Notes on exhaustionism, the latest moment of the global organic crisis

This essay seeks to build on the concept of exterminism developed by E. P. Thompson in his 1980 New Left Review essay ‘Notes on exterminism, the last state of civilization’. Thompson’s polemical focus on weapons systems in his analysis was the product of a particular moment in history; one where the most precipitous threat to human security was the Cold War. The concept of exhaustionism developed in this piece describes the governance ideologies and frameworks found within advanced capitalist state/societal complexes in response to the present ‘organic crisis’ of post-Cold War global capitalism; one accelerated by the 2008 financial crisis and Covid-19 pandemic. The exhaustionism of political leadership within the contemporary world order has contributed to widely held assumptions that the collapse of civilisation and the planet is either occurring or imminent. Moreover, it is also implied that it is too late for a novel or fundamental transformation in governing ideology, global governance and political economy to reverse the current predicament. This exhaustionism in many ways mirrors the absurdity and cynicism of the Cold War military technicians and nuclear regimes described by Thompson’s concept of exterminism, but with notable differences related to the host of actors involved, temporal horizon, and emphasis on class, imperialism and supremacism.

Prospect Theory with Bounded Temporal Horizon for Modeling Prosumer Behavior in the Smart Grid

We study prosumer decision-making in the smart grid in which a prosumer must decide whether to make a sale of solar energy units generated at her home every day or hold (store) the energy units in anticipation of a future sale at a better price. Specifically, we enhance a Prospect Theory (PT)-based behavioral model by taking into account bounded temporal horizons (a time window specified in terms of the number of days) that prosumers implicitly impose on their decision-making in arriving at “hold” or “sell” decisions of energy units. The new behavioral model for prosumers assumes that in addition to the framing and probability weighting effects imposed by classical PT, humans make decisions that will affect their lives within a bounded temporal horizon regardless of how far into the future their units may be sold. Modeling the utility of the prosumer with parameters such as the offered price on a day, the available energy units on a day, and the probabilities of the forecast prices, we fit the PT-based proposed behavioral model with bounded temporal horizons to prosumer data collected over 10 weeks from 57 homeowners who generated surplus units of solar power and had the opportunity to sell those units to the local utility at the price set that day by the utility or hold the units for sale in the future. For most participants, a model with a bounded temporal horizon in the range of 1–6 days provided a much better fit to their responses than was found for the traditional EUT-based model, thus validating the need to model PT effects (framing and probability weighting) and bounded temporal horizons imposed in prosumer decision-making.

A new Lagrangian-based short-term prediction methodology for high-frequency (HF) radar currents

The use of high-frequency radar (HFR) data is increasing worldwide for different applications in the field of operational oceanography and data assimilation, as it provides real-time coastal surface currents at high temporal and spatial resolution. In this work, a Lagrangian-based, empirical, real-time, short-term prediction (L-STP) system is presented in order to provide short-term forecasts of up to 48 h of ocean currents. The method is based on finding historical analogs of Lagrangian trajectories obtained from HFR surface currents. Then, assuming that the present state will follow the same temporal evolution as the historical analog, we perform the forecast. The method is applied to two HFR systems covering two areas with different dynamical characteristics: the southeast Bay of Biscay and the central Red Sea. A comparison of the L-STP methodology with predictions based on persistence and reference fields is performed in order to quantify the error introduced by this approach. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis has been conducted to determine the limit of applicability of the methodology regarding the temporal horizon of Lagrangian prediction. A real-time skill score has been developed using the results of this analysis, which allows for the identification of periods when the short-term prediction performance is more likely to be low, and persistence can be used as a better predictor for the future currents.

Challenges and Opportunities for End-of-Life Coal Mine Sites: Black-to-Green Energy Approach

This paper presents the possibilities of adapting active mines to generate green energy after their closure using their resources and/or infrastructure. For this purpose, firstly, the temporal horizon of selected mines in Poland was determined, its basic assumption being the analysis of the current state. In the research, 18 mining plants operating within 12 mines in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin (USCB) were analyzed. The analyzed mines belong to three of the five largest hard coal producers in Poland, and the main object of exploitation is hard coal of energy types. Severe restrictions or even abandonment of further investments in the development of the coal mining industry were taken into consideration (regarding the construction of new shafts or the development of new exploitation levels). When determining the temporal horizon, the challenges that hamper the exploitation based at the levels of natural hazards and depth of exploitation in each mine were considered. Secondly, the criteria for the adaptation of active mines to generate energy are presented. The possibility of using the resources and infrastructural potential of active mines to produce geothermal energy from water, extracting coalbed methane (CBM), and processes of underground coal gasification (UCG) are analyzed. Finally, for a selected example—generating energy from underground coal gasification in Polish mine conditions—a structural analysis of the criteria was performed using the MICMAC method, as the Central Mining Institute has an extensive experience in the development of underground coal gasification trials in coal mines. Based on expert analysis and using structural analysis, the criteria important for UCG were selected. As demonstrated in the article, the MICMAC method can be applied in other scenarios with different criteria to implement new technologies in coal mines.

Agricultural Activities and Restoration of Lake Chad

The disappearance of 90% of Lake Chad’s surface has brought riparian countries to elaborate a restoration project for this natural asset. The aim of this study is to estimate the benefits and costs associated with the realization of this project, in order to determine if it is socially profitable. The methodological approach use data from the contingent valuation survey conducted in 2011 in the Cameroonian part of Lake Chad and appropriate statistical and econometric procedures. First, we estimate the middle and long term benefits of the project to be €5,549,576.832 and €38,543,518.56 respectively. Then, we evaluate the costs generated by the implementation of such a project to €37,960,149.12. Finally, the social profitability of this project depends on the temporal horizon used by decision-makers. It is negative for an economic horizon and positive for an ecological horizon.

Globally distributed iridium layer preserved within the Chicxulub impact structure

The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction is marked globally by elevated concentrations of iridium, emplaced by a hypervelocity impact event 66 million years ago. Here, we report new data from four independent laboratories that reveal a positive iridium anomaly within the peak-ring sequence of the Chicxulub impact structure, in drill core recovered by IODP-ICDP Expedition 364. The highest concentration of ultrafine meteoritic matter occurs in the post-impact sediments that cover the crater peak ring, just below the lowermost Danian pelagic limestone. Within years to decades after the impact event, this part of the Chicxulub impact basin returned to a relatively low-energy depositional environment, recording in unprecedented detail the recovery of life during the succeeding millennia. The iridium layer provides a key temporal horizon precisely linking Chicxulub to K-Pg boundary sections worldwide.

Quantifying the Predictability of Visual Scanpaths Using Active Information Storage

Entropy-based measures are an important tool for studying human gaze behavior under various conditions. In particular, gaze transition entropy (GTE) is a popular method to quantify the predictability of a visual scanpath as the entropy of transitions between fixations and has been shown to correlate with changes in task demand or changes in observer state. Measuring scanpath predictability is thus a promising approach to identifying viewers’ cognitive states in behavioral experiments or gaze-based applications. However, GTE does not account for temporal dependencies beyond two consecutive fixations and may thus underestimate the actual predictability of the current fixation given past gaze behavior. Instead, we propose to quantify scanpath predictability by estimating the active information storage (AIS), which can account for dependencies spanning multiple fixations. AIS is calculated as the mutual information between a processes’ multivariate past state and its next value. It is thus able to measure how much information a sequence of past fixations provides about the next fixation, hence covering a longer temporal horizon. Applying the proposed approach, we were able to distinguish between induced observer states based on estimated AIS, providing first evidence that AIS may be used in the inference of user states to improve human–machine interaction.

An Analytical Study of Ideally Inherent Operative Transformation of the Original Mental Process in Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology

This research paper entitled “An Analytical Study of Ideally inherent Operative Transformations of the Original Mental Process in Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology” has three objectives: 1) to study the mental process of reflection and modification in which that mind is directed towards the intended object including the mental objects regarding Western philosophical thought, Edmund Husserl, 2) to study of the way to operative transformation of original mental process and, 3) to analyze various forms of transformed reproduction and a problem of the reproduction. It is found that the transformation of the original mental process in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology is the ideally inherent process of reproduction of mental process in which the mental process passed through the modificative process together with its contents so as to produce a novel knowledge. The transformative process as such is systematically operated with main following aspects: (1) The mode of giveness (the immanent essence of a concrete sensation-content such as a visual sensation-content in the field of visual sensation-Data that is continually adumbrated from the visual physical objects), (2) the temporal mental processes are to be unified as one stream of mental process, (3) the phase or the temporal horizon which is cosmic time in other ways such as horizon of Now, horizon of Before, and horizon of After, and (4) pure ego, the function of which is to direct its regards to the temporal modes of giveness (immanent essences). By its transformative operation, it is effectively proceeded with three steps. The first is a step of a physical perception of the mental process in which the perceived physical things is used as an essential content for all mental process as they are kept in a memory. The second step is succeeded from the first step which is called a retention or a primary memory; the process of a modification using the immanent object kept in a retention as the initial part of the constitution of an identical object. Then, comes the third step which is the step of a recollection or a second memory; it is to recall the remembered or represented for the perception again. After the whole process has fully accomplished, the remembered or represented is afresh reproduced. However, the reproduction of the remembered or the represented can emerge with two possibilities; one is the vague-reproduced information as without repeating while looking at the reproduced flash; other is afresh one as it is repeated resulting in further perception. However, the reproduction of the remembered can be accurate and perfect depending on two conditions; one is the condition of the perception of physical things and the condition of either clarity or obscurity of the whole object that is re-presented with the mode of mental process.

Economic evaluation in oral health: rehabilitation of a single prosthetic space

Objective: To evaluate the allocative efficiency, financial impact, and cost-effectiveness of rehabilitation of a single tooth by means of a 3-unit fixed dental prosthesis and of a dental implant from the perspective of the Commercial Social Service - SESC (“Serviço Social do Comércio”). Methods: An economic analysis of the cost-effectiveness type was designed. A Markov model was developed to capture long-term clinical and economic outcomes considering the temporal horizon of 25 years. Results: Within this temporal horizon it would be possible to perform 308 more procedures with a saving of R$ 351,737.49, if rehabilitation by means of the one-unit implant were chosen. Conclusion: The implant technique with an implant and an implant-supported prosthesis was dominant; that is, it had lower cost and higher effectiveness and its allocative efficiency allowed a much higher number of persons to have access to treatment.