112,433 research outputs found
The role of social interaction in farmers' climate adaptation choice
Adaptation to climate change might not always occur, with potentially\ud
catastrophic results. Success depends on coordinated actions at both\ud
governmental and individual levels (public and private adaptation). Even for a âwetâ country like the Netherlands, climate change projections show that the frequency and severity of droughts are likely to increase. Freshwater is an important factor for agricultural production. A deficit causes damage to crop production and consequently to a loss of income. Adaptation is the key to decrease farmersâ vulnerability at the micro level and the sectorâs vulnerability at the macro level. Individual adaptation decision-making is determined by the behavior of economic agents and social interaction among them. This can be best studied with agentbased modelling. Given the uncertainty about future weather conditions and the costs and effectiveness of adaptation strategies, a farmer in the model uses a cognitive process (or heuristic) to make adaptation decisions. In this process, he can rely on his experiences and on information from interactions within his social network. Interaction leads to the spread of information and knowledge that causes learning. Learning changes the conditions for individual adaptation decisionmaking. All these interactions cause emergent phenomena: the diffusion of adaptation strategies and a change of drought vulnerability of the agricultural sector. In this paper, we present a conceptual model and the first implementation of an agent-based model. The aim is to study the role of interaction in a farmerâs social network on adaptation decisions and on the diffusion of adaptation strategies\ud
and vulnerability of the agricultural sector. Micro-level survey data will be used to parameterize agentsâ behavioral and interaction rules at a later stage. This knowledge is necessary for the successful design of public adaptation strategies, since governmental adaptation actions need to be fine-tuned to private adaptation behavior
Biofuel scenarios in a water perspective: the global blue and green water footprint of road transport in 2030
The trend towards substitution of conventional transport fuels by biofuels requires additional water. The EU aims In the last two centuries, fossil fuels have been our major source of energy. However, issues concerning energy security and the quality of the environment have given an impulse to the development of alternative, renewable fuels. Particularly the transport sector is expected to steadily switch from fossil fuels to a larger fraction of biofuels - liquid transport fuels derived from biomass. Many governments believe that biofuels can replace substantial volumes of crude oil and that they will play a key role in diversifying the sources of energy supply in the coming decades. The growth of biomass requires water, a scarce resource. The link between water resources and (future) biofuel consumption, however, has not been analyzed in great detail yet. Existing scenarios on the use of water resources usually only consider the changes in food and livestock production, industry and domestic activity. The aim of this research is to assess the change in water use related to the expected increase in the use of biofuels for road transport in 2030, and subsequently evaluate the contribution to potential water scarcity. The study builds on earlier research on the relation between energy and water and uses the water footprint (WF) methodology to investigate the change in water demand related to a transition to biofuels in road transport. Information about this transition in each country is based on a compilation of different energy scenarios. The study distinguishes between two different bio-energy carriers, bio-ethanol and biodiesel, and assesses the ratio of fuel produced from selected first-generation energy crops per country. For ethanol these crops are sugar cane, sugar beet, sweet sorghum, wheat and maize. For biodiesel they are soybean, rapeseed, jatropha, and oil palm
Counting matroids in minor-closed classes
A flat cover is a collection of flats identifying the non-bases of a matroid.
We introduce the notion of cover complexity, the minimal size of such a flat
cover, as a measure for the complexity of a matroid, and present bounds on the
number of matroids on elements whose cover complexity is bounded. We apply
cover complexity to show that the class of matroids without an -minor is
asymptotically small in case is one of the sparse paving matroids
, , , , or , thus confirming a few special
cases of a conjecture due to Mayhew, Newman, Welsh, and Whittle. On the other
hand, we show a lower bound on the number of matroids without -minor
which asymptoticaly matches the best known lower bound on the number of all
matroids, due to Knuth.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure
Peri-abelian categories and the universal central extension condition
We study the relation between Bourn's notion of peri-abelian category and
conditions involving the coincidence of the Smith, Huq and Higgins commutators.
In particular we show that a semi-abelian category is peri-abelian if and only
if for each normal subobject , the Higgins commutator of with
itself coincides with the normalisation of the Smith commutator of the
denormalisation of with itself. We show that if a category is peri-abelian,
then the condition (UCE), which was introduced and studied by Casas and the
second author, holds for that category. In addition we show, using amongst
other things a result by Cigoli, that all categories of interest in the sense
of Orzech are peri-abelian and therefore satisfy the condition (UCE).Comment: 14 pages, final version accepted for publicatio
OH-selected AGB and post-AGB stellar objects II.Blue versus red evolution off the AGB
Using objects found in a systematic survey of the galactic Plane in the
1612-MHz OH line, we discuss in detail two ``sequences'' of post-AGB evolution,
a red and a blue. We argue that the red and the blue groups separate by initial
mass at 4Msun, based on evolutionary-sequence turn-off colours, spectral energy
distributions, outflow velocities and scaleheight. The higher-mass (blue)
objects may have earlier AGB termination. The lower-mass (red) objects undergo
very sudden reddening for IRAS colour R21\sim1.2; these sources must all
undergo a very similar process at AGB termination. The transition colour
corresponds to average initial masses of 1.7Msun. A combined IRAS-MSX colour
proves a very sensitive tool to distinguish lower-mass, early post-AGB objects
from sources still on the AGB and also to distinguish more evolved post-AGB
objects from star-forming regions. The high-mass blue objects are the likely
precursors of bipolar planetary nebulae, whereas the low-mass red objects will
evolve into elliptical planetary nebulae.Comment: 12 pages, LaTex, 7 figures (1 colour), AJ (accepted
The Westerbork HI Survey of Spiral and Irregular Galaxies I. HI Imaging of Late-type Dwarf Galaxies
Neutral hydrogen observations with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope
are presented for a sample of 73 late-type dwarf galaxies. These observations
are part of the WHISP project (Westerbork HI Survey of Spiral and Irregular
Galaxies). Here we present HI maps, velocity fields, global profiles and radial
surface density profiles of HI, as well as HI masses, HI radii and line widths.
For the late-type galaxies in our sample, we find that the ratio of HI extent
to optical diameter, defined as 6.4 disk scale lengths, is on average 1.8+-0.8,
similar to that seen in spiral galaxies. Most of the dwarf galaxies in this
sample are rich in HI, with a typical M_HI/L_B of 1.5. The relative HI content
M_HI/L_R increases towards fainter absolute magnitudes and towards fainter
surface brightnesses. Dwarf galaxies with lower average HI column densities
also have lower average optical surface brightnesses. We find that lopsidedness
is as common among dwarf galaxies as it is in spiral galaxies. About half of
the dwarf galaxies in our sample have asymmetric global profiles, a third has a
lopsided HI distribution, and about half shows signs of kinematic lopsidedness.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. 18 pages. 39 MB version with all
figures is available http://www.robswork.net/publications/WHISPI.ps.g
Identification of black hole power spectral components across all canonical states
From a uniform analysis of a large (8.5 Ms) Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer data
set of Low Mass X-ray Binaries, we present a complete identification of all the
variability components in the power spectra of black holes in their canonical
states. It is based on gradual frequency shifts of the components observed
between states, and uses a previous identification in the black hole low hard
state as a starting point. It is supported by correlations between the
frequencies in agreement with those previously found to hold for black hole and
neutron stars. Similar variability components are observed in neutron stars and
black holes (only the component observed at the highest frequencies is
different) which therefore cannot depend on source-specific characteristics
such as the magnetic field or surface of the neutron star or spin of the black
hole. As the same variability components are also observed across the jet-line
the X-ray variability cannot originate from the outer-jet but is most likely
produced in either the disk or the corona. We use the identification to
directly compare the difference in strength of the black hole and neutron star
variability and find these can be attributed to differences in frequency and
strength of high frequency features, and do not require the absence of any
components. Black holes attain their highest frequencies (in the
hard-intermediate and very-high states) at a level a factor ~6 below the
highest frequencies attained by the corresponding neutron star components,
which can be related to the mass difference between the compact objects in
these systems.Comment: 17 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
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