Climate Change Talks Suspended, Negotiations To Resume During 2001, UNFCCC Press Release 
After two weeks of intensive negotiations,
ministers and diplomats have suspended talks on making the Kyoto
Protocol operational and strengthening financial and technical
cooperation between developed and developing countries on
climate-friendly policies and technologies.
"It is extremely disappointing that political leaders were
unable to work it out here and finalize guidelines for reducing
greenhouse gas emissions, especially when the public had such high
expectations," said Jan Pronk, the conference chairman and
Environment Minister of The Netherlands.
"But I believe that the political will to succeed is still
alive, and I am confident that we can regroup in the very near
future and complete a deal that leads to effective actions to
control emissions and protect the most vulnerable countries from
the impacts of global warming," he said.
The conference made progress towards outlining a package of
financial support and technology transfer to help developing
countries contribute to global action on climate change. But the
key political issues - including an international emissions
trading system, a "clean development mechanism", the rules for
counting emissions reductions from carbon "sinks" such as forests,
and a compliance regime - could not be resolved in the time
available.
"This conference highlights both the importance and the
difficulty of making the transition to low-carbon economies," said
Klaus Töpfer, Executive Director of the UN Environment
Programme. "It is better to suspend the talks and resume later to
ensure that we find the right path forward rather than take a
hasty step that moves us in the wrong direction."
A compromise text tabled by Mr. Pronk will be forwarded as an
input to a resumed sixth session of the Conference of the Parties
to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. These talks
could be held in late May in Bonn, the home of the climate change
secretariat.
"Establishing a robust global regime for addressing climate
change is an ambitious undertaking - comparable to the creation of
the international trade regime under the WTO," said Michael Zammit
Cutajar, Executive Secretary of the Convention. "Global warming is
one of the great challenges of the 21 st century, and I trust that
public reaction to our meeting here will inspire governments with
the necessary sense of urgency to succeed at the next
opportunity."
World's First Commercial Wave Plant Opens In Britain, CNN Online/Wavegen
"'It has been estimated that if less than 0.1% of the
renewable energy available within the oceans could be converted
into electricity it would satisfy the present world demand for
energy more than five times over', Marine
Foresight Panel
"The world's first commercial wave power station has started
operations on the small Scottish island of Islay, operators
Wavegen said on Tuesday.
Wavegen said the launch of the 500 kilowatt wave power
station, capable of lighting 400 homes, opens the door for wave
power to become a major contributor of renewable energy and assist
reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
"There is a huge global market for wave energy, it has a
great future," Wavegen managing director Allan Thomson told
Reuters."(1)
The wave energy collectors used in Wavegen’s Limpet and
Osprey modules are in the form of a partially submerged shell into
which seawater is free to enter and leave. As the water enters or
leaves, the level of water in the chamber rises or falls in
sympathy. A column of air, contained above the water level, is
alternately compressed and decompressed by this movement to
generate an alternating stream of high velocity air in an exit
blowhole. If this air stream is allowed to flow to and from the
atmosphere via a pneumatic turbine, energy can be extracted from
the system and used to generate electricity. (2)
- World's
First Commercial Wave Plant Opens In
Britain, CNN Online
November 21, 2000
- Wavegen
-
Abstract: Water vapor is the dominant greenhouse
gas, the most important gaseous source of infrared opacity in the
atmosphere. As the concentrations of other greenhouse gases,
particularly carbon dioxide, increase because of human activity,
it is centrally important to predict how the water vapor
distribution will be affected. To the extent that water vapor
concentrations increase in a warmer world, the climatic effects of
the other greenhouse gases will be amplified. Models of the
Earth's climate indicate that this is an important positive
feedback that increases the sensitivity of surface temperatures to
carbon dioxide by nearly a factor of two when considered in
isolation from other feedbacks, and possibly by as much as a
factor of three or more when interactions with other feedbacks are
considered. Critics of this consensus have attempted to provide
reasons why modeling results are overestimating the strength of
this feedback.
Our uncertainty concerning climate sensitivity is
disturbing. The range most often quoted for the equilibrium global
mean surface temperature response to a doubling of CO2
concentrations in the atmosphere is 1.5°C to 4.5°C. If
the Earth lies near the upper bound of this sensitivity range,
climate changes in the twenty-first century will be profound. The
range in sensitivity is primarily due to differing assumptions
about how the Earth's cloud distribution is maintained; all the
models on which these estimates are based possess strong water
vapor feedback. If this feedback is, in fact, substantially weaker
than predicted in current models, sensitivities in the upper half
of this range would be much less likely, a conclusion that would
clearly have important policy implications. In this review, we
describe the background behind the prevailing view on water vapor
feedback and some of the arguments raised by its critics, and
attempt to explain why these arguments have not modified the
consensus within the climate research community.
-
Abstract: Geoengineering is the intentional
large-scale manipulation of the environment, particularly
manipulation that is intended to reduce undesired anthropogenic
climate change. The post-war rise of climate and weather
modification and the history of U.S. assessments of the
CO2-climate problem is reviewed. Proposals to engineer the climate
are shown to be an integral element of this history. Climate
engineering is reviewed with an emphasis on recent developments,
including low-mass space-based scattering systems for altering the
planetary albedo, simulation of the climate's response to albedo
modification, and new findings on iron fertilization in oceanic
ecosystems. There is a continuum of human responses to the climate
problem that vary in resemblance to hard geoengineering schemes
such as space-based mirrors. The distinction between
geoengineering and mitigation is therefore fuzzy. A definition is
advanced that clarifies the distinction between geoengineering and
industrial carbon management. Assessment of geoengineering is
reviewed under various framings including economics, risk,
politics, and environmental ethics. Finally, arguments are
presented for the importance of explicit debate about the
implications of countervailing measures such as
geoengineering.
Energy And Material Flow Through The Urban Ecosystem, Annu. Rev. Energy Environ
Abstract: This paper reviews the available data
and models on energy and material flows through the world's 25
largest cities. Throughput is categorized as stored, transformed,
or passive for the major flow modes. The aggregate, fuel, food,
water, and air cycles are all examined. Emphasis is placed on
atmospheric pathways because the data are abundant. Relevant
models of urban energy and material flows, demography, and
atmospheric chemistry are discussed. Earth system-level loops from
cities to neighboring ecosystems are identified. Megacities are
somewhat independent of their immediate environment for food,
fuel, and aggregate inputs, but all are constrained by their
regional environment for supplying water and absorbing wastes. We
elaborate on analogies with biological metabolism and ecosystem
succession as useful conceptual frameworks for addressing urban
ecological problems. We conclude that whereas data are numerous
for some individual cities, cross-cutting compilations are lacking
in biogeochemical analysis and modeling. Synthesis of the existing
information will be a crucial first step. Cross-cutting field
research and integrated, multidisciplinary simulations will be
necessary.
God, Stephen Wolfram, And Everything Else, Forbes ASAP
It has been the ultimate question since humans started to
have consciousness: Were are we coming from? What is the cause of
our existence? Over millennia only creation stories -usually tied
to religions- would deal with this question. Only very recently
science of the Big Bang and biological evolution could add some
experimental evidence and rigorous theory to the discussion.
Although current theories have been reasonably successful
especially in regards to technology spin-off, there are still too
many open ends where some fundamental steps in the foundation of
some theories are not quite compelling or even possibly wrong.
This is one of the conclusions that, according to Malone, were
made by Stephen Wolfram, who had "made a series of discoveries
which launched the field of complex systems research". He
found out about those fundamental flaws while pushing one of the
principles of complex systems to its logical limit: If simple
rules can generate structures of unlimited complexity, then it
makes perfect sense to assume that in The Beginning there was a
simple rule, and the whole universe emerged.
Wolfram is describing his findings in his 1200+ pages opus with
the simple title "A
New Kind of Science" expected to be released by
2001:
Wolfram won't describe all of his discoveries, but
he does toss out a few extraordinary examples:
- A challenge to natural selection as the defining
force in evolution
- Why time goes only one way
- How to grow artificial organisms
- An explanation of stock market behavior
- How complex systems, from thunderstorms to galaxies,
exhibit intelligence
- New ways to design and build integrated circuits and
computers at the atomic level
- Why leaves, trees, seashells, snowflakes (and almost
everything else) take the shapes they do
Moving Averages And Markets Inefficiency, arXiv
Abstract: We introduce a stochastic price model
where, together with a random component, a moving average of
logarithmic prices contributes to the price formation. Our model
is tested against financial datasets, showing an extremely good
agreement with them. It suggests how to construct trading
strategies which imply a capital growth rate larger than the
growth rate of the underlying asset, with also the effect of
reducing the fluctuations. These results are a clear evidence that
some hidden information is not fully integrated in price dynamics,
and therefore financial markets are partially inefficient. In
simple terms, we give a recipe for speculators to make money as
long as only few investors follow it.
Generation Of Anti-Predictable Time Series, A Neural Network, arXiv
Abstract: A perceptron that learns the opposite
of its own output is used to generate a time series. We analyse
properties of the weight vector and the generated sequence, like
cycle length and probability distribution of generated sequences.
A remarkable suppression of the autocorrelation function is
explained, and connections to the Bernasconi model are discussed.
If a continuous transfer function is used, the system displays
chaotic and intermittent behaviour, with the product of learning
rate and amplification as a control parameter.
Microstructure Effects on Daily Return Volatility in Financial Markets, arXiv
Abstract: We simulate a series of daily returns
from intraday price movements initiated by microstructure
elements. Significant evidence is found that daily returns and
daily return volatility exhibit first order autocorrelation, but
trading volume and daily return volatility are not correlated,
while intraday volatility is. We also consider GARCH effects in
daily return series and show that estimates using daily returns
are biased from the influence of the level of prices. Using daily
price changes instead, we find evidence of a significant GARCH
component. These results suggest that microstructure elements have
a considerable influence on the return generating process.
Form And Function Of Fetal And Neonatal Pulmonary Arterial Bifurcations, AJP
Bifurcation is a basic form of vascular connection. It is
composed of a parent vessel of diameter d0, and two
daughter vessels, d1 and d2, where
d0 > d1 > d2. Optimal
values for the bifurcation area ratio, b
= (d12 +
d22)/d02, and the
junction exponent, x, in d0x =
d1x + d2x, are
postulated to be universal in nature. However, we have
hypothesized that the perinatal pulmonary arterial circulation is
an exception. Arterial diameters were measured in pulmonary
vascular casts of a fetal lamb (140 days gestation/145 days term)
and a neonatal lamb (1 day old). The values for b
and x were evaluated in 10,970 fetal and 846 neonatal
bifurcations sampled from the proximal and intermediate arterial
regions. Mean values and confidence intervals (CI) for the fetus
were b = 0.890 (0.886-0.895 CI) and x =
1.75 (1.74-1.76 CI); and for the newborn were b
= 0.913 (0.90-0.93 CI) and x = 1.79 (1.75-1.82 CI). These
values are significantly different from Murray's law (
b > 1, x = 3) or the
West-Brown-Enquist law ( b = 1, x = 2).
Therefore, perinatal pulmonary bifurcation design appears to be
distinctive and exceptional. The decreasing cross-sectional area
with branching leads to the hemodynamic consequence of shear
stress amplification. This structural organization may be
important for facilitating vascular development at low flow rates;
however, it may be the origin of unstable reactivity if elevated
blood flow and pressure occurs.
Detection And Sources Of Nonlinearity In The Variability Of Cardiac R-R Intervals And Blood Pressure In Rats, AJP
Abstract: Beat-to-beat R-R interval (RRV) and
systolic blood pressure (SPV) variability signals were obtained
from unrestrained rats in baseline and under different
pharmacological treatments. The origin and extent of the
nonlinearity in both signals, as well as their degree of mutual
coupling, was estimated using measurements from the correlation
integral (CI) and recurrence quantification analysis (RQA). After
the respiratory component of baseline signals was removed, the
nonlinearity was lower in the RRV and disappeared in the SPV. This
also decreased the RRV-SPV coupling. The nonlinearity of RRV was
also reduced after atropine, and the nonlinearity of SPV was
strengthened after prazosin and Nw-monomethyl-L-arginine
(L-NMMA). Atropine and prazosin decreased CI measures of both
signals, whereas propranolol, phenylephrine, and L-NMMA decreased
only those of SPV. RQA indexes of RRV increased after atropine and
decreased after propranolol, whereas the reverse occurred for the
RRV-SPV coupling. These results suggest that: 1) the nonlinearity
of RRV appears to be very dependent on the parasympathetic
activity, whereas that of SPV seems to come from its respiratory
component through a nonneural pathway; 2) respiratory component
appears to be involved, through the parasympathetic system, in the
RRV-SPV coupling; and 3) CI and RQA measures seems to be useful in
assessing autonomic mediation of RRV and RRV-SPV coupling.
Chaotic Flow: The Physics Of Species Coexistence, PNAS
Abstract: Hydrodynamical phenomena
play a keystone role in the population dynamics of passively
advected species such as phytoplankton and replicating
macromolecules. Recent developments in the field of chaotic
advection in hydrodynamical flows encourage us to revisit the
population dynamics of species competing for the same resource
in an open aquatic system. If this aquatic environment is
homogeneous and well-mixed then classical studies predict
competitive exclusion of all but the most perfectly adapted
species. In fact, this homogeneity is very rare, and the
species of the community (at least on an ecological observation
time scale) are in nonequilibrium coexistence. We argue that a
peculiar small-scale, spatial heterogeneity generated by
chaotic advection can lead to coexistence. In open flows this
imperfect mixing lets the populations accumulate along fractal
filaments, where competition is governed by an "advantage of
rarity" principle. The possibility of this generic coexistence
sheds light on the enrichment of phytoplankton and the
information integration in early macromolecule evolution.
-
Abstract: Telomeres are DNA and protein
structures that form complexes protecting the ends of chromosomes.
Understanding of the mechanisms maintaining telomeres and insights
into their function have advanced considerably in recent years.
This review summarizes the currently known components of the
telomere/telomerase functional complex, and focuses on how they
act in the control of processes occurring at telomeres. These
include processes acting on the telomeric DNA and on telomeric
proteins. Key among them are DNA replication and elongation of one
telomeric DNA strand by telomerase. In some situations, homologous
recombination of telomeric and subtelomeric DNA is induced. All
these processes act to replenish or restore telomeres. Conversely,
degradative processes that shorten telomeric DNA, and
nonhomologous end-joining of telomeric DNA, can lead to loss of
telomere function and genomic instability. Hence they too must
normally be tightly controlled.
- Telomeres
And Their Control,
Michael J Mceachern, Anat Krauskopf, Elizabeth H
Blackburn, Annu. Rev. Genet. 2000 January 1; 34(1): P.
331-358
RAND Workshop on Complexity and Public Policy, Conference Video/Audio
We had already a report of this important workshop
contributed by Michael Lissak in
Complexity
Digest 2000.39.10. The organizers had
video-taped the lectures and Complexity Digest sponsored the
conversion of some of the lectures into digital RealMedia (.rm)
format. Unfortunately the technical quality of some of the talks
were such that they were not usable. Others had only the audio
track. Fortunately, however, some of the speakers made their
visual presentation material available on the RAND website.
The combination of listening to the audio track and following the
presentation through the pdf files with the transparencies
provides a surprisingly good experience of the presentation. We
invite reader feedback also on the comparison of this mode of
conference report with higher resolution video only format in
"slide-show" mode. (See the Applied Complexity conference held in
New Zeasand recently Complexity
Digest 2000.45.1). We will update this
website in the ComDig archive
to include more of the talks of this workshop.
Presentations:
- Complexity and Public Policy: A Hallmark of the 21st
Century?, Bruce Don (RAND), Video,
pdf
slides
- Introductory Remarks,
Congressman Mike Doyle (D-PA) , Video
- Self-Organization in the Connected Economy, Chris
Meyer (Ernst & Young), Audio,
pdf
slides
- Zipf's Law of City Sizes: A Microeconomic Explanation
Far From Equilibrium, Rob Axtell (Brookings), Audio,
pdf
slides
- Collaborative Spatial Modeling of Ecological Economic
Systems, Tom Maxwell (U. Maryland), Audio,
pdf
slides
- Managing Change: An Interaction Knowledge
Perspective, Kathleen Carley (Carnegie-Mellon U.),
Audio,
pdf
slides
- Agent-Enabled Assurance of Distributed Information
Systems, Laura Gilliom (Sandia Lab), Audio,
pdf
slides
Links & Snippets
1 Noise Effects On The Complex Patterns Of Abnormal Heartbeats, arXiv
Abstract: We show that complex patterns of certain
abnormal heartbeats in the normal heart rhythm can be described
by a model of two independent oscillators with stochastic
elements. We find that this model successfully reproduces key
statistical properties of the abnormal beats within a 12-hour
heartbeat record, and demonstrate how the noise accounts for
the emergence of the patterns of normal and abnormal
heartbeats. We observe a best agreement with the data when an
`optimal' level of noise is introduced.
2 Symbolic Dynamics Of Event-Related Brain Potentials, Phys Rev E
Abstract: We apply symbolic dynamics techniques such
as word statistics and measures of complexity to nonstationary
and noisy multivariate time series of electroencephalograms
(EEG) in order to estimate event-related brain potentials
(ERP). Their significance against surrogate data as well as
between different experimental conditions is tested. These
methods are validated by simulations using stochastic dynamical
systems with time-dependent control parameters and compared
with traditional ERP-analysis techniques. Continuous EEG data
are cut into epochs according to stimuli events presented to
the subjects. These ensembles of time series can be considered
as ensembles of trajectories given by some dynamical systems.
We employ a statistical mechanics approach motivated by the
Frobenius-Perron equation and apply it to coarse-grained
symbolic descriptions of the dynamics. We develop
time-dependent measures of complexity founded on running
cylinder sets and show that these quantities are able to
distinguish simulated data obtained by different control
parameters as well as experimental data between different
experimental conditions. As a first finding, our approach
restores the well-known ERP components and it reveals
additionally qualitative changes in the EEG that cannot be
detected by means of the traditional techniques. We criticize
the prerequisites of the traditional approach to ERP analysis
and propose to consider ERP instead in terms of dynamical
system theory and information theory.
3 Why Hawks Have A Logarithmic Spiral, New Scientist
Excerpt: The mystery of why birds of prey spiral in
towards their victims may have been solved. They do it to make
the most of their pin-sharp sideways vision, according to an
American biologist.
Vance Tucker of Duke University in North Carolina, has
long been puzzled by the way birds of prey approach their
dinner. In studies of peregrine falcons in Colorado, he and his
colleagues found that the birds almost always follow a curved
path once they get within 1.5 kilometres of their prey.
4 Monkey Brain Controls Robot Arm, Discovery Online
Excerpt: Researchers have wired the brains of
monkeys to control robotic arms — a feat that could one
day allow paralyzed people to move artificial arms and legs
merely by thinking.
The wires fed electrical impulses from the brains of two
monkeys into a computer linked to robotic arms. When the
monkeys reached for food or manipulated a joystick, the robotic
arms mimicked those motions.
5 Suppressing Complexity Via The Slaving Principle, Phys Rev E
Abstract: The complexity of a nonlinear dynamic
system can be suppressed by adding an external period force
with appropriate choice of frequency and amplitude directly on
the slowly changing variable of the system. Numerical results
indicate that the method not only can suppress chaos but also
is robust to the additive external noise.
6 Algorithmic Complexity In The Minority Game, Phys Rev E
Abstract: In this paper, we present our approach for
the study of the complexity of Minority Game using tools from
thermodynamics and statistical physics. Previous attempts were
based on the behavior of volatility, an observable of the
financial markets. Our approach focuses on some properties of
the binary stream of outcomes of the game. Physical complexity,
a magnitude rooted in Kolmogorov-Chaitin theory, allows us to
explain some properties of collective behavior of the agents.
Mutual information function, a measure related to Shannon's
information entropy, was useful to observe a kind of phase
transition when applied to the binary string of the whole
history of the game.
7 Coaxing Molecular Devices to Build Themselves, Science
A NAME="15.7">
Abstract: Nagoya University chemist Makoto Fujita
and others are using a technique called directed self-assembly,
which exploits the chemical and electrical bonds that hold
natural molecules together, to get molecules to form desired
nanometer-scale structures. This could lead to computer logic
and memory devices up to 100 times smaller than their current
counterparts. Self-assembled molecules might also serve as
cages to hold and deliver unstable medical compounds, and as
crucibles for chemical reactions.
