Ambiguity reduction by objective model selection, with an application to the costs of the EU 2030 climate targets

I estimate the cost of meeting the EU 2030 targets for greenhouse gas emission reduction, using statistical emulators of ten alternative models. Assuming a first-best policy implementation, I find that total and marginal costs are modest. The statistical emulators allow me to compute the risk premiums, which are small, because the EU is rich and the policy impact is small. The ensemble of ten models allows me to compute the ambiguity premium, which is small for the same reason. I construct a counterfactual estimate of recent emissions without the climate policy and use that to test the predictive skill of the ten models. The models that show the lowest cost of emission reduction also have the lowest skill for Europe in recent times

Adult education between the wars - the curious case of the Selborne Lecture Bureau

‘Independent’ lecture agencies are an important but neglected element in the history of education. Between 1918 and 1939, the Selborne Lecture Bureau was a significant national provider of adult education in Britain, both in its own right and as a supplier of lecture(r)s to Women’s Institutes and other bodies, and it pioneered the use of films in schools. For a brief period, it was an ‘educational’ vehicle for the Empire Marketing Board with a programme of over 2,400 lectures in 1929. The Bureau originated in the early 20th century split between the conservative (and male) traditions of natural history and the radical (and female) campaigning (anti) plumage movement that produced the RSPB. The inter-War history of the Selborne Lecture Bureau provides a counterpoint to conventional accounts of adult education between the two World Wars, representing an influential ‘third stream’ alongside the ‘liberal tradition’ and growing state and local authority provision

Effects in polarimetry of interference within wave plates

Multiple-beam interference within wave plates is investigated in terms of the detrimental effects it produces in the data of stellar spectropolarimetry. It is noted that spectral fringe structures occur in the phase delay, the polarizance and, for Pancharatnam designs, the reference axis of the wave plate. The natures of the problems are exposed by considering typical wave plates and experimental procedures used in linear and circular spectropolarimetry. It is demonstrated that the chief bane of accurate measurements is the presence of polarizance fringes, but which can be alleviated by the choice of experimental procedure. For spectral circular polarization studies, problems of cross-talk from any linear polarization present in the source are especially severe. In principle the effects of fringing can be removed in data reductions by calibration measurements of a set of linear polarization standard stars displaying different vibration azimuths and, for circular polarization measurements, knowledge of the linear polarization characteristics of the investigated star must also be known

This May Mean Doing Things a Bit Differently from Here on Out

OccupyPennHall failed. Embittered by a failed election and its hateful aftermath, students parked themselves in protest. The act precluded and followed an irruption of a faculty meeting. Therein, sitting professors tuned into pleas for student-teacher solidarity. Protesters then took to the campus fulcrum and braced themselves for a sneak-peak of winter. The supposed movement was spur-of-the-moment: a visceral stillness in the wake of an absurd, precarious life. [excerpt

New New Deals: Reforming Welfare Again?

In both the Unites States and the United Kingdom, the idea of the New Deal has proved a potent political symbol during this crisis. In what follows, I explore some of the ways in which the imagery of the New Deal has been deployed and consider some of the historical questions that are generated by this imagery. What does the image of the New Deal evoke, and to what does it lay claim? Three aspects of current political discourse seem to me to be of particular interest: the return of publicness; the problematization of capitalism; and the revival of the New Deal as a progressive imaginary. They are, of course, interlinked, not least in their attempt to define this as an epochal moment while struggling to “save the system” from itself

Investigating the Dark Sector: Attempting to Resolve the Hubble Tension with a Modified Model of the Universe

The standard model of Big Bang cosmology is the ΛCDM model, which incorporates cold dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious components of what is known as the “dark sector” of the universe, or sector not directly observable with light. Observations of primordial light in the universe allow precision tests of cosmological models, including the expansion rate of the universe, also known as the Hubble constant. Values of the Hubble constant determined using observations of primordial light and the ΛCDM model are in disagreement with the value determined from local observables, such as the recession velocities of galaxies observable with satellites. This tension may indicate a need to move beyond standard ΛCDM. During my International Research Opportunities Program (IROP) research at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore, India, I studied a possible extension of the ΛCDM model in which cold dark matter decays into dark radiation. In this project I investigated the effects of decaying dark matter on cosmological observables such as the Hubble constant. My results show that the decaying dark matter model may help alleviate tension between the indirect and direct 0determinations of the Hubble constant

A proof of the birationality of certain BHK-mirrors

We generalize and give an elementary proof of Kelly's refinement of Shoemaker's result on the birationality of certain BHK-mirrors. Our approach uses a construction that is equivalent to the Krawitz generalization of the duality of Berglund-Hubsch.Comment: 9 page