Measuring Sustainability

Planning for sustainability is high on many agendas, and tools to measure sustainability have been developed. Sustainable processes are those whose rates are maintained over time without exceeding the innate ability of its surroundings to support the process. We present the necessary conditions along with a new algorithm for measuring the sustainability of processes that integrates the laws of thermodynamics with laws for rate processes. The algorithm permits the assessment of the degree of sustainability of any process, whether ecological, economic, or social, as well as chemical or biological. It is a dynamic approach that applies at any scale and takes into consideration the spatial and temporal factors of processes, thus permitting empirical applications that correspond to real world (dynamic, complex, evolving) conditions across space and time. These characteristics make it especially suitable for applications in the field of spatial planning

Religious pro-sociality? Experimental evidence from a sample of 766 Spaniards

This study explores the relationship between several personal religion-related variables and social behaviour, using three paradigmatic economic games: the dictator (DG), ultimatum (UG), and trust (TG) games. A large carefully designed sample of the urban adult population in Granada (Spain) is employed (N = 766). From participants' decisions in these games we obtain measures of altruism, bargaining behaviour and sense of fairness/equality, trust, and positive reciprocity. Three dimensions of religiosity are examined: (i) religious denomination; (ii) intensity of religiosity, measured by active participation at church services; and (iii) conversion out into a different denomination than the one raised in. The major results are: (i) individuals with “no religion” made decisions closer to rational selfish behaviour in the DG and the UG compared to those who affiliate with a “standard” religious denomination; (ii) among Catholics, intensity of religiosity is the key variable that affects social behaviour insofar as religiously-active individuals are generally more pro-social than non-active ones; and (iii) the religion raised in seems to have no effect on pro-sociality, beyond the effect of the current measures of religiosity. Importantly, behaviour in the TG is not predicted by any of the religion-related variables we analyse. While the results partially support the notion of religious pro-sociality, on the other hand, they also highlight the importance of closely examining the multidimensional nature of both religiosity and pro-social behaviour

Determinants of disaffiliation: an international study

Using a dataset of 15,000 subjects from 32 Western countries, the current study examines individuals who were raised in a certain religion and, at some stage of their lives, left it. Currently, they define their religious affiliation as ‘no religion’. A battery of explanatory variables (country-specific, personal attributes and marriage variables) was employed to test for determinants of this decision. It was found that the tendency of individuals to leave their religion—the most extreme symptom of secularization—is strongly correlated with their liberal beliefs and with parental and spousal religious characteristics. Moreover, country characteristics, as well as personal socio-demographic features seem to be much less relevant, except for the religious diversity of the country that has a positive effect on disaffiliation

Intergenerational transmission of ‘religious capital’. Evidence from Spain

This paper examines intergenerational transmission of ‘religious capital’ from parents to their offspring within an economic framework. The analytical tool is a ‘production function of religiosity’ where parental religious inputs serve as factors of production. The database used is based on a large-scale survey that was conducted in 1998 in Spain. In addition to information on the religious affiliation of the respondent and his parents, it has detailed data on two dimensions of the individual’s religious performance: church attendance and prayer. It also includes information on the mother’s and father’s church attendance when the respondent was a child, as well as the respondent’s participation in mass services at the age of 12. Socio-economic background data are also available. The core findings are: (i) parental religious inputs significantly affect individuals’ religiosity; (ii) interestingly, the route of intergenerational transmission is from mother to daughter and from father to son; and (iii) current mass participation of respondents is more affected by parental- than by own childhood mass attendance

Measuring cosmological bulk flows via the kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect in the upcoming cosmic microwave background maps

We propose a new method to measure the possible large-scale bulk flows in the Universe from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) maps from the upcoming missions, MAP and Planck. This can be done by studying the statistical properties of the CMB temperature field at many X-ray cluster positions. At each cluster position, the CMB temperature fluctuation will be a combination of the Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) kinematic and thermal components, the cosmological fluctuations and the instrument noise term. When averaged over many such clusters the last three will integrate down, whereas the first one will be dominated by a possible bulk flow component. In particular, we propose to use all-sky X-ray cluster catalogs that should (or could) be available soon from X-ray satellites, and then to evaluate the dipole component of the CMB field at the cluster positions. We show that for the MAP and Planck mission parameters the dominant contributions to the dipole will be from the terms due to the SZ kinematic effect produced by the bulk flow (the signal we seek) and the instrument noise (the noise in our signal). Computing then the expected signal-to-noise ratio for such measurement, we get that at the 95 % confidence level the bulk flows on scales >100h^{-1} Mpc can be probed down to the amplitude of $< 200$ km/sec with the MAP data and down to only 30 km/sec with the Planck mission.Comment: Astrophysical Journal Letters, in pres

Swimming Efficiency of Bacterium Escherichia Coli

We use in vivo measurements of swimming bacteria in an optical trap to determine fundamental properties of bacterial propulsion. In particular, we determine the propulsion matrix, which relates the angular velocity of the flagellum to the torques and forces propelling the bacterium. From the propulsion matrix dynamical properties such as forces, torques, swimming speed and power can be obtained from measurements of the angular velocity of the motor. We find significant heterogeneities among different individuals even though all bacteria started from a single colony. The propulsive efficiency, defined as the ratio of the propulsive power output to the rotary power input provided by the motors, is found to be 0.2%.Comment: 6 page

On the identification of Dragon Kings among extreme-valued outliers

Abstract. Extreme values of earth, environmental, ecological, physical, biological, financial and other variables often form outliers to heavy tails of empirical frequency distributions. Quite commonly such tails are approximated by stretched exponential, log-normal or power functions. Recently there has been an interest in distinguishing between extreme-valued outliers that belong to the parent population of most data in a sample and those that do not. The first type, called Gray Swans by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (often confused in the literature with Taleb's totally unknowable Black Swans), is drawn from a known distribution of the tails which can thus be extrapolated beyond the range of sampled values. However, the magnitudes and/or space–time locations of unsampled Gray Swans cannot be foretold. The second type of extreme-valued outliers, termed Dragon Kings by Didier Sornette, may in his view be sometimes predicted based on how other data in the sample behave. This intriguing prospect has recently motivated some authors to propose statistical tests capable of identifying Dragon Kings in a given random sample. Here we apply three such tests to log air permeability data measured on the faces of a Berea sandstone block and to synthetic data generated in a manner statistically consistent with these measurements. We interpret the measurements to be, and generate synthetic data that are, samples from α-stable sub-Gaussian random fields subordinated to truncated fractional Gaussian noise (tfGn). All these data have frequency distributions characterized by power-law tails with extreme-valued outliers about the tail edges