A Roadmap for Citizen Science in GEO - The essence of the Lisbon Declaration. WeObserve policy brief 1

The relevance of Citizen Science and Citizen Observatories has only recently been considered in GEO activities. In order to advocate its importance and significance, this policy brief summarises three key messages from the Lisbon Declaration for European policy makers and describes how best to connect and integrate Citizen Science communities as well as their activities and outputs into GEO

On weak convergence of locally periodic functions

We prove a generalization of the fact that periodic functions converge weakly to the mean value as the oscillation increases. Some convergence questions connected to locally periodic nonlinear boundary value problems are also considered.Comment: arxiv version is already officia

Existence for elastodynamic Griffith fracture with a weak maximal dissipation condition

We consider a model of elastodynamics with fracture evolution, based on energy-dissipation balance and a maximal dissipation condition. We prove an existence result in the case of planar elasticity with a free crack path, where the maximal dissipation condition is satisfied among suitably regular competitor cracks

Elastodynamic Griffith fracture on prescribed crack paths with kinks

We prove an existence result for a model of dynamic fracture based on Griffith\u2019s criterion in the case of a prescribed crack path with a kink

Contribution of mixing in the ABL to new particle formation based on observations

The connection between new particle formation and micro- and mesoscale meteorology was studied based on measurements at SMEAR II station in Southern Finland. We analyzed turbulent conditions described by sodar measurements and utilized these combined with surface layer measurements and a simple model to estimate the upper boundary layer conditions. Turbulence was significantly stronger on particle formation days and the organic vapor saturation ratio increase due to large eddies was stronger on event than nonevent days. We examined which variables could be the best indicators of new particle formation and concluded that the formation probability depended on the condensation sink and temporal temperature change at the top of the atmospheric boundary layer. Humidity and heat flux may also be good indicators for particle formation

Power calculation for gravitational radiation: oversimplification and the importance of time scale

A simplified formula for gravitational-radiation power is examined. It is shown to give completely erroneous answers in three situations, making it useless even for rough estimates. It is emphasized that short timescales, as well as fast speeds, make classical approximations to relativistic calculations untenable.Comment: Three pages, no figures, accepted for publication in Astronomische Nachrichte

Is accounting enforcement related to risk-taking in the banking industry?

Using a sample of banks from 36 countries, we document that accounting enforcement is negatively related to bank risk-taking. We also provide evidence that accounting enforcement enhances bank stability during the crisis. In addition, we show that banks assume less risk through more conservative lending decisions and a reduction in complexity in jurisdictions with higher accounting enforcement. Our results show that formal institutions such as accounting enforcement are associated with bank financial decisions and risk-taking behavior

Does Disaster Risk Relate to Banks’ Loan Loss Provisions?

We examine the relation between disaster risk and banks’ loan loss provisions (LLP). We propose a disaster risk measure based on the natural disasters declared as major disasters by the Federal Emergency Management Agency over a 15-year span. We theoretically support and empirically validate our measure using three different approaches, including the UN Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction, which relates disaster risk to natural hazard exposure, vulnerability and capacity, and hazard characteristics. Using more than 445,000 bank-quarter observations, we document that banks located in U.S. counties with higher disaster risk recognize larger LLP after controlling for other bank-level factors related to LLP. We employ several techniques to ensure the robustness of our findings, including difference-in-differences estimation and matched samples. In additional analysis, we explore the characteristics that better enable banks to recognize disaster risk in their LLP, and investigate the consequences of managing disaster risk through LLP. Our results are important, especially because of the increasing concern about disaster risk and because they inform the growing debate on the economic consequences of disaster risk and the ability of the banking system to proactively manage the resulting credit risk through LLP

The current panorama of European Network of Earth Observation Networks and the need for an European Network of Networks - ENEON

ENEON is the European Network of Earth Observation Networks, funded by the European Union under the H2020ConnectinGEO project mainly including non-space networks to better coordinate them, with the aim of providing better observations for resolving interdisciplinary problems, to improve the European in-situ participation in GEO and in support of the implementation and monitoring of the UN Sustainable Development Goals

A second order minimality condition for the Mumford-Shah functional

A new necessary minimality condition for the Mumford-Shah functional is derived by means of second order variations. It is expressed in terms of a sign condition for a nonlocal quadratic form on $H^1_0(\Gamma)$, $\Gamma$ being a submanifold of the regular part of the discontinuity set of the critical point. Two equivalent formulations are provided: one in terms of the first eigenvalue of a suitable compact operator, the other involving a sort of nonlocal capacity of $\Gamma$. A sufficient condition for minimality is also deduced. Finally, an explicit example is discussed, where a complete characterization of the domains where the second variation is nonnegative can be given.Comment: 30 page