If the tide is rising, who pays for the ark?

Two common goals of this meeting are to arrest the effects of sea level rise and other phenomena caused by Greenhouse Gases from anthropogenic sources ("GHG",) and to mitigate the effects. The fundamental questions are: (1) how to get there and (2) who should shoulder the cost? Given Washington gridlock, states, NGO's and citizens such as the Inupiat of the Village of Kivalina have turned to the courts for solutions. Current actions for public nuisance seek (1) to reduce and eventually eliminate GHG emissions, (2) damages for health effects and property damage—plus hundreds of millions in dollars spent to prepare for the foregoing. The U.S. Court of Appeals just upheld the action against the generators of some 10% of the CO2 emissions from human activities in the U.S., clearing the way for a trial featuring the state of the art scientific linkage between GHG production and the effects of global warming. Climate change impacts on coastal regions manifest most prominently through sea level rise and its impacts: beach erosion, loss of private and public structures, relocation costs, loss of use and accompanying revenues (e.g. tourism), beach replenishment and armoring costs, impacts of flooding during high water events, and loss of tax base. Other effects may include enhanced storm frequency and intensity, increased insurance risks and costs, impacts to water supplies, fires and biological changes through invasions or local extinctions (IPCC AR4, 2007; Okmyung, et al., 2007). There is an increasing urgency for federal and state governments to focus on the local and regional levels and consistently provide the information, tools, and methods necessary for adaptation. Calls for action at all levels acknowledge that a viable response must engage federal, state and local expertise, perspectives, and resources in a coordinated and collaborative effort. A workshop held in December 2000 on coastal inundation and sea level rise proposes a shared framework that can help guide where investments should be made to enable states and local governments to assess impacts and initiate adaptation strategies over the next decade. (PDF contains 5 pages)

Stormsmart coasts in action: Two case studies of local level climate change adaptation

Coastal communities throughout the United States have dealt with the devastating effects of storms for centuries, however today’s threats are greater due to three factors. First, the population along the coastline has grown, and is projected to increase.i Additionally, past land use management decisions in the coastal zone have rarely led to the greatest protection from threats. Finally, climate change is predicted to affect coastal areas by accelerating current sea level rise rates and possibly increasing storm intensity.ii These factors compounded together mean that coastal communities are facing a very dangerous situation that threatens economies and human life. (PDF contains 4 pages)

Vibrational predissociation spectroscopy of mass-selected ionic clusters

This thesis presents structural investigations of molecular ions and ionic clusters using vibrational predissociation spectroscopy. Experimentally, a pulsed beam of the mass-selected ion is crossed by a tunable infrared laser beam generated by a Nd:YAG pumped LiNbO_3 optical parametric oscillator. The resulting fragment ion is mass-analyzed and detected, with its intensity as a function of the laser wavelength being the "action" spectrum of the parent ion. In the case of SiH_7^+, we observed a vibrational band centered at 3866 cm^(-1) with clear P, Q, R branches, which is assigned as a perturbed H_2 stretch. The absence of a second H_2 band suggests that the ion forms a symmetric complex with a structure H_2•SiH_3^+•H_2 , in contrast to the species CH_7^+, which has the structure CH_5^+•H_2. The infrared spectra of NO_2^+(H_2O)_n clusters exhibit a marked change with cluster size, indicating that an intracluster reaction occurs with sufficient solvation. Specifically, in NO_2^+(H_2O)_n clusters where n≤3, H_2O binds to a nitronium ion core; but at n=4 the NO_2^+ reacts, transforming the cluster to a new structure of H_3O^+•(H_2O)_(n_2)•HNO_3. For protonated chlorine nitrate, we have observed two distinct isomers previously predicted by ab initio calculations: NO_2^+•(HOC1), the lowest energy isomer, and (ClO)(HO)NO^+, a covalently bonded isomer about 20 kcal/mol higher in energy. Both isomers decompose to NO_2^+ and HOCl upon photo-excitation. These results for HClONO_2^+ lend strong support to the involvement of an ionic mechanism in the reaction of ClONO_2 on polar stratospheric cloud surfaces, a critical step in the dramatic springtime depletion of ozone over Antarctica. Current research activities on halide-solvent clusters and metal-ligand complexes as well as technological improvements of the apparatus are also discussed.

The intensity distributions of collected signals in coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering microscopy

Coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy with the combining of confocal and CARS techniques is a remarkable alternative for imaging chemical or biological specimens that neither fluoresce nor tolerate labeling. The CARS is a nonlinear optical process, the imaging properties of CARS microscopy will be very different from the conventional confocal microscopy. In this paper, we calculated the propagation of CARS signals by using the wave equation in medium and the slowly varying envelope approximation (SVEA), and find that the intensity angular distributions vary considerably with the different experimental configurations and the different specimen shapes. So the conventional description of microscopy (e.g.. the point spread function) will fail to descript the imaging properties of CARS microscopy. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Financial equilibrium, voting procedures, and coalition structures in allocational mechanisms

This thesis is comprised of three chapters, each of which is concerned with properties of allocational mechanisms which include voting procedures as part of their operation. The theme of interaction between economic and political forces recurs in the three chapters, as described below.

Chapter One demonstrates existence of a non-controlling interest shareholders' equilibrium for a stylized one-period stock market economy with fewer securities than states of the world. The economy has two decision mechanisms: Owners vote to change firms' production plans across states, fixing shareholdings; and individuals trade shares and the current production / consumption good, fixing production plans. A shareholders' equilibrium is a production plan profile, and a shares / current good allocation stable for both mechanisms. In equilibrium, no (Kramer direction-restricted) plan revision is supported by a share-weighted majority, and there exists no Pareto superior reallocation.

Chapter Two addresses efficient management of stationary-site, fixed-budget, partisan voter registration drives. Sufficient conditions obtain for unique optimal registrar deployment within contested districts. Each census tract is assigned an expected net plurality return to registration investment index, computed from estimates of registration, partisanship, and turnout. Optimum registration intensity is a logarithmic transformation of a tract's index. These conditions are tested using a merged data set including both census variables and Los Angeles County Registrar data from several 1984 Assembly registration drives. Marginal registration spending benefits, registrar compensation, and the general campaign problem are also discussed.

The last chapter considers social decision procedures at a higher level of abstraction. Chapter Three analyzes the structure of decisive coalition families, given a quasitransitive-valued social decision procedure satisfying the universal domain and ITA axioms. By identifying those alternatives X* ⊆ X on which the Pareto principle fails, imposition in the social ranking is characterized. Every coaliton is weakly decisive for X* over X~X*, and weakly antidecisive for X~X* over X*; therefore, alternatives in X~X* are never socially ranked above X*. Repeated filtering of alternatives causing Pareto failure shows states in X^n*~X^((n+1))* are never socially ranked above X^((n+1))*. Limiting results of iterated application of the *-operator are also discussed.

Laser intensity dependence of high-order harmonic generation from aligned CO2 molecules

We investigate experimentally the high-order harmonic generation from aligned CO2 molecules and demonstrate that the modulation inversion of the harmonic yield with respect to molecular alignment can be altered dramatically by fine-tuning the intensity of the driving laser pulse for harmonic generation. The results can be modeled by employing the strong field approximation including a ground state depletion factor. The laser intensity is thus proved to be a parameter that can control the high-harmonic emission from aligned molecules.

A new ground motion intensity measure, peak filtered acceleration (PFA), to estimate collapse vulnerability of buildings in earthquakes

In this thesis, we develop an efficient collapse prediction model, the PFA (Peak Filtered Acceleration) model, for buildings subjected to different types of ground motions.

For the structural system, the PFA model covers modern steel and reinforced concrete moment-resisting frame buildings (potentially reinforced concrete shear wall buildings). For ground motions, the PFA model covers ramp-pulse-like ground motions, long-period ground motions, and short-period ground motions.

To predict whether a building will collapse in response to a given ground motion, we first extract long-period components from the ground motion using a Butterworth low-pass filter with suggested order and cutoff frequency. The order depends on the type of ground motion, and the cutoff frequency depends on the building’s natural frequency and ductility. We then compare the filtered acceleration time history with the capacity of the building. The capacity of the building is a constant for 2-dimentional buildings and a limit domain for 3-dimentional buildings. If the filtered acceleration exceeds the building’s capacity, the building is predicted to collapse. Otherwise, it is expected to survive the ground motion.

The parameters used in PFA model, which include fundamental period, global ductility and lateral capacity, can be obtained either from numerical analysis or interpolation based on the reference building system proposed in this thesis.

The PFA collapse prediction model greatly reduces computational complexity while archiving good accuracy. It is verified by FEM simulations of 13 frame building models and 150 ground motion records.

Based on the developed collapse prediction model, we propose to use PFA (Peak Filtered Acceleration) as a new ground motion intensity measure for collapse prediction. We compare PFA with traditional intensity measures PGA, PGV, PGD, and Sa in collapse prediction and find that PFA has the best performance among all the intensity measures.

We also provide a close form in term of a vector intensity measure (PGV, PGD) of the PFA collapse prediction model for practical collapse risk assessment.

Intensity-dependent asymmetric photoionization in few-cycle laser pulses

The asymmetric photoionization of atoms irradiated by intense, few-cycle laser pulses is studied numerically. The results show that the pulse intensity affects the asymmetric photoionization in three aspects. First, at higher intensities, the asymmetry becomes distinctive for few-cycle pulses of longer durations. Second, as the laser intensity increases, the maximal asymmetry first decreases then increases after it has reached a minimal value. Last, the value of the carrier-envelope phase corresponding to the maximal asymmetry varies with the pulse intensity. This study reveals that the increasing of pulse intensity is helpful for observing the asymmetric photoionization.

Short-pulse laser absorption via J x B heating in ultrahigh intensity laser plasma interaction

An analytical fluid model for JxB heating during the normal incidence by a short ultraintense linearly polarized laser on a solid-density plasma is proposed. The steepening of an originally smooth electron density profile as the electrons are pushed inward by the laser is included self-consistently. It is shown that the JxB heating includes two distinct coupling processes depending on the initial laser and plasma conditions: for a moderate intensity (a <= 1), the ponderomotive force of the laser light can drive a large plasma wave at the point n(e)=4 gamma(0)n(c) resonantly. When this plasma wave is damped, the energy is transferred to the plasma. At higher intensity, the electron density is steepened to a high level by the time-independent ponderomotive force, n(e)> 4 gamma(0)n(c), so that no 2 omega resonance will occur, but the longitudinal component of the oscillating ponderomotive field can lead to an absorption mechanism similar to "vacuum heating." (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.

Is the current EU climate instrument mix adequate?

4 p.

A review of current biological and recent environmental research on Lake Baikal from a British perspective

In 1990, "BICER" or the Baikal International Centre for Ecological Research was created to foster collaborative research on Lake Baikal. The British effort in BICER was initiated and is administered by the Royal Society, London. Much of the on-going research effort is now focussed on environmental change, as there is increasing concern about recent changes in the lake's unique ecosystem that could be linked with the effects of water pollution from catchment effluents. Monitoring studies of the phytoplankton in Lake Baikal's southern basin indicate that several species have increased in abundance since the mid-70's. Diatoms in Lake Baikal sediments are also being studied.