The STEREO/PLASTIC response to solar wind ions (Flight measurements and models)

The Plasma and Supra-Thermal Ion Composition (PLASTIC) instrument is one of four experiment packages on board of the two identical STEREO spacecraft A and B, which were successfully launched from Cape Canaveral on 26 October 2006. During the two years of the nominal STEREO mission, PLASTIC is providing us with the plasma characteristics of protons, alpha particles, and heavy ions. PLASTIC will also provide key diagnostic measurements in the form of the mass and charge state composition of heavy ions. Three measurements (E/qk, time of flight, ESSD) from the pulse height raw data are used to characterize the solar wind ions from the solar wind sector, and part of the suprathermal particles from the wide-angle partition with respect to mass, atomic number and charge state. In this paper, we present a new method for flight data analysis based on simulations of the PLASTIC response to solar wind ions. We present the response of the entrance system / energy analyzer in an analytical form. Based on stopping power theory, we use an analytical expression for the energy loss of the ions when they pass through a thin carbon foil. This allows us to model analytically the response of the time of flight mass spectrometer to solar wind ions. Thus we present a new version of the analytical response of the solid state detectors to solar wind ions. Various important parameters needed for our models were derived, based on calibration data and on the first flight measurements obtained from STEREO-A. We used information from each measured event that is registered in full resolution in the Pulse Height Analysis words and we derived a new algorithm for the analysis of both existing and future data sets of a similar nature which was tested and works well. This algorithm allows us to obtain, for each measured event, the mass, atomic number and charge state in the correct physical units. Finally, an important criterion was developed for filtering our Fe raw flight data set from the pulse height data without discriminating charge states.

First middle-atmospheric zonal wind profile measurements with a new ground-based microwave Doppler-spectro-radiometer

We report on the wind radiometer WIRA, a new ground-based microwave Doppler-spectro-radiometer specifically designed for the measurement of middle-atmospheric horizontal wind by observing ozone emission spectra at 142.17504 GHz. Currently, wind speeds in five levels between 30 and 79 km can be retrieved which makes WIRA the first instrument able to continuously measure horizontal wind in this altitude range. For an integration time of one day the measurement error on each level lies at around 25 m s−1. With a planned upgrade this value is expected to be reduced by a factor of 2 in the near future. On the altitude levels where our measurement can be compared to wind data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) very good agreement in the long-term statistics as well as in short time structures with a duration of a few days has been found. WIRA uses a passive double sideband heterodyne receiver together with a digital Fourier transform spectrometer for the data acquisition. A big advantage of the radiometric approach is that such instruments can also operate under adverse weather conditions and thus provide a continuous time series for the given location. The optics enables the instrument to scan a wide range of azimuth angles including the directions east, west, north, and south for zonal and meridional wind measurements. The design of the radiometer is fairly compact and its calibration does not rely on liquid nitrogen which makes it transportable and suitable for campaign use. WIRA is conceived in a way that it can be operated remotely and does hardly require any maintenance. In the present paper, a description of the instrument is given, and the techniques used for the wind retrieval based on the determination of the Doppler shift of the measured atmospheric ozone emission spectra are outlined. Their reliability was tested using Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, a time series of 11 months of zonal wind measurements over Bern (46°57′ N, 7°26′ E) is presented and compared to ECMWF wind data.

More than just Good Luck. How to Explain the Success of Monte Carlo Simulations

Monte Carlo simulation is a powerful method in many natural and social sciences. But what sort of method is it? And where does its power come from? Are Monte Carlo simulations experiments, theories or something else? The aim of this talk is to answer these questions and to explain the power of Monte Carlo simulations. I provide a classification of Monte Carlo techniques and defend the claim that Monte Carlo simulation is a sort of inference.

Sex as a source of power? Backlash against self-sexualizing women

Although women are thought to possess sexual power, they risk social and economic penalties (i.e., backlash; Rudman, 1998) when they self-sexualize (i.e., assert their power; Cahoon & Edmonds, 1989; Glick, Larsen, Johnson, & Branstiter, 2005). Why? Drawing on the status incongruity hypothesis (SIH), which predicts backlash against powerful women because they challenge the gender hierarchy, we expected prejudice against self-sexualizing women to be explained by a dominance penalty rather than a communality deficit (Rudman, Moss-Racusin, Phelan, & Nauts, 2012). Two experiments supported this hypothesis, and Experiment 3 further showed that the dominance penalty was explained by ascribing power motives to self-sexualized women. These findings extend the SIH’s utility to the domain of self-sexualization and illuminate the scope of people’s discomfort with female power. Implications for the advancement of gender equality are discussed.

Characterization of surface winds over the Iberian Peninsula

This work presents a characterization of the surface wind climatology over the Iberian Peninsula (IP). For this objective, an unprecedented observational database has been developed. The database covers a period of 6years (2002–2007) and consists of hourly wind speed and wind direction data recorded at 514 automatic weather stations. Theoriginal observations underwent a quality control process to remove rough errors from the data set. In the first step, the annual and seasonal mean behaviour of the wind field are presented. This analysis shows the high spatial variability of the wind as a result of its interaction with the main orographic features of the IP. In order to simplify the characterization of the wind, a clustering procedure was applied to group the observational sites with similar temporal wind variability. A total of 20 regions are identified. These regions are strongly related to the main landforms of the IP. The wind behaviour of each region, characterized by the wind rose (WR), annual cycle (AC) and wind speed histogram, is explained as the response of each region to the main circulation types (CTs) affecting the IP. Results indicate that the seasonal variability of the synoptic scale is related with intra-annual variability and modulated by local features in the WRs variability. The wind speed distribution not always fit to a unimodal Weibull distribution consequence of interactions at different atmospheric scales. This work contributes to a deeper understanding of the temporal and spatial variability of surface winds. Taken together, the wind database created, the methodology used and the conclusion extracted are a benchmark for future works based on the wind behaviour.

Sustainable Pasture Management : LforS learning and simulation game

Three teams consisting of 2 to 5 persons each play the game. Each team represents a farm. Each team decides jointly on its strategy. In annual meetings in winter, the farm teams jointly discuss, evaluate and decide on how to proceed and actions to be taken. The farms make use of three different pasture areas (village pasture, intensive pasture and summer pasture) for grazing their livestock. The carrying capacity of each pasture area is different and varies according to the season. In each season, the farms have to decide on how many livestock units to graze on which pasture. Overgrazing and pasture degradation occur if the total number of livestock units exceeds the carrying capacity of a specific pasture area. Overgrazing results in a reduction of pasture productivity. To diversify and improve their livelihood strategy farms can make individual investments to increase productivity at the farm level, eg. in fodder production or in income generating activities. At the community level, collective investments can be made which may influence livestock and household economy, e.g. rehabilitate and improve pasture productivity, improve living conditions on remote pastures etc. Events occurring in the course of the game represent different types of (risk) factors such as meteorology, market, politics etc. that may positively or negatively influence livestock production and household economy. A sustainable management of pastures requires that farms actively regulate the development of their herds, that they take measures to prevent pasture degradation and to improve pasture productivity, and that they find a balance between livestock economy and other productive activities. The game has a double aim: a) each farm aims at its economic success and prosperity, and b) the three farm teams jointly have to find and implement strategies for a sustainable use of pasture areas.

Widespread Signals of Convergent Adaptation to High Altitude in Asia and America

Living at high altitude is one of the most difficult challenges that humans had to cope with during their evolution. Whereas several genomic studies have revealed some of the genetic bases of adaptations in Tibetan, Andean, and Ethiopian populations, relatively little evidence of convergent evolution to altitude in different continents has accumulated. This lack of evidence can be due to truly different evolutionary responses, but it can also be due to the low power of former studies that have mainly focused on populations from a single geographical region or performed separate analyses on multiple pairs of populations to avoid problems linked to shared histories between some populations. We introduce here a hierarchical Bayesian method to detect local adaptation that can deal with complex demographic histories. Our method can identify selection occurring at different scales, as well as convergent adaptation in different regions. We apply our approach to the analysis of a large SNP data set from low- and high-altitude human populations from America and Asia. The simultaneous analysis of these two geographic areas allows us to identify several candidate genome regions for altitudinal selection, and we show that convergent evolution among continents has been quite common. In addition to identifying several genes and biological processes involved in high-altitude adaptation, we identify two specific biological pathways that could have evolved in both continents to counter toxic effects induced by hypoxia.

SMARTnet: First Experience of Setting Up a Telescope System to Survey the Geostationary Ring

Space debris in geostationary orbits may be detected with optical telescopes when the objects are illuminated by the Sun. The advantage compared to Radar can be found in the illumination: radar illuminates the objects and thus the detection sensitivity depletest proportional to the fourth power of the d istance. The German Space Operation Center, GSOC, together with the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern, AIUB, are setting up a telescope system called SMARTnet to demonstrate the capability of performing geostationary surveillance. Such a telescope system will consist of two telescopes on one mount: a smaller telescope with an aperture of 20cm will serve for fast survey while the larger one, a telescope with an aperture of 50cm, will be used for follow-up observations. The telescopes will be operated by GSOC from Oberpfaffenhofen by the internal monitoring and control system called SMARTnetMAC. The observation plan will be generated by MARTnetPlanning seven days in advance by applying an optimized planning scheduler, taking into account fault time like cloudy nights, priority of objects etc. From each picture taken, stars will be identified and everything not being a star is treated as a possible object. If the same object can be identified on multiple pictures within a short time span, the trace is called a tracklet. In the next step, several tracklets will be correlated to identify individual objects, ephemeris data for these objects are generated and catalogued . This will allow for services like collision avoidance to ensure safe operations for GSOC’s satellites. The complete data processing chain is handled by BACARDI, the backbone catalogue of relational debris information and is presented as a poster.

Bargaining for power and information : an experimental and theoretical analysis of the interaction between institutions, externalities and adverse selection

Bargaining is the building block of many economic interactions, ranging from bilateral to multilateral encounters and from situations in which the actors are individuals to negotiations between firms or countries. In all these settings, economists have been intrigued for a long time by the fact that some projects, trades or agreements are not realized even though they are mutually beneficial. On the one hand, this has been explained by incomplete information. A firm may not be willing to offer a wage that is acceptable to a qualified worker, because it knows that there are also unqualified workers and cannot distinguish between the two types. This phenomenon is known as adverse selection. On the other hand, it has been argued that even with complete information, the presence of externalities may impede efficient outcomes. To see this, consider the example of climate change. If a subset of countries agrees to curb emissions, non-participant regions benefit from the signatories’ efforts without incurring costs. These free riding opportunities give rise to incentives to strategically improve ones bargaining power that work against the formation of a global agreement. This thesis is concerned with extending our understanding of both factors, adverse selection and externalities. The findings are based on empirical evidence from original laboratory experiments as well as game theoretic modeling. On a very general note, it is demonstrated that the institutions through which agents interact matter to a large extent. Insights are provided about which institutions we should expect to perform better than others, at least in terms of aggregate welfare. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on the problem of adverse selection. Effective operation of markets and other institutions often depends on good information transmission properties. In terms of the example introduced above, a firm is only willing to offer high wages if it receives enough positive signals about the worker’s quality during the application and wage bargaining process. In Chapter 1, it will be shown that repeated interaction coupled with time costs facilitates information transmission. By making the wage bargaining process costly for the worker, the firm is able to obtain more accurate information about the worker’s type. The cost could be pure time cost from delaying agreement or cost of effort arising from a multi-step interviewing process. In Chapter 2, I abstract from time cost and show that communication can play a similar role. The simple fact that a worker states to be of high quality may be informative. In Chapter 3, the focus is on a different source of inefficiency. Agents strive for bargaining power and thus may be motivated by incentives that are at odds with the socially efficient outcome. I have already mentioned the example of climate change. Other examples are coalitions within committees that are formed to secure voting power to block outcomes or groups that commit to different technological standards although a single standard would be optimal (e.g. the format war between HD and BlueRay). It will be shown that such inefficiencies are directly linked to the presence of externalities and a certain degree of irreversibility in actions. I now discuss the three articles in more detail. In Chapter 1, Olivier Bochet and I study a simple bilateral bargaining institution that eliminates trade failures arising from incomplete information. In this setting, a buyer makes offers to a seller in order to acquire a good. Whenever an offer is rejected by the seller, the buyer may submit a further offer. Bargaining is costly, because both parties suffer a (small) time cost after any rejection. The difficulties arise, because the good can be of low or high quality and the quality of the good is only known to the seller. Indeed, without the possibility to make repeated offers, it is too risky for the buyer to offer prices that allow for trade of high quality goods. When allowing for repeated offers, however, at equilibrium both types of goods trade with probability one. We provide an experimental test of these predictions. Buyers gather information about sellers using specific price offers and rates of trade are high, much as the model’s qualitative predictions. We also observe a persistent over-delay before trade occurs, and this mitigates efficiency substantially. Possible channels for over-delay are identified in the form of two behavioral assumptions missing from the standard model, loss aversion (buyers) and haggling (sellers), which reconcile the data with the theoretical predictions. Chapter 2 also studies adverse selection, but interaction between buyers and sellers now takes place within a market rather than isolated pairs. Remarkably, in a market it suffices to let agents communicate in a very simple manner to mitigate trade failures. The key insight is that better informed agents (sellers) are willing to truthfully reveal their private information, because by doing so they are able to reduce search frictions and attract more buyers. Behavior observed in the experimental sessions closely follows the theoretical predictions. As a consequence, costless and non-binding communication (cheap talk) significantly raises rates of trade and welfare. Previous experiments have documented that cheap talk alleviates inefficiencies due to asymmetric information. These findings are explained by pro-social preferences and lie aversion. I use appropriate control treatments to show that such consideration play only a minor role in our market. Instead, the experiment highlights the ability to organize markets as a new channel through which communication can facilitate trade in the presence of private information. In Chapter 3, I theoretically explore coalition formation via multilateral bargaining under complete information. The environment studied is extremely rich in the sense that the model allows for all kinds of externalities. This is achieved by using so-called partition functions, which pin down a coalitional worth for each possible coalition in each possible coalition structure. It is found that although binding agreements can be written, efficiency is not guaranteed, because the negotiation process is inherently non-cooperative. The prospects of cooperation are shown to crucially depend on i) the degree to which players can renegotiate and gradually build up agreements and ii) the absence of a certain type of externalities that can loosely be described as incentives to free ride. Moreover, the willingness to concede bargaining power is identified as a novel reason for gradualism. Another key contribution of the study is that it identifies a strong connection between the Core, one of the most important concepts in cooperative game theory, and the set of environments for which efficiency is attained even without renegotiation.

New Sites, New Challenges? Ethical and Methodological Questions in the Context of Research on Migration Exclusion

The challenges of research ethics and methodologies have been reflected on extensively, but – aside from the context of feminist methodologies – less so in relation to research on particular migration sites such as in transit, detention centres, at the borders or within migration administration. First attempts in this direction have been made (Düvell et al. 2010, Fresia et al. 2005, Riedner 2014, van Liempt/Bilger2009), however, more reflection and theorization is needed, considering the contested nature of these temporal and volatile sites. In this workshop, we thus aim at examining methodological as well as ethical questions that arise during field work: We attempt to reflect the power relations involved in the research process, the ethics of research design, the dissemination of research results, the question of gaining access to and – whenever necessary – staying in contact with our research subjects. How can we negotiate informed consent with subjects whose life is currently marked by transit and insecurity concerning their own future, and who are in an uncertain situation in which substantial information (legal, social, cultural etc.) is likely to be missing? How do we deal with the dilemma of possibly contributing to knowledge production that might facilitate removals and deportations in the future, considering that the reception of the results is not in the hands of the researchers? How do we deal with the anticipated as well as unexpected impacts of our research on social and political practice? Regarding fieldwork in state institutions, how do we negotiate the multiple loyalties we often find ourselves faced with as social researchers, both with the excluded migrants and with the authorities implementing the exclusions – two groupings considered to be opposite to each other (Lavanchy 2013)? Which different roles do researchers need to take on? The aim of our workshop is first and foremost to exchange experiences on fieldwork with others doing qualitative research on related topics and to consider its possible implications – including affective dimensions – for all participants involved in the research process: the migrants, the security staff of detention centres, its social workers, border police and bureaucrats and, last but not least, the researchers themselves. Furthermore, we generally wish to reflect upon the question of how best to conduct research in this contested field, applying an interdisciplinary perspective.

The Face of Power

Objective: In humans and other animals, open, expansive postures (compared to contracted postures) are evolutionary developed expressions of power and have been shown to cause neuroendocrine and behavioral changes (Carney, Cuddy, & Yap, 2010). In the present study we aimed to investigate whether power postures have a bearing on the participant’s facial appearance and whether others are able to distinguish faces after “high power posing” from faces after “low power posing”. Methods: 16 models were photographed 4-5 minutes after having adopted high and low power postures. Two different high power and two different low power postures were held for 2 minutes each. Power-posing sessions were performed on two consecutive days. High and low power photographs of each model were paired and an independent sample of 100 participants were asked to pick the more dominant and the more likeable face of each pair. Results: Photographs that were taken after adopting high power postures were chosen significantly more often as being more dominant looking. There was no preference when asked to choose the more likeable photograph (chance level). A further independent sample rated each photograph for head tilt, making it unlikely that dominance ratings were caused merely by the posture of the head. Consistently, facial width-to-height ratio did not differ between faces after high and low power posing. Conclusions: Postures associated with high power affect facial appearance, leading to a more dominant looking face. This finding may have implications for everyday life, for instance when a dominant appearance is needed.