scholarly journals It’s the very time to learn a pandemic lesson: why have predictive techniques been ineffective when describing long-term events?

Author(s):  
D. Kovriguine ◽  
S. Nikitenkova

AbstractWe have detected a regular component of the monitoring error of officially registered total cases of the spread of the current pandemic. This regular error component explains the reason for the failure of a priori mathematical modelling of probable epidemic events in different countries of the world. Processing statistical data of countries that have reached an epidemic peak has shown that this regular monitoring obeys a simple analytical regularity which allows us to answer the question: is this or that country that has already passed the threshold of the epidemic close to its peak or is still far from it?

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 1413-1423 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. W. Verstraeten ◽  
K. F. Boersma ◽  
J. Zörner ◽  
M. A. F. Allaart ◽  
K. W. Bowman ◽  
...  

Abstract. In this analysis, Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) V004 nadir ozone (O3) profiles are validated with more than 4400 coinciding ozonesonde measurements taken across the world from the World Ozone and Ultraviolet Radiation Data Centre (WOUDC) during the period 2005–2010. The TES observation operator was applied to the sonde data to ensure a consistent comparison between TES and ozonesonde data, i.e. without the influence of the a priori O3 profile needed to regulate the retrieval. Generally, TES V004 O3 retrievals are biased high by 2–7 ppbv (7–15%) in the troposphere, consistent with validation results from earlier studies. Because of two degrees of freedom for signal in the troposphere, we can distinguish between upper and lower troposphere mean biases, respectively ranging from −0.4 to +13.3 ppbv for the upper troposphere and +3.9 to +6.0 ppbv for the lower troposphere. Focusing on the 464 hPa retrieval level, broadly representative of the free tropospheric O3, we find differences in the TES biases for the tropics (+3 ppbv, +7%), sub-tropics (+5 ppbv, +11%), and northern (+7 ppbv, +13%) and southern mid-latitudes (+4 ppbv, +10%). The relatively long-term record (6 yr) of TES–ozonesonde comparisons allowed us to quantify temporal variations in TES biases at 464 hPa. We find that there are no discernable biases in each of these latitudinal bands; temporal variations in the bias are typically within the uncertainty of the difference between TES and ozonesondes. Establishing these bias patterns is important in order to make meaningful use of TES O3 data in applications such as model evaluation, trend analysis, or data assimilation.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1239-1267 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. W. Verstraeten ◽  
K. F. Boersma ◽  
J. Zörner ◽  
M. A. F. Allaart ◽  
K. W. Bowman ◽  
...  

Abstract. In this analysis, Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) V004 nadir ozone profiles are validated with more than 4400 coinciding ozonesonde measurements taken across the world from the World Ozone and Ultraviolet Radiation Data Centre (WOUDC) during the period 2005–2010. The TES observation operator was applied to the sonde data to ensure a consistent comparison between TES and ozonesonde data, i.e. without the influence of the a priori O3 profile needed to regulate the retrieval. Generally, TES V004 ozone retrievals are biased high by 2–7 ppbv in the troposphere, consistent with validation results from earlier studies. Because of two degrees of freedom for signal in the troposphere, we can distinguish between upper and lower troposphere mean biases, respectively ranging from −0.4 to +13.3 ppbv for the upper troposphere and +3.9 to +6.0 ppbv for the lower troposphere. Focusing on the 464 hPa retrieval level, broadly representative for free tropospheric ozone, we find differences in the TES biases for the Tropics (+3 ppbv), sub-tropics (+5 ppbv), and northern (+7 ppbv) and southern mid-latitudes (+4 ppbv). The relatively long-term record (6 yr) of TES-ozonesonde comparisons, allowed us to quantify temporal variations in TES biases in free tropospheric ozone, at 464 hPa. We find that there are no discernable biases in each of these latitudinal bands; temporal variations in the bias are typically within the uncertainty of the difference between TES and ozone-sondes. Establishing these bias patterns is important in order to make meaningful use of TES O3 data in applications such as model evaluation, trend analysis, or data assimilation.


2006 ◽  
pp. 4-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Abalkin

The article covers unified issues of the long-term strategy development, the role of science as well as democracy development in present-day Russia. The problems of budget proficit, the Stabilization Fund issues, implementation of the adopted national projects, an increasing role of regions in strengthening the integrity and prosperity of the country are analyzed. The author reveals that the protection of businessmen and citizens from the all-embracing power of bureaucrats is the crucial condition of democratization of the society. Global trends of the world development and expert functions of the Russian science are presented as well.


2009 ◽  
pp. 123-129
Author(s):  
Yu. Golubitsky

The article considers business practices of Moscow small industry in the XIX century, basing upon physiological sketches of N. Polevoy and I. Kokorev, statistical data and the classification of professions are also presented. The author claims that the heroes of the analyzed sketches are the forefathers of Moscow small businesses and shows what a deep similarity their occupations and a way of life bear to the present-day routine existence of small enterprises.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul K. Gellert ◽  
Paul S. Ciccantell

Predominant analyses of energy offer insufficient theoretical and political-economic insight into the persistence of coal and other fossil fuels. The dominant narrative of coal powering the Industrial Revolution, and Great Britain's world dominance in the nineteenth century giving way to a U.S.- and oil-dominated twentieth century, is marred by teleological assumptions. The key assumption that a complete energy “transition” will occur leads some to conceive of a renewable-energy-dominated twenty-first century led by China. After critiquing the teleological assumptions of modernization, ecological modernization, energetics, and even world-systems analysis of energy “transition,” this paper offers a world-systems perspective on the “raw” materialism of coal. Examining the material characteristics of coal and the unequal structure of the world-economy, the paper uses long-term data from governmental and private sources to reveal the lack of transition as new sources of energy are added. The increases in coal consumption in China and India as they have ascended in the capitalist world-economy have more than offset the leveling-off and decline in some core nations. A true global peak and decline (let alone full substitution) in energy generally and coal specifically has never happened. The future need not repeat the past, but technical, policy, and movement approaches will not get far without addressing the structural imperatives of capitalist growth and the uneven power structures and processes of long-term change of the world-system.


Author(s):  
Roberto D. Hernández

This article addresses the meaning and significance of the “world revolution of 1968,” as well as the historiography of 1968. I critically interrogate how the production of a narrative about 1968 and the creation of ethnic studies, despite its world-historic significance, has tended to perpetuate a limiting, essentialized and static notion of “the student” as the primary actor and an inherent agent of change. Although students did play an enormous role in the events leading up to, through, and after 1968 in various parts of the world—and I in no way wish to diminish this fact—this article nonetheless argues that the now hegemonic narrative of a student-led revolt has also had a number of negative consequences, two of which will be the focus here. One problem is that the generation-driven models that situate 1968 as a revolt of the young students versus a presumably older generation, embodied by both their parents and the dominant institutions of the time, are in effect a sociosymbolic reproduction of modernity/coloniality’s logic or driving impulse and obsession with newness. Hence an a priori valuation is assigned to the new, embodied in this case by the student, at the expense of the presumably outmoded old. Secondly, this apparent essentializing of “the student” has entrapped ethnic studies scholars, and many of the period’s activists (some of whom had been students themselves), into said logic, thereby risking the foreclosure of a politics beyond (re)enchantment or even obsession with newness yet again.


Author(s):  
V.B. Kondratiev

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the commodity markets and mining industry around the world in different ways. Mining company’s operations have been hit by coronavirus outbreaks and government-mandated production stops. Demand for many commodities remains low. This paper examines the potential long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on future commodity demand, mining prospects, as well as tactical and strategic steps by mining companies to overcome the current crisis quickly and effectively.


1969 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-169
Author(s):  
Andrés Dapuez

Latin American cash transfer programs have been implemented aiming at particular anticipatory scenarios. Given that the fulfillment of cash transfer objectives can be calculated neither empirically nor rationally a priori, I analyse these programs in this article using the concept of an “imaginary future.” I posit that cash transfer implementers in Latin America have entertained three main fictional expectations: social pacification in the short term, market inclusion in the long term, and the construction of a more distributive society in the very long term. I classify and date these developing expectations into three waves of conditional cash transfers implementation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Lisa Guenther

In The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry analyzes the structure of torture as an unmaking of the world in which the tools that ought to support a person’s embodied capacities are used as weapons to break them down. The Security Housing Unit (SHU) of California’s Pelican Bay State Prison functions as a weaponized architecture of torture in precisely this sense; but in recent years, prisoners in the Pelican Bay Short Corridor have re-purposed this weaponized architecture as a tool for remaking the world through collective resistance. This resistance took the form of a hunger strike in which prisoners exposed themselves to the possibility of biological death in order to contest the social and civil death of solitary confinement. By collectively refusing food, and by articulating the meaning and motivation of this refusal in articles, interviews, artwork, and legal documents, prisoners reclaimed and expanded their perceptual, cognitive, and expressive capacities for world-making, even in a space of systematic torture.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chinweike Eseonu ◽  
Martin A Cortes

There is a culture of disengagement from social consideration in engineering disciplines. This means that first year engineering students, who arrive planning to change the world through engineering, lose this passion as they progress through the engineering curriculum. The community driven technology innovation and investment program described in this paper is an attempt to reverse this trend by fusing community engagement with the normal engineering design process. This approach differs from existing project or trip based approaches – outreach – because the focus is on local communities with which the university team forms a long-term partnership through weekly in-person meetings and community driven problem statements – engagement.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document