCHWA-D as well as its implication for future studies and therapeutic intervention are discussed.Bontius Stichting (Leiden, Netherlands), the Dutch CAA Foundation (Rotterdam, Netherlands) and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO, The Hague, Netherlands), under research program VIDI, project “Amyloid and Vessels,” number 864.13.014LUMC / Geneeskund

Renormalization Group Study of the soliton mass on the (lambda Phi^4)_{1+1} lattice model

We compute, on the $(\lambda \Phi^4)_{1+1}$ model on the lattice, the soliton mass by means of two very different numerical methods. First, we make use of a ``creation operator'' formalism, measuring the decay of a certain correlation function. On the other hand we measure the shift of the vacuum energy between the symmetric and the antiperiodic systems. The obtained results are fully compatible. We compute the continuum limit of the mass from the perturbative Renormalization Group equations. Special attention is paid to ensure that we are working on the scaling region, where physical quantities remain unchanged along any Renormalization Group Trajectory. We compare the continuum value of the soliton mass with its perturbative value up to one loop calculation. Both quantities show a quite satisfactory agreement. The first is slightly bigger than the perturbative one; this may be due to the contributions of higher order corrections.Comment: 19 pages, preprint DFTUZ/93/0

Outlaw Community Innovations

Recent studies of outlaw communities provide qualitative evidence of their existence and the organisation of the underlying innovation processes. We provide descriptive results from a large scale survey of two online outlaw communities focussing on Microsoft's XBox. In line with previous findings, we identify two types of participants in outlaw communities - user innovators and adopters. Based on 2,256 responses, we find that users modify their XBox mainly to be able to increase the set of available functions of their XBox. Users are also motivated to modify their XBox for the sake of having fun and to conduct pirate behaviour. Finally, the results from our survey suggest that user innovators are largely intrinsically motivated by fun and the intellectual stimulation of writing code for homebrew software