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A comparison of policies to reduce the methane emission intensity of smallholder dairy production in India
Within the dairy sector, the effects of climate change are particularly diverse as cows are affected by, and a
significant contributor to climate change. With a burgeoning body of work indicating the importance of livestock’s
contribution to climate change (via Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions), the dairy sector will increasingly
be targeted for emission reduction. Yet, gaps in knowledge remain as to the effectiveness of interventions in
achieving emission reductions. The investigation examines two high-profile Indian policies to evaluate their
effectiveness in reducing the methane emission intensity of milk production in Odisha, India. Selected policies
included the installation of smallscale anaerobic digesters and the control of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD). The
interventions were evaluated at the cow level informed by data collected from 115 smallholder dairy producers
in Puri (n =31) and Khurda (n =84) districts in Odisha, India. The installation of an anaerobic digester was
found to increase methane emission intensity by 4.41–5.01%. Control of FMD reduced methane emission intensity
by 3.68–12.95% depending on the infection scenario considered. The findings highlight the importance
of contextually relevant and multi-sectoral approaches to mitigation as the increase in methane emission intensity
following anaerobic digester installation represents movement of emissions from the energy sector into
the dairy sector where mitigation is inherently more complex. Thus, the long-term usefulness of anaerobic
digester installation as a mitigation strategy is limited
The Measure of Cosmological Parameters
New, large, ground and space telescopes are contributing to an exciting and
rapid period of growth in observational cosmology. The subject is now far from
its earlier days of being data-starved and unconstrained, and new data are
fueling a healthy interplay between observations and experiment and theory. I
briefly review here the status of measurements of a number of quantities of
interest in cosmology: the Hubble constant, the total mass-energy density, the
matter density, the cosmological constant or dark energy component, and the
total optical background light.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, to be published in "2001: A Spacetime Odyssey:
Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference of the Michigan Center for
Theoretical Physics", Michael J. Duff & James T. Liu, eds., (World
Scientific, Singapore), in pres
Towards a Singularity-Proof Scheme in Numerical Relativity
Progress in numerical relativity has been hindered for 30 years because of
the difficulties of avoiding spacetime singularities in numerical evolution. We
propose a scheme which excises a region inside an apparent horizon containing
the singularity. Two major ingredients of the scheme are the use of a
horizon-locking coordinate and a finite differencing which respects the causal
structure of the spacetime. Encouraging results of the scheme in the spherical
collapse case are given.Comment: 9 page
Self-Renormalization of the Classical Quasilocal Energy
Pointlike objects cause many of the divergences that afflict physical
theories. For instance, the gravitational binding energy of a point particle in
Newtonian mechanics is infinite. In general relativity, the analog of a point
particle is a black hole and the notion of binding energy must be replaced by
quasilocal energy. The quasilocal energy (QLE) derived by York, and elaborated
by Brown and York, is finite outside the horizon but it was not considered how
to evaluate it inside the horizon. We present a prescription for finding the
QLE inside a horizon, and show that it is finite at the singularity for a
variety of types of black hole. The energy is typically concentrated just
inside the horizon, not at the central singularity.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure
Local and global properties of conformally flat initial data for black hole collisions
We study physical properties of conformal initial value data for single and
binary black hole configurations obtained using conformal-imaging and
conformal-puncture methods. We investigate how the total mass M_tot of a
dataset with two black holes depends on the configuration of linear or angular
momentum and separation of the holes. The asymptotic behavior of M_tot with
increasing separation allows us to make conclusions about an unphysical
``junk'' gravitation field introduced in the solutions by the conformal
approaches. We also calculate the spatial distribution of scalar invariants of
the Riemann tensor which determine the gravitational tidal forces. For single
black hole configurations, these are compared to known analytical solutions.
Spatial distribution of the invariants allows us to make certain conclusions
about the local distribution of the additional field in the numerical datasets
Stuffed Black Holes
Initial data corresponding to spacetimes containing black holes are
considered in the time symmetric case. The solutions are obtained by matching
across the apparent horizon different, conformally flat, spatial metrics. The
exterior metric is the vacuum solution obtained by the well known conformal
imaging method. The interior metric for every black hole is regular everywhere
and corresponds to a positive energy density. The resulting matched solutions
cover then the whole initial (Cauchy) hypersurface, without any singularity,
and can be useful for numerical applications. The simpler cases of one black
hole (Schwarzschild data) or two identical black holes (Misner data) are
explicitly solved. A procedure for extending this construction to the multiple
black hole case is also given, and it is shown to work for all time symmetric
vacuum solutions obtained by the conformal imaging method. The numerical
evolution of one such 'stuffed' black hole is compared with that of a pure
vacuum or 'plain' black hole in the spherically symmetric case.Comment: 12 pages, Latex, 4 postscript figures, corrected some typos, new
section about physical interpretatio
Modifying the Einstein Equations off the Constraint Hypersuface
A new technique is presented for modifying the Einstein evolution equations
off the constraint hypersurface. With this approach the evolution equations for
the constraints can be specified freely. The equations of motion for the
gravitational field variables are modified by the addition of terms that are
linear and nonlocal in the constraints. These terms are obtained from solutions
of the linearized Einstein constraints.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, uses REVTe
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