Nonlinear softening as a predictive precursor to climate tipping

Approaching a dangerous bifurcation, from which a dynamical system such as the Earth's climate will jump (tip) to a different state, the current stable state lies within a shrinking basin of attraction. Persistence of the state becomes increasingly precarious in the presence of noisy disturbances. We consider an underlying potential, as defined theoretically for a saddle-node fold and (via averaging) for a Hopf bifurcation. Close to a stable state, this potential has a parabolic form; but approaching a jump it becomes increasingly dominated by softening nonlinearities. If we have already detected a decrease in the linear decay rate, nonlinear information allows us to estimate the propensity for early tipping due to noise. We argue that one needs to extract information about the nonlinear features (a "softening") of the underlying potential from the time series to judge the probability and timing of tipping. This analysis is the logical next step if one has detected a decrease of the linear decay rate. If there is no discernable trend in the linear analysis, nonlinear softening is even more important in showing the proximity to tipping. After extensive normal form calibration studies, we check two geological time series from paleo-climate tipping events for softening of the underlying well. For the ending of the last ice age, where we find no convincing linear precursor, we identify a statistically significant nonlinear softening towards increasing temperature. The analysis has thus successfully detected a warning of the imminent tipping event.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures, changed title back, corrected smaller mistakes, updated reference

A short note on the multiplier ideals of monomial space curves

Thompson (2014) exhibits a formula for the multiplier ideal with multiplier lambda of a monomial curve C with ideal I as an intersection of a term coming from the I-adic valuation, the multiplier ideal of the term ideal of I, and terms coming from certain specified auxiliary valuations. This short note shows it suffices to consider only one auxiliary valuation. This improvement is achieved through a more intrinsic approach, reduction to the toric case.Comment: This version adds Corollary 10 and fixes several typo

Land Law – The fight against gazumping

Professor M.P. Thompson (University of Leicester) considers the background and needs for the government review of conveyancing procedures in England and Wales which has focussed on stamping out the practice of gazumping. Note published in Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and its Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London

Is the Internet a Viable Threat to Representative Democracy?

The Internet, despite its relatively recent advent, is critical to millions of Americans’ way of life. Although the Internet arguably opens new opportunities for citizens to become more directly involved in their government, some scholars fear this direct involvement poses a risk to one of the Constitution’s most precious ideals: representative democracy. This iBrief explores whether the constitutional notion of representation is vulnerable to the Internet’s capacity to open new vistas for a more direct democracy by analyzing statistics and theories about why voters in the United States do or do not vote and by examining the inherent qualities of the Internet itself. This iBrief concludes that the Constitution will adapt to the Internet and the Internet to the Constitution, such that even if there are advances in direct democracy, representative democracy will not be unduly threatened

AdS Solutions of 2D Type 0A

We present a two-parameter family of AdS solutions to the two-dimensional type 0A effective action.Comment: 9 page

Wittgenstein's Contributions to Philosophy

Any discussion of Wittgenstein's philosophical thought would be incomplete without taking notice of the method he employs. Often criticized for his style and organization, many feel that they are indicative of his state of mind; that such a lack of rigid argumentation betrays an inadequacy within the arguments themselves. However, criticism of Wittgenstein along these lines only serves to demonstrate a superficial reading of his texts. Not simply content (or even able) to just present us with the results of his investigations, Wittgenstein coaxes the reader into taking up an investigation of his own by means of an open dialogue. As a dialogue, we are not confronted with a traditional argumentative structure, i.e. the stating of theses and their subsequent defense. Rather, Wittgenstein attempts to draw the reader away from the obvious by means of an indirect method of discourse

Bottom-up constructions of top-down transformational change : change leader interventions and qualitative schema change in a spatially differentiated technically-oriented public professional bureaucracy

In the face of knowledge deficits in and poor outcome assessments of Organisation Transformation (OT), there is a need for a better understanding of the relationship between change leader interventions and qualitative organisational schema change, the collective knowledge structures that must be replaced or significantly elaborated if OT is to be realised. Previous research on this relationship has (a) focused on imposed structural interventions and given little attention to large-scale human process interventions, (b) given little attention to the radical structural interventions frequently involved in the transformation of public organisations, (c) given little scrutiny to how organisational schema have been conceptualised, (d) given little scrutiny to recent propositions on schema change dynamics that may be contentious, and (e) given little consideration to the change management contexts in which leader influence may be neutralised. In the light of these gaps in the literature, this thesis investigates, from the perspective of change recipients, the relationship between complex large-scale change leader interventions and qualitative organisational schema change in change management contexts thought to be inimical to leader influence. In particular, how efficacious are change leader interventions in realising qualitative organisational schema change in such contexts? An interpretive longitudinal case study design was used to address this question. The case organisation is a spatially differentiated technically-oriented public Professional Bureaucracy located in Queensland. In this context, this thesis investigates, over a three-year period, the creation and evolution of three schema change contexts, or change trajectories, created by two temporally disconnected yet functionally inter-related change leader interventions. Data collection techniques included focus group interviews, semi-structured interviews, and secondary sources. Data were collected from several sites, including Head Office functions and Regional and District offices, across Queensland. Data were collected on four occasions across the three-year period from early 2000 to late 2002. The results reveal that (a) while there are no panaceas, public managers need more sophisticated intervention theories based on a knowledge of the relative efficacy of different interventions rather than relying on, predominantly, structural interventions, (b) viewing organisational schema in one-dimensional rather than multidimensional terms masks both the complexity of organisational schema change and the possibility of partial rather than configurational schema change, (c) while inter-schema conflict or dialectical processes were apparent, successful schema change was better explained by teleological processes than by dialectical processes, and (d) change leaders can have a powerful influence on OT in change management contexts thought to be inimical to change leader influence yet their influence is linked to high investments of time and effort