Nonlinear Data Assimilation: Towards a Prediction of the Solar Cycle

The solar cycle is the cyclic variation of solar activity, with a span of 9-14 years. The prediction of the solar cycle is an important and unsolved problem with implications for communications, aviation and other aspects of our high-tech society. Our interest is model-based prediction, and we present a self-consistent procedure for parameter estimation and model state estimation, even when only one of several model variables can be observed. Data assimilation is the art of comparing, combining and transferring observed data into a mathematical model or computer simulation. We use the 3DVAR methodology, based on the notion of least squares, to present an implementation of a traditional data assimilation. Using the Shadowing Filter - a recently developed method for nonlinear data assimilation - we outline a path towards model based prediction of the solar cycle. To achieve this end we solve a number of methodological challenges related to unobserved variables. We also provide a new framework for interpretation that can guide future predictions of the Sun and other astrophysical objects

Best Interest of a Minor Theist: An American and Religiously Informed Response to Canada’s A.C. v. Manitoba

AbstractObjective The objective of this study was to examine the prevalence of self-reported experiences of potential childhood traumas and polytraumatization, and to find cut-off values for different kinds of potential traumatic events in a national representative sample of adults in Sweden. In addition, to analyse the association between polytraumatization and both psychological distress and global self-esteem. Method A web-based survey - containing SCL-25 and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and Linköping Difficult Life Events Scale - Adult - was sent out to a nationally reprative sample and 5062 people chose to participate in the study. Results Results showed that almost everyone (97%) has experienced at least one potential traumatic event and that polytraumatization (the 10% of the participants with most reported traumas) was significantly (Z = 12.57, P < 0.001, r = 0.18) associated with psychological distress and global self-esteem. Gender differences were significant (Z = 8.44, P < 0.001, r = 0.12), in that men experience more noninterpersonal traumas but women report more symptoms. The effect sizes regarding the impact of potential trauma on self-esteem were largest for women with experience of polytraumatization in the age group 18–25 (r = 0.48). There was almost linear increase in psychological distress and linear decrease in self-esteem with increasing number of traumatic events experienced. Conclusion Experience of polytrauma can be considered an important factor to take into account in psychiatric settings as well

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThis dissertation presents original research that improves the ability of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure temperature in aqueous tissue using the proton resonance frequency (PRF) shift and T1 measurements in fat tissue in order to monitor focused ultrasound (FUS) treatments. The inherent errors involved in measuring the longitudinal relaxation time T1 using the variable flip angle method with a two-dimensional (2D) acquisition are presented. The edges of the slice profile can contribute a significant amount of signal for large flip angles at steady state, which causes significant errors in the T1 estimate. Only a narrow range of flip angle combinations provided accurate T1 estimates. Respiration motion causes phase artifacts, which lead to errors when measuring temperature changes using the PRF method. A respiration correction method for 3D imaging temperature of the breast is presented. Free induction decay (FID) navigators were used to measure and correct phase offsets induced by respiration. The precision of PRF temperature measurements within the breast was improved by an average factor of 2.1 with final temperature precision of approximately 1 °C. Locating the position of the ultrasound focus in MR coordinates of an ultrasound transducer with multiple degrees of freedom can be difficult. A rapid method for predicting the position using 3 tracker coils with a special MRI pulse iv sequence is presented. The Euclidean transformation of the coil's current positions to their calibration positions was used to predict the current focus position. The focus position was predicted to within approximately 2.1 mm in less than 1 s. MRI typically has tradeoffs between imaging field of view and spatial and temporal resolution. A method for acquiring a large field of view with high spatial and temporal resolution is presented. This method used a multiecho pseudo-golden angle stack of stars imaging sequence to acquire the large field of view with high spatial resolution and k-space weighted image contrast (KWIC) to increase the temporal resolution. The pseudo-golden angle allowed for removal of artifacts introduced by the KWIC reconstruction algorithm. The multiple echoes allowed for high readout bandwidth to reduce blurring due to off resonance and chemical shift as well as provide separate water/fat images, estimates of the initial signal magnitude M(0), T2 * time constant, and combination of echo phases. The combined echo phases provided significant improvement to the PRF temperature precision, and ranged from ~0.3-1.0 °C within human breast. M(0) and T2 * values can possibly be used as a measure of temperature in fat

A Multilevel Approach to Urban Regional Agglomerations: A Swedish Case of Transition Paths toward a “Fossil-Free Society” by 2050

This article has a focus on the changing patterns of connected urban spaces forming large super-regional aggregates made up of cities of various sizes and regional functions as well as the interconnecting space of much smaller municipalities of agricultural or forestry types of character. The multi-scalar level analysis of these connected clusters is pursued from the level of the individual to the regional, national, Nordic and EU levels. The enfolding of the regional pattern also has global connotations in terms of trade connections, but also in the context of bio-geo challenges as climate change, biodiversity depletion or food security considerations. The transition dynamics involves governance, economic, social and cultural aspects. International negotiations, as the Paris agreement on climate change and agreements at the UN level as the 17 “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDG), or agreements at the EU level, provide an international political frame to this process

Crisis management in Russia: overcoming institutional rigidity and resource constraints

Journal ArticleThe editors would like to express their gratitude to a number of persons and institutions for making this book on Russian crisis management possible. We are grateful for the generous financial support from the Swedish Agency for Civil Emergency Planning (?CB) which has made the CM Europe program (of which this volume is a part) possible. Special thanks to Sture Ericson, Bo Richard Lundgren, and Harald T?rner of ?CB for their help in launching this endeavor and bringing it to fruition

Utilization and limitations of soil health metrics in Missouri corn production decisions

Soil health benefits are widely acknowledged but empirically-vetted connections to agronomic outcomes remain absent. Therefore, recommendations for on-farm soil health assessments and interpretation remain ambiguous. Empirical connections to two major outcomes remain absent, specifically row crop productivity and fertilizer recommendations. This dissertation investigates potential benefits from incorporating soil health indicators with established phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) fertilizer recommendations, evaluates links between soil health indicators and corn grain productivity, and identifies optimal sampling depths and regional sensitivity to common conservation practices for seven unique soil health indicators. All results and conclusions derive from a dataset collected over three seasons (2018-2020) including 446 sample locations collected from 101 Mid-Missouri commercial row crop systems. Current P and K fertilizer recommendations accurately identified where fertilizer improved yield with 42 and 34 percent accuracy, respectively. No significant or measurable benefit occurred from incorporating soil health indicators with established P and K soil nutrient analysis when identifying nutrient deficiencies. Investigations into general productivity discovered an empirical relationship between potassium permanganate oxidizable carbon (or POXC) and grain yield. This relationship identified a POXC value of [greater than] 415 mg kg soil-1 where corn productivity was optimized. Further, POXC outperformed all other established soil analyses in predicting corn grain yield. Finally, regional sensitivity analysis of soil biological indicators of soil health identified important environmental and soil properties to consider when interpreting soil health assessments in Mid-Missouri. Recommendations were unique for each soil health assessment, with specific conservation practices and optimal sampling depth. In total, these results provide the needed groundwork connecting soil health with agronomic outcomes to support on-farm soil health interpretations.Includes bibliographical references

Small-State crisis management: the lcelandic way

Journal ArticleThe editors would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to a number of people and institutions, which have made this volume on Icelandic crisis management possible. We would like to first of all thank all of the case writers for their pioneering research and for their Icelandic stubbornness and acceptance that everything in life has its own pace as the editing phase of this book took longer than any of us had anticipated. Their patience and hard work is really what has made this book as good as it is. We would also like to thank the Icelandic government officials who opened doors for our case Author's and shared their experiences and expertise. In connection to this, we would like to express our particular gratitude to Gunnar Snorri Gunnarsson, the Permanent Secretary of State, who wrote the foreword to the book, and to Solveig Thorvaldsdottir, who during her time as the director of AVRIK (the National Civil Defense organization) served as a valuable asset and source of support for us

Bio-cultural refugia - Safeguarding diversity of practices for food security and biodiversity

Food security for a growing world population is high on the list of grand sustainability challenges, as is reducing the pace of biodiversity loss in landscapes of food production. Here we shed new insights on areas that harbor place specific social memories related to food security and stewardship of biodiversity. We call them bio-cultural refugia. Our goals are to illuminate how bio-cultural refugia store, revive and transmit memory of agricultural biodiversity and ecosystem services, and how such social memories are carried forward between people and across cohorts. We discuss the functions of such refugia for addressing the twin goals of food security and biodiversity conservation in landscapes of food production. The methodological approach is first of its kind in combining the discourses on food security, social memory and biodiversity management. We find that the rich biodiversity of many regionally distinct cultural landscapes has been maintained through a mosaic of management practices that have co-evolved in relation to local environmental fluctuations, and that such practices are carried forward by both biophysical and social features in bio-cultural refugia including; genotypes, artifacts, written accounts, as well as embodied rituals, art, oral traditions and self-organized systems of rules. Combined these structure a diverse portfolio of practices that result in genetic reservoirs-source areas-for the wide array of species, which in interplay produce vital ecosystem services, needed for future food security related to environmental uncertainties, volatile financial markets and large scale conflicts. In Europe, processes related to the large-scale industrialization of agriculture threaten such bio-cultural refugia. The paper highlights that the dual goals to reduce pressures from modern agriculture on biodiversity, while maintaining food security, entails more extensive collaboration with farmers oriented toward ecologically sound practices. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Die Rolle von Religionen in Gewaltkonflikten und Friedensprozessen. 2. Interdisziplinärer Workshop von DSF, EAD und FEST zur Einrichtung eines multidisziplinären Forschungsverbundes "Religion und Konflikt" am 12. und 13. Mai 2006 in Loccum

Minor child physical abuse has decreased in Sweden since 1979, when a law banning corporal punishment of children was passed, but more serious forms have not decreased. The aim of this study was to examine risk and background factors in cases of severe child abuse reported to the police. Files from different agencies (e.g., Social services, Adult and Child psychiatry and Pediatric clinic) for 20 children and 34 caretakers were studied. An accumulation of risk factors was found. It is concluded that when the following four factors are present, there is a risk for severe child abuse: 1) a person with a tendency to use violence in conflict situations; 2) a strong level of stress on the perpetrator and the family; 3) an insufficient social network that does not manage to protect the child; 4) a child that does not manage to protect him or herself. Thus, multiple sources of information must be used when investigating child abuse.The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com:Eva-Maria Annerbäck, Carl Göran Svedin and Per Gustafsson, Characteristic Features of Severe Child Physical Abuse-A Multi-informant Approach, 2010, JOURNAL OF FAMILY VIOLENCE, (25), 2, 165-172.http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10896-009-9280-1Copyright: Springer Science Business Mediahttp://www.springerlink.com

Precise Biomatch Fingerprint Algorithm

Precise Biometrics’ core fingerprint technology, Precise BioMatch™1, is an advanced fingerprint-matching algorithm that ensures accuracy and security when used as an authentication method. Precise BioMatch™ is the foundation for all authentication solutions from Precise Biometrics and operates seamlessly with many third-party security applications, smart cards and biometric readers on the market. This white paper describes the principles and advantages of Precise Biometrics’ technology