Possible Precursor Events to Earthquakes and the Resulting Effects on Organic Material in the Surrounding Water Bodies

Being located on the “Ring of Fire” Japan experiences many seismic events. Adding to this, it is located at the convergence of four fault lines where seismic activity will be even more frequent and severe. Although small tremors occurring in an area are indicators of an earthquake to come it only gives minutes of warning. Scientists are now trying to see if latent heat and gas release from fault lines can indicate an earthquake to come with hours or even days of warning. MODIS aqua and terra data will be analyzed in order to see if such precursors can be found using satellite data. Once an earthquake has occurred it can affect other aspects of the environment, like surrounding water bodies. The second half of this study will analyze the chlorophyll a and color dissolved organic matter content in order to gage the health of the ocean as a result of the earthquakes. However, in the atmospheric data major changes or indications could not be linked to the earthquake it self but rather to seasonal fluctuations in anthropogenic pollutants. Hydrologic data did show some correlation between changes in chlorophyll a and color dissolved organic matter content, but this only occurred when the earthquake and its succeeding events lead to infrastructure collapse. This does show that better earthquake precursor events are need to indicate when an event will occur so there can be better preparation to protect our infrastructure

Tensões entre a “zoeira” e o “politicamente correto” : entrelaçamentos de estética e política na cultura digital jovem

Este trabalho tem como objeto os tensionamentos que se estabelecem no campo da cultura e da política entre a zoeira – uma categoria de humor que tende a solapar limites e transgredir normas – e as demandas por reconhecimento e respeito, principalmente por parte de grupos historicamente marginalizados, categorizadas depreciativamente como “o politicamente correto”. A pesquisa busca lançar um olhar sobre tais disputas, com foco no riso e no ambiente das redes digitais, a fim de compreender como se relacionam e produzem novas dinâmicas no contexto político: como os tensionamentos entre percepções e sensibilidades divergentes, que disputam por diferentes limites para o dizível e tolerável, passaram a tomar o centro do debate público? Que condições tornaram possível, por exemplo, que o “politicamente correto” fosse declarado inimigo no discurso oficial da presidência da República? Como a zoeira e a cultura digital ambivalente (MILNER; PHILLIPS, 2017) estão articuladas a essa questão? A partir da análise de notícias, vídeos, montagens, comentários e memes, essa pesquisa busca reiterar a urgência de olharmos para as relações que se estabelecem entre estética e política (BENJAMIN, 2004), um entrelaçamento importante para pensar como nos socializamos politicamente no mundo conectado. O presente estudo foca, portanto, no papel do riso, do humor e do lúdico na construção do sujeito político no contexto das redes digitais.This paper has as its object the tensions that are established in the field of culture and politics between the lulz – a category of humor that tends to undermine limits and transgress norms – and the demands for recognition and respect, especially by historically marginalized groups, referred contemptuously as "politically correct." The research looks at such disputes, focusing on the laughter and the environment of digital networks, in order to understand how they relate and produce new dynamics in the political context: how the tensions between divergent perceptions and sensibilities, which dispute for different limits for the sayable and tolerable, have come to take center stage in public debate? What conditions made possible, for example, that "politically correctness" was declared an enemy in an official speech by the presidency? How are the lulz and the ambivalent digital culture (MILNER; PHILLIPS, 2017) articulated to this issue? From the analysis of news, videos, montages, comments and memes, this research seeks to reiterate the urgency of looking at the relations that are established between aesthetics and politics (BENJAMIN, 2004), an important intertwining to understand how we socialize politically in the connected world. Therefore, this paper focuses on the role of laughter, humor and playfulness in the construction of the political subject in the context of digital networks

Parameter optimization by using differential elimination: a general approach for introducing constraints into objective functions

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The investigation of network dynamics is a major issue in systems and synthetic biology. One of the essential steps in a dynamics investigation is the parameter estimation in the model that expresses biological phenomena. Indeed, various techniques for parameter optimization have been devised and implemented in both free and commercial software. While the computational time for parameter estimation has been greatly reduced, due to improvements in calculation algorithms and the advent of high performance computers, the accuracy of parameter estimation has not been addressed. </p> <p>Results</p> <p>We propose a new approach for parameter optimization by using differential elimination, to estimate kinetic parameter values with a high degree of accuracy. First, we utilize differential elimination, which is an algebraic approach for rewriting a system of differential equations into another equivalent system, to derive the constraints between kinetic parameters from differential equations. Second, we estimate the kinetic parameters introducing these constraints into an objective function, in addition to the error function of the square difference between the measured and estimated data, in the standard parameter optimization method. To evaluate the ability of our method, we performed a simulation study by using the objective function with and without the newly developed constraints: the parameters in two models of linear and non-linear equations, under the assumption that only one molecule in each model can be measured, were estimated by using a genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). As a result, the introduction of new constraints was dramatically effective: the GA and PSO with new constraints could successfully estimate the kinetic parameters in the simulated models, with a high degree of accuracy, while the conventional GA and PSO methods without them frequently failed.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The introduction of new constraints in an objective function by using differential elimination resulted in the drastic improvement of the estimation accuracy in parameter optimization methods. The performance of our approach was illustrated by simulations of the parameter optimization for two models of linear and non-linear equations, which included unmeasured molecules, by two types of optimization techniques. As a result, our method is a promising development in parameter optimization. </p

Antiferromagnetic spintronics

Antiferromagnetic materials are magnetic inside, however, the direction of their ordered microscopic moments alternates between individual atomic sites. The resulting zero net magnetic moment makes magnetism in antiferromagnets invisible on the outside. It also implies that if information was stored in antiferromagnetic moments it would be insensitive to disturbing external magnetic fields, and the antiferromagnetic element would not affect magnetically its neighbors no matter how densely the elements were arranged in a device. The intrinsic high frequencies of antiferromagnetic dynamics represent another property that makes antiferromagnets distinct from ferromagnets. The outstanding question is how to efficiently manipulate and detect the magnetic state of an antiferromagnet. In this article we give an overview of recent works addressing this question. We also review studies looking at merits of antiferromagnetic spintronics from a more general perspective of spin-ransport, magnetization dynamics, and materials research, and give a brief outlook of future research and applications of antiferromagnetic spintronics.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure

Biochemical systems identification by a random drift particle swarm optimization approach

BACKGROUND: Finding an efficient method to solve the parameter estimation problem (inverse problem) for nonlinear biochemical dynamical systems could help promote the functional understanding at the system level for signalling pathways. The problem is stated as a data-driven nonlinear regression problem, which is converted into a nonlinear programming problem with many nonlinear differential and algebraic constraints. Due to the typical ill conditioning and multimodality nature of the problem, it is in general difficult for gradient-based local optimization methods to obtain satisfactory solutions. To surmount this limitation, many stochastic optimization methods have been employed to find the global solution of the problem. RESULTS: This paper presents an effective search strategy for a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm that enhances the ability of the algorithm for estimating the parameters of complex dynamic biochemical pathways. The proposed algorithm is a new variant of random drift particle swarm optimization (RDPSO), which is used to solve the above mentioned inverse problem and compared with other well known stochastic optimization methods. Two case studies on estimating the parameters of two nonlinear biochemical dynamic models have been taken as benchmarks, under both the noise-free and noisy simulation data scenarios. CONCLUSIONS: The experimental results show that the novel variant of RDPSO algorithm is able to successfully solve the problem and obtain solutions of better quality than other global optimization methods used for finding the solution to the inverse problems in this study

Tensões entre a “zoeira” e o “politicamente correto” : entrelaçamentos de estética e política na cultura digital jovem

Este trabalho tem como objeto os tensionamentos que se estabelecem no campo da cultura e da política entre a zoeira – uma categoria de humor que tende a solapar limites e transgredir normas – e as demandas por reconhecimento e respeito, principalmente por parte de grupos historicamente marginalizados, categorizadas depreciativamente como “o politicamente correto”. A pesquisa busca lançar um olhar sobre tais disputas, com foco no riso e no ambiente das redes digitais, a fim de compreender como se relacionam e produzem novas dinâmicas no contexto político: como os tensionamentos entre percepções e sensibilidades divergentes, que disputam por diferentes limites para o dizível e tolerável, passaram a tomar o centro do debate público? Que condições tornaram possível, por exemplo, que o “politicamente correto” fosse declarado inimigo no discurso oficial da presidência da República? Como a zoeira e a cultura digital ambivalente (MILNER; PHILLIPS, 2017) estão articuladas a essa questão? A partir da análise de notícias, vídeos, montagens, comentários e memes, essa pesquisa busca reiterar a urgência de olharmos para as relações que se estabelecem entre estética e política (BENJAMIN, 2004), um entrelaçamento importante para pensar como nos socializamos politicamente no mundo conectado. O presente estudo foca, portanto, no papel do riso, do humor e do lúdico na construção do sujeito político no contexto das redes digitais.This paper has as its object the tensions that are established in the field of culture and politics between the lulz – a category of humor that tends to undermine limits and transgress norms – and the demands for recognition and respect, especially by historically marginalized groups, referred contemptuously as "politically correct." The research looks at such disputes, focusing on the laughter and the environment of digital networks, in order to understand how they relate and produce new dynamics in the political context: how the tensions between divergent perceptions and sensibilities, which dispute for different limits for the sayable and tolerable, have come to take center stage in public debate? What conditions made possible, for example, that "politically correctness" was declared an enemy in an official speech by the presidency? How are the lulz and the ambivalent digital culture (MILNER; PHILLIPS, 2017) articulated to this issue? From the analysis of news, videos, montages, comments and memes, this research seeks to reiterate the urgency of looking at the relations that are established between aesthetics and politics (BENJAMIN, 2004), an important intertwining to understand how we socialize politically in the connected world. Therefore, this paper focuses on the role of laughter, humor and playfulness in the construction of the political subject in the context of digital networks