Barry Saltzman and the Theory of Climate

Barry Saltzman was a giant in the fields of meteorology and climate science. A leading figure in the study of weather and climate for over 40 yr, he has frequently been referred to as the "father of modern climate theory." Ahead of his time in many ways, Saltzman made significant contributions to our understanding of the general circulation and spectral energetics budget of the atmosphere, as well as climate change across a wide spectrum of time scales. In his endeavor to develop a unified theory of how the climate system works, lie played a role in the development of energy balance models, statistical dynamical models, and paleoclimate dynamical models. He was a pioneer in developing meteorologically motivated dynamical systems, including the progenitor of Lorenz's famous chaos model. In applying his own dynamical-systems approach to long-term climate change, he recognized the potential for using atmospheric general circulation models in a complimentary way. In 1998, he was awarded the Carl-Gustaf Rossby medal, the highest honor of the American Meteorological Society "for his life-long contributions to the study of the global circulation and the evolution of the earth's climate." In this paper, the authors summarize and place into perspective some of the most significant contributions that Barry Saltzman made during his long and distinguished career. This short review also serves as an introduction to the papers in this special issue of the Journal of Climate dedicated to Barry's memory.

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.

The Entrepreneurial Theory of the Firm and the Theory of the Entrepreneurial Firm

The entrepreneurial theory of the firm argues that entrepreneurship, properly understood, is a crucial but neglected element in explaining the nature and boundaries of the firm. By contrast, the theory of the entrepreneurial firm presumably seeks not to understand the nature and boundaries of "the firm" in general but rather to understand a particular type of firm: one that is entrepreneurial. This paper is an attempt to reconcile the two. After briefly delving for the concept of entrepreneurship in the work of Schumpeter, Kirzner, and (especially) Knight, the paper makes the case for the entrepreneurial theory of the firm. In such a theory, the firm exists as the solution to a coordination problem in a world of change and uncertainty, including Knightian or structural uncertainty. Taking a historical or developmental perspective, the paper then examines the changing nature of the entrepreneurial coordination problem over the life-cycle. In this formulation, "the entrepreneurial firm" is a nascent firm or proto-firm facing a problem of coordinating systemic change in economic capabilities. Lacking (by definition) adequate guidance from existing systems of rules of conduct embedded in markets or organizations, the entrepreneurial firm typically relies on a form of organization Max Weber called charismatic authority. In the end, although there is no such thing as a non-entrepreneurial firm, firms that must solve coordination problems in a world of novelty and systemic change ("entrepreneurial firms") are perhaps the purest case of the entrepreneurial theory of the firm.

A generic persistence model for CLP systems (and two useful implementations)

This paper describes a model of persistence in (C)LP languages and two different and practically very useful ways to implement this model in current systems. The fundamental idea is that persistence is a characteristic of certain dynamic predicates (Le., those which encapsulate state). The main effect of declaring a predicate persistent is that the dynamic changes made to such predicates persist from one execution to the next one. After proposing a syntax for declaring persistent predicates, a simple, file-based implementation of the concept is presented and some examples shown. An additional implementation is presented which stores persistent predicates in an external datábase. The abstraction of the concept of persistence from its implementation allows developing applications which can store their persistent predicates alternatively in files or databases with only a few simple changes to a declaration stating the location and modality used for persistent storage. The paper presents the model, the implementation approach in both the cases of using files and relational databases, a number of optimizations of the process (using information obtained from static global analysis and goal clustering), and performance results from an implementation of these ideas.

The role of secretion systems and small molecules in soft-rot enterobacteriaceae pathogenicity

Soft-rot Enterobacteriaceae (SRE), which belong to the genera Pectobacterium and Dickeya, consist mainly of broad host-range pathogens that cause wilt, rot, and blackleg diseases on a wide range of plants. They are found in plants, insects, soil, and water in agricultural regions worldwide. SRE encode all six known protein secretion systems present in gram-negative bacteria, and these systems are involved in attacking host plants and competing bacteria. They also produce and detect multiple types of small molecules to coordinate pathogenesis, modify the plant environment, attack competing microbes, and perhaps to attract insect vectors. This review integrates new information about the role protein secretion and detection and production of ions and small molecules play in soft-rot pathogenicity.

SMS design and aberration theory

The SMS, Simultaneous Multiple Surfaces, design was born to Nonimaging Optics applications and is now being applied also to Imaging Optics. In this paper the wave aberration function of a selected SMS design is studied. It has been found the SMS aberrations can be analyzed with a little set of parameters, sometimes two. The connection of this model with the conventional aberration expansion is also presented. To verify these mathematical model two SMS design systems were raytraced and the data were analyzed with a classical statistical methods: the plot of discrepancies and the quadratic average error. Both the tests show very good agreement with the model for our systems.

Changing the paradigm: endoscopic video analysis and information extraction for safer surgeries

Background: Minimally invasive surgery creates two technological opportunities: (1) the development of better training and objective evaluation environments, and (2) the creation of image guided surgical systems.

Design and analysis of ripple-based controls based on the discrete modeling and Floquet theory

Ripple-based controls can strongly reduce the required output capacitance in PowerSoC converter thanks to a very fast dynamic response. Unfortunately, these controls are prone to sub-harmonic oscillations and several parameters affect the stability of these systems. This paper derives and validates a simulation-based modeling and stability analysis of a closed-loop V 2Ic control applied to a 5 MHz Buck converter using discrete modeling and Floquet theory to predict stability. This allows the derivation of sensitivity analysis to design robust systems. The work is extended to different V 2 architectures using the same methodology.

High-speed rail systems and tourists´ destination choice: the case studies of Paris and Madrid

The analysis of how tourists select their holiday destinations along with the factors determining their choices is very important for promoting tourism. In particular, transportation is supposed to have a great influence on the tourists’ decisions. The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of High Speed Rail (HSR) systems with respect to a destination choice. Two key tourist destinations in Europe namely Paris, and Madrid, have been chosen to identify the factors influencing this choice. On the basis of two surveys to obtain information from tourists, it has been found that the presence of architectural sites, the promotion quality of the destination itself, and the cultural and social events have an impact when making a destination choice. However the availability of the HSR systems affects the choice of Paris and Madrid as tourist destinations in a different way. For Paris, TGV is considered a real transport mode alternative among tourists. On the other hand, Madrid is chosen by tourists irrespective of the presence of an efficient HSR network. Data collected from the two surveys have been used for a further quantitative analysis. Regression models have been specified and parameters have been calibrated to identify the factors influencing holidaymakers to revisit Paris and Madrid and visit other tourist places accessible by HSR from these capitals

An information theory model of hydrophobic interactions.

A molecular model of poorly understood hydrophobic effects is heuristically developed using the methods of information theory. Because primitive hydrophobic effects can be tied to the probability of observing a molecular-sized cavity in the solvent, the probability distribution of the number of solvent centers in a cavity volume is modeled on the basis of the two moments available from the density and radial distribution of oxygen atoms in liquid water. The modeled distribution then yields the probability that no solvent centers are found in the cavity volume. This model is shown to account quantitatively for the central hydrophobic phenomena of cavity formation and association of inert gas solutes. The connection of information theory to statistical thermodynamics provides a basis for clarification of hydrophobic effects. The simplicity and flexibility of the approach suggest that it should permit applications to conformational equilibria of nonpolar solutes and hydrophobic residues in biopolymers.

A novel information theory method for filter feature selection

In this paper, we propose a novel filter for feature selection. Such filter relies on the estimation of the mutual information between features and classes. We bypass the estimation of the probability density function with the aid of the entropic-graphs approximation of Rényi entropy, and the subsequent approximation of the Shannon one. The complexity of such bypassing process does not depend on the number of dimensions but on the number of patterns/samples, and thus the curse of dimensionality is circumvented. We show that it is then possible to outperform a greedy algorithm based on the maximal relevance and minimal redundancy criterion. We successfully test our method both in the contexts of image classification and microarray data classification.

Structures, Systems and Organizational Communication Processes in Franchises in times of crisis: the Spanish case

Current economic crisis together with the Internet revolution has had direct impacts on the franchise sector of Spain: in particular on its unique communication network. The aim of this research is to analyse how Spanish franchise companies have adapted to these changes through its corporate communications management. We want to determine whether the management of communications is ideal to the growth and consolidation of companies in the market. Corporate communications plans and organizational structures were analyzed to verify whether or not information technology (i.e. the use of the Internet) is maximized: the communications aspect being a critical area of company growth. We found that most franchise companies surveyed had adapted well to the changes in information technology, despite economic challenges. The Internet as a communications tool has been limited to its utility as a “bulletin board” for information. The marketing advantage of Internet communication, or its use as an avenue for customer exchange and exchange of goods and services has yet to be maximized. Future research may look into the details of how companies are able to maximize the communications-marketing advantage that Online/Internet can contribute to the franchise sector.

Ideological systems and its validation: a neutrosophic approach

Ideologies face two critical problems in the reality, the problem of commitment and the problem of validation. Commitment and validation are two separate phenomena, in spite of the near universal myth that the human is committed because his beliefs are valid. Ideologies not only seem external and valid but also worth whatever discomforts believing entails. In this paper the authors develop a theory of social commitment and social validation using concepts of validation of neutrosophic logic.

Expertise in Ultra-Endurance Triathletes Early Sport Involvement, Training Structure, and the Theory of Deliberate Practice

The theory of deliberate practice (Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Römer, 1993) is predicated on the concept that the engagement in specific forms of practice is necessary for the attainment of expertise. The purpose of this paper was to examine the quantity and type of training performed by expert UE triathletes. Twenty-eight UE triathletes were stratified into expert, middle of the pack, and back of the pack groups based on previous finishing times. All participants provided detailed information regarding their involvement in sports in general and the three triathlon sports in particular. Results illustrated that experts performed more training than non-experts but that the relationship between training and performance was not monotonic as suggested by Ericsson et al. Further, experts' training was designed so periods of high training stress were followed by periods of low stress. However, early specialization was not a requirement for expertise. This work indicates that the theory of deliberate practice does not fully explain expertise development in UE triathlon.

Odor and corrosion control in sanitary sewerage systems and treatment plants : design manual.

Mode of access: Internet.