An earth-system prediction initiative for the twenty-first century

The necessity and benefits for establishing the international Earth-system Prediction Initiative (EPI) are discussed by scientists associated with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) World Weather Research Programme (WWRP), World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), International Geosphere–Biosphere Programme (IGBP), Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), and natural-hazards and socioeconomic communities. The proposed initiative will provide research and services to accelerate advances in weather, climate, and Earth system prediction and the use of this information by global societies. It will build upon the WMO, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) and the International Council for Science (ICSU) to coordinate the effort across the weather, climate, Earth system, natural-hazards, and socioeconomic disciplines. It will require (i) advanced high-performance computing facilities, supporting a worldwide network of research and operational modeling centers, and early warning systems; (ii) science, technology, and education projects to enhance knowledge, awareness, and utilization of weather, climate, environmental, and socioeconomic information; (iii) investments in maintaining existing and developing new observational capabilities; and (iv) infrastructure to transition achievements into operational products and services.

Identifying human influences on atmospheric temperature

We perform a multimodel detection and attribution study with climate model simulation output and satellite-based measurements of tropospheric and stratospheric temperature change. We use simulation output from 20 climate models participating in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. This multimodel archive provides estimates of the signal pattern in response to combined anthropogenic and natural external forcing (the finger-print) and the noise of internally generated variability. Using these estimates, we calculate signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios to quantify the strength of the fingerprint in the observations relative to fingerprint strength in natural climate noise. For changes in lower stratospheric temperature between 1979 and 2011, S/N ratios vary from 26 to 36, depending on the choice of observational dataset. In the lower troposphere, the fingerprint strength in observations is smaller, but S/N ratios are still significant at the 1% level or better, and range from three to eight. We find no evidence that these ratios are spuriously inflated by model variability errors. After removing all global mean signals, model fingerprints remain identifiable in 70% of the tests involving tropospheric temperature changes. Despite such agreement in the large-scale features of model and observed geographical patterns of atmospheric temperature change, most models do not replicate the size of the observed changes. On average, the models analyzed underestimate the observed cooling of the lower stratosphere and overestimate the warming of the troposphere. Although the precise causes of such differences are unclear, model biases in lower stratospheric temperature trends are likely to be reduced by more realistic treatment of stratospheric ozone depletion and volcanic aerosol forcing.

Comparison of TAMSAT and CPC rainfall estimates with raingauges, for southern Africa

Two different TAMSAT (Tropical Applications of Meteorological Satellites) methods of rainfall estimation were developed for northern and southern Africa, based on Meteosat images. These two methods were used to make rainfall estimates for the southern rainy season from October 1995 to April 1996. Estimates produced by both TAMSAT methods and estimates produced by the CPC (Climate Prediction Center) method were then compared with kriged data from over 800 raingauges in southern Africa. This shows that operational TAMSAT estimates are better over plateau regions, with 59% of estimates within one standard error (s.e.) of the kriged rainfall. Over mountainous regions the CPC approach is generally better, although all methods underestimate and give only 40% of estimates within 1 s.e. The two TAMSAT methods show little difference across a whole season, but when looked at in detail the northern method gives unsatisfactory calibrations. The CPC method does have significant overall improvements by building in real-time raingauge data, but only where sufficient raingauges are available.

The surface temperatures of Earth: steps towards integrated understanding of variability and change

Surface temperature is a key aspect of weather and climate, but the term may refer to different quantities that play interconnected roles and are observed by different means. In a community-based activity in June 2012, the EarthTemp Network brought together 55 researchers from five continents to improve the interaction between scientific communities who focus on surface temperature in particular domains, to exploit the strengths of different observing systems and to better meet the needs of different communities. The workshop identified key needs for progress towards meeting scientific and societal requirements for surface temperature understanding and information, which are presented in this community paper. A "whole-Earth" perspective is required with more integrated, collaborative approaches to observing and understanding Earth's various surface temperatures. It is necessary to build understanding of the relationships between different surface temperatures, where presently inadequate, and undertake large-scale systematic intercomparisons. Datasets need to be easier to obtain and exploit for a wide constituency of users, with the differences and complementarities communicated in readily understood terms, and realistic and consistent uncertainty information provided. Steps were also recommended to curate and make available data that are presently inaccessible, develop new observing systems and build capacities to accelerate progress in the accuracy and usability of surface temperature datasets.

Multi-Objective Pipe Smoothing Genetic Algorithm For Water Distribution Network Design

This paper describes the formulation of a Multi-objective Pipe Smoothing Genetic Algorithm (MOPSGA) and its application to the least cost water distribution network design problem. Evolutionary Algorithms have been widely utilised for the optimisation of both theoretical and real-world non-linear optimisation problems, including water system design and maintenance problems. In this work we present a pipe smoothing based approach to the creation and mutation of chromosomes which utilises engineering expertise with the view to increasing the performance of the algorithm whilst promoting engineering feasibility within the population of solutions. MOPSGA is based upon the standard Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II) and incorporates a modified population initialiser and mutation operator which directly targets elements of a network with the aim to increase network smoothness (in terms of progression from one diameter to the next) using network element awareness and an elementary heuristic. The pipe smoothing heuristic used in this algorithm is based upon a fundamental principle employed by water system engineers when designing water distribution pipe networks where the diameter of any pipe is never greater than the sum of the diameters of the pipes directly upstream resulting in the transition from large to small diameters from source to the extremities of the network. MOPSGA is assessed on a number of water distribution network benchmarks from the literature including some real-world based, large scale systems. The performance of MOPSGA is directly compared to that of NSGA-II with regard to solution quality, engineering feasibility (network smoothness) and computational efficiency. MOPSGA is shown to promote both engineering and hydraulic feasibility whilst attaining good infrastructure costs compared to NSGA-II.

Comparison and analysis of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports of the top five companies ranked on the 2013 CSR RepTrak

In the 1970s, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) was discussed by Nobel laureate Milton Friedman in his article “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” (Friedman, 1970). His view on CSR was contemptuous as he referred to it as “hypocritical window-dressing” a reflection of the view of Corporate America on CSR back then. For a long time short-term maximization of shareholder value was the only maxim for top management across industries and companies. Over the last decade, CSR has become a more important and relevant factor of a company’s reputation, shifting the discussion from whether CSR is necessary to how best CSR commitments should be done (Smith, 2003). Inevitably, companies do have an environmental, social and economic impact, thereby imposing social costs on current and future generations. In 2013, 50 of the world biggest companies have been responsible for 73 percent of the total carbon dioxide (CO2) emission (Global 500 Climate Change Report 2013). Post et al. (2002) refer to these social costs as a company’s need to retain its “license to operate”. In the late 1990s, CSR reporting was nearly unknown, which drastically changed during the last decade. Allen White, co-founder of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), said that CSR reporting”… has evolved from the extraordinary to the exceptional to the expected” (Confino, 2013). In confirmation of this, virtually all of the world’s largest 250 companies report on CSR (93%) and reporting by now appears to be business standard (KPMG, 2013). CSR reports are a medium for transparency which may lead to an improved company reputation (Noked, 2013; Thorne et al, 2008; Wilburn and Wilburn, 2013). In addition, it may be used as part of an ongoing shareholder relations campaign, which may prevent shareholders from submitting Environmental and Social (E&S)1 proposals (Noked, 2013), based on an Ernst & Young report 1 The top five E&S proposal topic areas in 2013 were: 1. Political spending/ lobbying; 2. Environmental sustainability; 3. Corporate diversity/ EEO; 4.Labor/ human rights and 5. Animal testing/ animal welfare. Three groups of environmental sustainability proposal topics of sub-category number two (environmental sustainability) 6 2013, representing the largest category of shareholder proposals submitted. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) even goes as far as to claim that CSR reports are “…becoming critical to a company’s credibility, transparency and endurance.” (PwC, 2013).

Municipal solid waste management in the Caribbean: a benefit-cost analysis

Includes bibliography

Estudo de metodologias para as criopreservação de sêmen de jumento(Equus Asinus) por meio de testes laboratoriais e fertilidade

Pós-graduação em Medicina Veterinária - FMVZ

Criopreservação e fertilidade de espermatozoides do ejaculado e recuperados da cauda do epidídimo de garanhões subférteis

Pós-graduação em Medicina Veterinária - FMVZ

A oralidade na sala de aula de língua inglesa de alunos ingressantes no curso de Letras: contribuições para a formação do professor

Pós-graduação em Estudos Linguísticos - IBILCE

Search for gravitational wave ringdowns from perturbed intermediate mass black holes in LIGO-Virgo data from 2005-2010

We report results from a search for gravitational waves produced by perturbed intermediate mass black holes ( IMBH) in data collected by LIGO and Virgo between 2005 and 2010. The search was sensitive to astrophysical sources that produced damped sinusoid gravitational wave signals, also known as ringdowns, with frequency 50 <= f(0)/Hz <= 2000 and decay timescale 0.0001 less than or similar to tau/s less than or similar to 0.1 characteristic of those produced in mergers of IMBH pairs. No significant gravitational wave candidate was detected. We report upper limits on the astrophysical coalescence rates of IMBHs with total binary mass 50 <= M/ M circle dot <= 450 and component mass ratios of either 1: 1 or 4: 1. For systems with total mass 100 <= M/M circle dot <= 150, we report a 90% confidence upper limit on the rate of binary IMBH mergers with nonspinning and equal mass components of 6.9 x 10(-8) Mpc(-3) yr(-1). We also report a rate upper limit for ringdown waveforms from perturbed IMBHs, radiating 1% of their mass as gravitational waves in the fundamental, l = m = 2, oscillation mode, that is nearly three orders of magnitude more stringent than previous results.

Methods and results of a search for gravitational waves associated with gamma-ray bursts using the GEO 600, LIGO, and Virgo detectors

In this paper we report on a search for short-duration gravitational wave bursts in the frequency range 64 Hz-1792 Hz associated with gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), using data from GEO 600 and one of the LIGO or Virgo detectors. We introduce the method of a linear search grid to analyze GRB events with large sky localization uncertainties, for example the localizations provided by the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM). Coherent searches for gravitational waves (GWs) can be computationally intensive when the GRB sky position is not well localized, due to the corrections required for the difference in arrival time between detectors. Using a linear search grid we are able to reduce the computational cost of the analysis by a factor of O(10) for GBM events. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our analysis pipeline can improve upon the sky localization of GRBs detected by the GBM, if a high-frequency GW signal is observed in coincidence. We use the method of the linear grid in a search for GWs associated with 129 GRBs observed satellite-based gamma-ray experiments between 2006 and 2011. The GRBs in our sample had not been previously analyzed for GW counterparts. A fraction of our GRB events are analyzed using data from GEO 600 while the detector was using squeezed-light states to improve its sensitivity; this is the first search for GWs using data from a squeezed-light interferometric observatory. We find no evidence for GW signals, either with any individual GRB in this sample or with the population as a whole. For each GRB we place lower bounds on the distance to the progenitor, under an assumption of a fixed GW emission energy of 10(-2)M circle dot c(2), with a median exclusion distance of 0.8 Mpc for emission at 500 Hz and 0.3 Mpc at 1 kHz. The reduced computational cost associated with a linear search grid will enable rapid searches for GWs associated with Fermi GBM events once the advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors begin operation.

Search for Gravitational Waves Associated with gamma-ray Bursts Detected by the Interplanetary Network

We present the results of a search for gravitational waves associated with 223 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) detected by the InterPlanetary Network (IPN) in 2005-2010 during LIGO's fifth and sixth science runs and Virgo's first, second, and third science runs. The IPN satellites provide accurate times of the bursts and sky localizations that vary significantly from degree scale to hundreds of square degrees. We search for both a well-modeled binary coalescence signal, the favored progenitor model for short GRBs, and for generic, unmodeled gravitational wave bursts. Both searches use the event time and sky localization to improve the gravitational wave search sensitivity as compared to corresponding all-time, all-sky searches. We find no evidence of a gravitational wave signal associated with any of the IPN GRBs in the sample, nor do we find evidence for a population of weak gravitational wave signals associated with the GRBs. For all IPN-detected GRBs, for which a sufficient duration of quality gravitational wave data are available, we place lower bounds on the distance to the source in accordance with an optimistic assumption of gravitational wave emission energy of 10(-2)M(circle dot)c(2) at 150 Hz, and find a median of 13 Mpc. For the 27 short-hard GRBs we place 90% confidence exclusion distances to two source models: a binary neutron star coalescence, with a median distance of 12 Mpc, or the coalescence of a neutron star and black hole, with a median distance of 22 Mpc. Finally, we combine this search with previously published results to provide a population statement for GRB searches in first-generation LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors and a resulting examination of prospects for the advanced gravitational wave detectors.