From CBA to decision trees and cognitive maps: Supplementing costs and benefits to acknowledge uncertainties and complexity in decision making

286 p.Decision making has always been di¿cult due to uncertainty about the future, but humans invented strategies to overcome these di¿culties. Climate change, however, has brought new challenges: on the one hand, many of these strategies have become inappropriate to face impacts of climate change; on the other hand, climate change is extensive which needs a response from everyone, everywhere, at every moment in time. This thesis takes the cost and bene¿t framework as a starting point to show if and how divulging uncertainties and complexities may improve decision-making and project evaluations that are done prior to investments. Overall, the work undertaken here demonstrates that improving decision-making based on costs and bene¿ts is both necessary and feasible. The cost-bene¿t model may bene¿t from being used together with (semi-) qualitative and illustrative methodologies that are better suited to communicate on complexities underlying decision-making and that enable to understand and acknowledge model assumptions. Illustrating complexities may result insightful and complementary. Using the bene¿t-cost model together with other more appropriate evaluation methods may also be more desirable in order to avoid reproducing from the past, what may not be suited for the future. In order to achieve this, economic assessments need also include the participation of actors from di¿erent backgrounds to expose knowledge that would otherwise remain hidden, while valuing democratic participation. Including interactions across various research domains and participants may enable to visualise and highlight the inter-linkages between domains and their complexity, instead of inhibiting what is the very nature of interactions of societies with their environment. This may enable to identify the root causes of vulnerabilities and a more complete range of interventions. This work is anticipated to be a starting point for more sophisticated applications, more participative and interlinked evaluation methods that use several methodologies. In addition, future research can build on di¿erent insights provided by neuroscientists and psychologists. Sound decision-making may not come from methodologies alone, but from humans¿ physical capacity to develop and implement them

Multiple perspectives of resilience: A holistic approach to resilience assessment using cognitive maps in practitioner engagement

Resilience has become a regulatory concept influencing investment decisions in the water and wastewater sector. However, current assessments predominantly focus on technical resilience and on engineering solutions. Here we propose an alternative, more holistic approach that captures multiple perspectives of resilience by eliciting and comparing cognitive maps of diverse agents both from within as well as external to a wastewater utility. We use Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping as a practical tool to elicit subjective views on resilience mechanisms and illustrate the methodology in co-production with professionals from the wastewater sector in the Belfast area (Northern Ireland). We find that the proposed participatory process facilitates a more reflective , inclusive and integrated assessment than current approaches. Screening for risks and vulnerabilities using this new approach can foster an integrated system perspective by (i) systematically identifying connections between (sub)systems which are normally assessed separately, (ii) detecting feedbacks between system components which may reveal unintended consequences of resilience interventions and by (iii) obtaining a wider portfolio of potential interventions to increase overall resilience. We conclude that the suggested approach may be useful for strategic planning purposes within a utility and for improving cross-departmental communication among both internal and external agents. © 2020 The Author

Accelerating ice mass loss across Arctic Russia in response to atmospheric warming, sea ice decline, and Atlantification of the Eurasian Arctic Shelf Seas

Glaciers and ice caps of the Russian Arctic are currently experiencing accelerating mass loss as a result of strong atmospheric and oceanic warming in the Barents and Kara Sea (BKS) region. Since 2010, this loss has been driven by both increased surface ablation, and dramatic shifts in ice dynamics at individual drainage basins across the entire Eurasian High Arctic. Here, we provide a high-resolution spatial and temporal overview of ice surface elevation change and mass imbalance across both Novaya Zemlya and Severnaya Zemlya using CryoSat-2 interferometric swath altimetry from 2010 to 2018. We find a total mass imbalance of -300 kg m−2 a−1, marked by a strong east-to-west gradient, with higher rates of loss over Novaya Zemlya (9.7 ± 0.5 Gt a−1 at 431 ± 22 kg m−2 a−1) in the west compared to Severnaya Zemlya (1.7 ± 0.1 Gt a−1 at 97 ± 8 kg m−2 a−1) in the east. Correlation between time series of surface elevation change and climate forcing reveals a quasi-linear relationship between coupled ocean-atmospheric forcing and glacier change over Novaya Zemlya, in agreement with similar findings from east Greenland. We further discern the likely role of ocean warming as the key factor driving dynamic ice loss in Severnaya Zemlya, owing to increasingly warm Atlantic Waters circulating along the Eurasian continental margin. We conclude that simple, linear relationships between environmental forcing and glacier change may be sufficiently accurate to parametrise ice loss in regions where synchronous, coupled ocean-atmosphere forcing prevails

Aspects de la réception des romans de Michel Houellebecq en France

Notre travail propose une analyse de la réception des romans de Michel Houellebecq en France et son enjeu est de dégager la construction idéologique produite par le texte de fiction dans le champ littéraire à partir de ce cas singulier. L'inscription du texte fictionnel dans le discours social a -comme ce travail se propose de le démontrer -un double rôle modélisateur, puisque, suite au processus de lecture et aux phénomènes de réception, elle produit une redéfinition des critères esthétiques d'appréciation de l'oeuvre, mais aussi un nivellement des repères idéologiques de l'époque. À partir de l'observation que l'appréciation esthétique des romans houellebecquiens acquiert un rôle secondaire par rapport avec la question de la modélisation épistémique de la contemporanéité faite par l'auteur tant dans ses romans que dans ses prises de position assertoriques, notre travail s'est donné comme but de cerner la manière dont la fiction institue de nouvelles tensions idéologiques, mais aussi des prémisses pour de nouvelles zones de consensus social. Un premier chapitre analytico-descriptif met donc en lumière les contraintes topiques que les romans et les prises de position médiatiques de Michel Houellebecq ont prédéfinies dans le champ social. Le deuxième chapitre cerne la manière progressive dont les lectures idéologiques de ses romans ont été privilégiées dans le champ littéraire français actuel. Le troisième chapitre analyse les diverses stratégies et classifications argumentatives définies en rapport avec l'oeuvre de Houellebecq, mais aussi en rapport avec l'acteur social Houellebecq, pour rendre compte de la place secondaire que la question du caractère fictionnel de ses représentations du monde contemporain a acquise. Les conclusions de notre travail rendent compte, de manière synthétique, de la manière dont la question de la pertinence gnoséologique du modèle de réalité proposé par Michel Houellebecq devient un topos définitoire de la construction idéologique cristallisée par la communauté lectorale en réponse aux messages fictionnels et assertoriques de l'auteur

Earth's ice imbalance

We combine satellite observations and numerical models to show that Earth lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice between 1994 and 2017. Arctic sea ice (7.6 trillion tonnes), Antarctic ice shelves (6.5 trillion tonnes), mountain glaciers (6.2 trillion tonnes), the Greenland ice sheet (3.8 trillion tonnes), the Antarctic ice sheet (2.5 trillion tonnes), and Southern Ocean sea ice (0.9 trillion tonnes) have all decreased in mass. Just over half (60 %) of the ice loss was from the northern hemisphere, and the remainder (40 %) was from the southern hemisphere. The rate of ice loss has risen by 57 % since the 1990s – from 0.8 to 1.2 trillion tonnes per year – owing to increased losses from mountain glaciers, Antarctica, Greenland, and from Antarctic ice shelves. During the same period, the loss of grounded ice from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets and mountain glaciers raised the global sea level by 35.0 ± 3.2 mm. The majority of all ice losses from were driven by atmospheric melting (68 % from Arctic sea ice, mountain glaciers ice shelf calving and ice sheet surface mass balance), with the remaining losses (32 % from ice sheet discharge and ice shelf thinning) being driven by oceanic melting. Altogether, the cryosphere has taken up 3.2 % of the global energy imbalance

Differences in the Antigens of Helicobacter pylori

The immune response to Helicobacter pylori importantly determines the pathogenesis of infection as well as the success of antibiotic eradication of the bacteria. Strains of H. pylori were gathered from 14 patients who failed to eradicate H. pylori infection with antibiotics—therapy resistant strains (TRS)—or from patients who were able to eradicate H. pylori infection—therapy susceptible strains (TSS). The THP-1 cells were stimulated with H. pylori antigens. Cathepsin X expression on THP-1 cells and concentration of cytokines in the supernatant of THP-1 cells were measured with a flow cytometer. TSS H. pylori antigens increased the proportion of cathepsin X positive cells compared to TRS H. pylori antigens. TSS H. pylori antigens induced higher secretion of IL-12 and IL-6 compared to TRS H. pylori antigens (P < 0.001; 0.02). Polymyxin B, a lipid A inhibitor, lowered the secretion of IL-12 and IL-6 in TRS and TSS. We demonstrated a H. pylori strain-dependent cathepsin X and cytokine expression that can be associated with H. pylori resistance to eradication due to lack of effective immune response. Differences in lipid A of H. pylori might have an influence on the insufficient immune response, especially on phagocytosis

Subglacial controls on dynamic thinning at Trinity-Wykeham Glacier, Prince of Wales Ice Field, Canadian Arctic

Mass loss from glaciers and ice caps represents the largest terrestrial component of current sea level rise. However, our understanding of how the processes governing mass loss will respond to climate warming remains incomplete. This study explores the relationship between surface elevation changes (dh/dt), glacier velocity changes (du/dt), and bedrock topography at the Trinity-Wykeham Glacier system (TWG), Canadian High Arctic, using a range of satellite and airborne datasets. We use measurements of dh/dt from ICESat (2003-2009) and CryoSat-2 (2010-2016) repeat observations to show that rates of surface lowering increased from 4 m yr-1 to 6 m yr-1 across the lowermost 10 km of the TWG. We show that surface flow rates at both Trinity Glacier and Wykeham Glacier doubled over 16 years, during which time the ice front retreated 4.45 km. The combination of thinning, acceleration and retreat of the TWG suggests that a dynamic thinning mechanism is responsible for the observed changes, and we suggest that both glaciers have transitioned from fully grounded to partially floating. Furthermore, by comparing the separate glacier troughs we suggest that the dynamic changes are modulated by both lateral friction from the valley sides and the complex geometry of the bed. Further, the presence of bedrock ridges induces crevassing on the surface and provides a direct link for surface meltwater to reach the bed. We observe supraglacial lakes that drain at the end of summer and are concurrent with a reduction in glacier velocity, suggesting hydrological connections between the surface and the bed significantly impact ice flow. The bedrock topography thus has a primary influence on the nature of the changes in ice dynamics observed over the last decade.</p