Observations of shallow convective clouds generated by solar heating of dark smoke plumes

The SEVIRI instrument on the Meteosat Second Generation satellite with both fine spatial and temporal resolution allows to detect and follow the dynamics of fast developing meteorological events like spreading smoke plumes and the lifecycles of convective clouds. Smoke plumes have the ability to change the atmospheric heat content due to absorption and reduced reflection of solar radiation. By these means they can trigger formation of shallow convective clouds at their edge. A heavy smoke plume emerging from burning Lebanese oil tanks and spreading over adjacent deserts on 17 July 2006 has been observed as an example of such an effect. This study suggests a physical explanation of the observed convection along the edge of the smoke plume, namely the strong thermal contrast resulting from solar heating of the smoke layer

Interacting six-dimensional topological field theories

We study the gauge-fixing and symmetries (BRST-invariance and vector supersymmetry) of various six-dimensional topological models involving Abelian or non-Abelian 2-form potentials.Comment: 11 page

Federal Regulation of Third-Party Litigation Finance

Third-party litigation finance has become a powerful and influential industry that will continue to play a significant role in shaping the legal landscape for years to come. The opportunities-and challenges-introduced by this burgeoning industry are legion, and with them has come a swath of disparate state regulations. These regimes have failed to balance important consumer- and commercial-lending protections with facilitation of the growth of an industry that is essential to increasing access to the courtroom. In response, this Note contends that a federal agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, should be delegated the authority to promulgate regulations (1) capping interest rates at a percentage in line with fair commercial practices, (2) expressly prohibiting financier control over litigation decisions, and (3) limiting the information that financiers can request from their clients. Additionally, this Note proposes amending the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to mandate disclosure of litigation-finance agreements in all cases

Migrant Political Participation and Voting Behavior in Romania

The results of the first round 2014 presidential elections in Romania predicted a comfortable win for the incumbent Prime Minister Victor Ponta, the president of the Social Democratic Party. After the first round, Ponta held a 10% lead over the Christian-Liberal Alliance candidate Klaus Iohannis. The runoff campaign was marked by reports displayed on all TV channels showing the Romanian Diaspora not being able to vote abroad. Surprisingly, Klaus Iohannis, who obtained 54% of the votes, won the second round of elections. Iohannis obtained 89% of Diaspora’s votes, adding a 4% gain in front of his contender. In most studies on electoral behavior, the focus for explaining why people go to vote is centered at the level of the “country, election, electoral cohort or individual voter” (Franklin 2004). Notably absent from these studies is the impact Diaspora on the election results and the predictors of turnout. The impact on national elections of this category of citizens is not to be neglected and it becomes important especially in democratizing states. In this vein we focus on the predictors that lie behind the political participation and preferences of Romanian Diaspora. We will test two basic models that explain participation (Franklin 2004). First there is research that focuses on the social determinants of voting (Verba and Nie 1972) labeled as “the baseline model”. Another stream of studies includes electoral system effects and political system format (Blais and Aarts 2006, Cox 1997, Franklin 2004). We claim that Romanian Diaspora voters participate in higher numbers in presidential elections when the number of voting stations increases. Romanian diaspora consistently votes with center right wing parties and candidates. This vote is associated with liberal policy preferences and support for issues that promote libertarian attitudes. We test these hypotheses with elections results data from 2000 to 2014 coupled with data collected from Votulmeu.com an online Voting Advice Application from the 2014 presidential elections in Romania

Ergebnisse der zerlegung von lammerschlachtkorpern mit verschiedenen anteilen Finnischer Landrasse

International audienc

Solving Forward and Inverse Problems of Contact Mechanics using Physics-Informed Neural Networks

This paper explores the ability of physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) to solve forward and inverse problems of contact mechanics for small deformation elasticity. We deploy PINNs in a mixed-variable formulation enhanced by output transformation to enforce Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions as hard constraints. Inequality constraints of contact problems, namely Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) type conditions, are enforced as soft constraints by incorporating them into the loss function during network training. To formulate the loss function contribution of KKT constraints, existing approaches applied to elastoplasticity problems are investigated and we explore a nonlinear complementarity problem (NCP) function, namely Fischer-Burmeister, which possesses advantageous characteristics in terms of optimization. Based on the Hertzian contact problem, we show that PINNs can serve as pure partial differential equation (PDE) solver, as data-enhanced forward model, as inverse solver for parameter identification, and as fast-to-evaluate surrogate model. Furthermore, we demonstrate the importance of choosing proper hyperparameters, e.g. loss weights, and a combination of Adam and L-BFGS-B optimizers aiming for better results in terms of accuracy and training time

When and How to Support Renewables?—Letting the Data Speak

Low-carbon energy technologies are pivotal for decarbonising our economies up to 2050 while ensuring secure and affordable energy. Consequently, innovation that reduces the cost of low-carbon energy would play an important role in reducing transition costs. We assess the two most prominent innovation policy instruments (i) public research, development and demonstration (RD&D) subsidies and (ii) public deployment policies. Our results indicate that both deployment and RD&D coincide with increasing knowledge generation and the improved competitiveness of renewable energy technologies. We find that both support schemes together have a greater effect that they would individually, that RD&D support is unsurprisingly more effective in driving patents and that timing matters. Current wind deployment based on past wind RD&D spending coincides best with wind patenting. If we look into competitiveness we find a similar picture, with the greatest effect coming from deployment. Finally, we find significant cross-border effects, especially for winddeployment. Increased deployment in one country coincides with increased patenting in nearby countries. Based on our findings we argue that both deployment and RD&D support are needed to create innovation in renewable energy technologies. However, we worry that current support is unbalanced. Public spending on deployment has been two orders of magnitude larger (in 2010 about €48 billion in the five largest EU countries in 2010) than spending on RD&D support (about €315 million). Consequently, basing the policy mix more on empirical evidence could increase the efficiency of innovation policy targeted towards renewable energy technologies

Doubly resonant optical nanoantenna arrays for polarization resolved measurements of surface-enhanced Raman scattering

We report that rhomb-shaped metal nanoantenna arrays support multiple plasmonic resonances, making them favorable bio-sensing substrates. Besides the two localized plasmonic dipole modes associated with the two principle axes of the rhombi, the sample supports an additional grating-induced surface plasmon polariton resonance. The plasmonic properties of all modes are carefully studied by far-field measurements together with numerical and analytical calculations. The sample is then applied to surface-enhanced Raman scattering measurements. It is shown to be highly efficient since two plasmonic resonances of the structure were simultaneously tuned to coincide with the excitation and the emission wave- length in the SERS experiment. The analysis is completed by measuring the impact of the polarization angle on the SERS signal.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure