A framework for modeling uncertainty in regional climate change

In this study, we present a new modeling framework and a large ensemble of climate projections to investigate the uncertainty in regional climate change over the United States (US) associated with four dimensions of uncertainty. The sources of uncertainty considered in this framework are the emissions projections, global climate system parameters, natural variability and model structural uncertainty. The modeling framework revolves around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Integrated Global System Model (IGSM), an integrated assessment model with an Earth System Model of Intermediate Complexity (EMIC) (with a two-dimensional zonal-mean atmosphere). Regional climate change over the US is obtained through a two-pronged approach. First, we use the IGSM-CAM framework, which links the IGSM to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Atmosphere Model (CAM). Second, we use a pattern-scaling method that extends the IGSM zonal mean based on climate change patterns from various climate models. Results show that the range of annual mean temperature changes are mainly driven by policy choices and the range of climate sensitivity considered. Meanwhile, the four sources of uncertainty contribute more equally to end-of-century precipitation changes, with natural variability dominating until 2050. For the set of scenarios used in this study, the choice of policy is the largest driver of uncertainty, defined as the range of warming and changes in precipitation, in future projections of climate change over the US

The marketing of seasoned equity offerings

In an accelerated seasoned equity offering (SEO), an issuer foregoes the investment bank's marketing efforts in return for a lower fee. To explain why many issuing firms choose a higher cost fully marketed offer, we posit that the marketing effort flattens the issuer's short-run demand curve. Alternatively stated, with a fully marketed offer, the issuer is paying investment bankers to create demand, making the elasticity of demand at the time of issuance an endogenous choice variable. Empirical analysis shows that both the pre-issue elasticity of the issuing firm's demand curve and the offer size are important determinants of the offer method choice. We find evidence of a large transitory increase in the elasticity of demand for issuers conducting fully marketed SEOs. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.postprin

Luther-Emery Phase and Atomic-Density Waves in a Trapped Fermion Gas

The Luther-Emery liquid is a state of matter that is predicted to occur in one-dimensional systems of interacting fermions and is characterized by a gapless charge spectrum and a gapped spin spectrum. In this Letter we discuss a realization of the Luther-Emery phase in a trapped cold-atom gas. We study by means of the density-matrix renormalization-group technique a two-component atomic Fermi gas with attractive interactions subject to parabolic trapping inside an optical lattice. We demonstrate how this system exhibits compound phases characterized by the coexistence of spin pairing and atomic-density waves. A smooth crossover occurs with increasing magnitude of the atom-atom attraction to a state in which tightly bound spin-singlet dimers occupy the center of the trap. The existence of atomic-density waves could be detected in the elastic contribution to the light-scattering diffraction pattern.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 Table, submitted to Phys. Rev. on July 25th 200

State switching in Bi-doped La[sub 0.67]Ca[sub 0.33]MnO[sub 3] and the effects of current

Electronic transport and magnetic properties of La0.477Bi0.193Ca0.33MnO3 have been experimentally studied. Different resistive behaviors are observed in the cooling and warming processes. The system first stays at a high resistive state, and switches to a state of lower resistivity when it is cooled below a critical temperature. However, keeping the sample at a temperature below ;60 K, a relaxation to the high resistive state takes place. This process is current dependent, and the application of a large current slows down the relaxation greatly. There is a strong competition between the two resistive states, which causes a switch of the system between states. © 2002 American Institute of Physics.published_or_final_versio

Analysis of the Transmission Performance Limits for a Multi-layer Transmitarray Unit Cell

This communication presents a theoretical study that establishes the performance limits for a multi-layer transmitarray unit cell. This is the first study to be applicable to unit cells in which the conducting resonators, on the different layers, are shaped differently. A theoretical calculation is derived at the beginning. The theoretical calculations predict that, for an S21 amplitude of -1 dB, unit cells having two and three conducting layers provide a phase shifting range of 170° and 360°, respectively. Additionally, for a given phase shifting range of S21, a new methodology for analyzing the maximum S21 amplitude, based on different substrates, is proposed. For the first time, we prove that it is efficient to attain the maximum S21 amplitudes by employing a smaller substrate permittivity or a quarter-of-wavelength substrate electrical thickness. Finally, the theoretical calculations have been validated through computer simulation

Recent Development in the Weibull Stress Model for Prediction of Cleavage Fracture in Ferritic Steels

This paper reviews recent developments in the Weibull stress model for prediction of cleavage fracture in ferritic steels. The procedure to calibrate the Weibull stress parameters builds upon the toughness scaling model between two crack configurations having different constraint levels and eliminates the recently discovered non-uniqueness that arises in calibrations using only fracture toughness data obtained under small scale yielding (SSY) conditions. The introduction of a non-zero threshold value for Weibull stress in the expression for cumulative failure probability is consistent with the experimental observations that there exists a minimum toughness value for cleavage fracture in ferritic steels, and brings numerical predictions of the scatter in fracture toughness data into better agreement with experiments. The calibrated model predicts accurately the toughness distributions for a variety of crack configurations including surface crack specimens subject to different combinations of bending tension