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In epidemic modelling, the emergence of a disease is characterized by the low numbers of infectious individuals. Environmental randomness impacts outcomes such as the outbreak or extinction of the disease in this case. This randomness can be accounted for by modelling the system as a continuous time Markov chain,. The probability of extinction given some initial state is the probability of hitting a subset of the state space associated with extinction for the initial state. This hitting probability can be studied by passing to the discrete time Markov chain (DTMC),. An approach is presented to approximate a DTMC on a countably infinite state space by a DTMC on a finite state space for the purpose of solving general hitting problems. This approach is applied to approximate the probability of disease extinction in an epidemic model. It is also applied to evaluate a heterogeneous disease control strategy in a metapopulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Festivals and celebrations have special significance for the foundation of community and collective memory. They are part of social practice and, at the same, also reveal much about current and historical social structures, traditions and rituals. Festivals contrast with everyday life, taking participants away from it; celebrations, conversely, celebrate and reinforce social hierarchies, the role of individuals in the community and the characteristics of the community. This is clearly demonstrated in this contribution on the example of the festivities of two western Ukrainian village communities celebrating 520 years of existence. The communities' notable peculiarity lies in the fact that they were founded as a single village. Due the partitioning of Poland along the Zbruč River, however, the two sides were situated in Austria-Hungary and Russia, respectively. In the interwar period, they were located in Poland and the Soviet Union. Since the end of the Second World War, they were part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Although they did not have borders for the first time in 150 years, they nevertheless continued to exist as independent villages. Given this starting point, a celebration of the 520th anniversary of the founding of these communities obviously has very complex historical contexts within different past state regimes. The following analysis of the village festival will first demonstrate how such a celebration was achieved. Further, it will examine the extent to which a socio-spatial demarcation was reproduced just as efforts were simultaneously made to eliminate it. The village is a striking example of the manifestation of the experience and perception, design and imagination of present and past spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a commentary on Germain Lietaer and Monica Gundrum's article entitled His master's voice: Carl Rogers' verbal response modes in therapy and demonstration sessions throughout his career. The commentary applauds the laborious and authoritative work of the authors and hopes to augment the significance of their finding by introducing two perspectives. Firstly, the authors viewed silence as an uncoded but significant ingredient of Rogers' response in therapy. They saw silence as creating a time for clearing a space, but this commentary takes another view. This paper argues that in the silence, Rogers' was holding a space for clients while they were Focusing. Secondly, the paper suggests viewing therapist responses as occurring in relation to clients' statements. It proceeds to show how examining the manner of experiencing (EXP levels) of clients may reveal how Rogers would have responded to clients who were at different levels of experiencing. Such analysis however, is easier said than done. Thus, this paper applauds the meticulous work produced by the authors and hopes that the two viewpoints put forth in the commentary will serve to stimulate further discussions on their paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Space, numbers and time share similar processing mechanisms mediated by parietal cortex. In parallel to the spatial representation of numbers along a horizontal line, temporal information is mapped on a horizontal axis with short intervals (and the past) represented to the left of long intervals (and the future). Little is known about the representation of time in the presence of visuo-spatial deficits. We here report two experiments on the comparative judgment of time. Experiment 1 required patients with left-sided neglect to indicate which of two consecutively presented silent intervals was longer. Their judgments were better if the first interval was longer and they judged the first interval longer on trials in which the two intervals were equally long. These results were not present in right-hemispheric damaged patients without neglect and healthy controls. They are in line with a previously reported finding in a single patient with neglect, but not readily compatible with findings of neglect patients' comparative length judgments. In Experiment 2, healthy participants' performance on an identical task improved for trials with a first-longer interval after caloric vestibular stimulation (CVS) of the right ear with warm water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Progressive changes in mean annual temperatures are arguably the strongest evidence of ongoing climate change. In destinations with a Mediterranean climate, in contrast to the colder months, during summer, rising air temperatures are believed to inhibit tourist movements and activities, and consequently affect tourists' evaluation of and satisfaction with their experiences. To the best of our knowledge, no previous study has investigated the potential impact of climate change on tourists' time-space activity using actual behavioural tracking-based information. Data collected via GPS technology and a post-visit survey of tourists (n = 404) visiting Lisbon during the summer were analysed via structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The results report empirical evidence of the present impact of (summer) weather on urban tourists' time-space activity and on their intra-destination experience evaluation. Specifically, maximum air temperature is found to have a significant negative effect on overall satisfaction, while the meteorological conditions of the entire day reveal a significant impact on tourists' activities and movements. The results are particularly useful for the sustainable adaptive management of urban attractions and destinations that are especially vulnerable to climate change, as well as in managing its adverse impact on tourists' experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The six stories in Ulrike Almut Sandig's Buch gegen das Verschwinden, each multi-layered in itself, are linked by leitmotifs so making a cycle that invites repeated reading, rather as a symphony invites repeated listening. The later stories, especially the last sci-fi adventure, cast retrospective light back over the collection, so highlighting ecological issues in stories which juxtapose threatened disappearances (of species, of wilderness) on a geological time scale, with disappearances (a lost child, declining bodily health, death of loved ones, memory loss) on the time scale of individual human life. Sandig's vividly atmospheric writing has affinities with poetic realism, notably Storm's ‘Der Schimmelreiter’, and stands more broadly in a long post-Enlightenment tradition of fascination with scientific enquiry, yet tension between instrumental reason that seeks mastery over nature and anguished feeling for the natural world under threat from human activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note proves a conjecture of Sparling [Germ of a synthesis: space-time is spinorial, extra dimensions are time-like. Proc R Soc Lond Ser A Math Phys Eng Sci. 2007;463(2083):1665-1679; The Ξ-transform for conformally flat space-time. arXiv:gr-qc/0612006; 2006.], that the ultrahyperbolic wave operator and the Ξ transform on form an exact couple. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the role of comics in the construction and interpretation of migration stories, and particularly of women’s stories of migration. It outlines some of the features of comics that can be considered important to the telling of life stories, specifically, the dual text-image format; the notion of gaps; and the interplay between time and space before exploring how these were represented in the Graphic Lives project. This project worked with a group of women from the British Bangladeshi community in Greater Manchester, UK to tell their stories in the form of digital comics. Two key themes emerge from the exploration of the way women’s migration experiences are depicted in these comics, namely, a focus on belonging and fluidity of identity. The women’s comics demonstrated how comics can disrupt notions of time and space, and how the co-presence of images and words (in different languages) can help to explore different aspects of identity. The experiences of this project suggest that comics may be effective in allowing migrant women alternative ways of representing their experiences and exploring their shifting identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epidemic diffusion is a space-time process, and showing time-series disease maps is a common way to demonstrate an epidemic progression in time and space. Previous studies used time-series maps to demonstrate the animation of diffusion process. Epidemic diffusion patterns were determined subjectively by visual inspection, however. There currently are still methodological concerns in developing effective analytical approaches for profiling diffusion dynamics of disease clustering and epidemic propagation. The objective of this study is to develop a geocomputational algorithm, the modified space-time density-based spatial clustering of application with noise (MST-DBSCAN), for detecting, identifying, and visualizing disease cluster evolution, which takes the effect of the incubation period into account. We also map the MST-DBSCAN algorithm output to visualize the diffusion process. Dengue fever case data from 2014 were used as an illustrative case study. Our results show that compared to kernel-smoothed mapping, the MST-DBSCAN algorithm can better identify the evolution type of any cluster at any epoch. Furthermore, using only one two-dimensional map (and graphs), our approach can demonstrate the same diffusion process that time-series maps or three-dimensional space-time kernel plotting displays but in an easy-to-read manner. We conclude that our MST-DBSCAN algorithm can profile the spatial pattern of epidemic diffusion in detail by identifying disease cluster evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the Cauchy problem for fractional evolution equations with time fractional derivative as Caputo fractional derivative of order and space variable coefficients on an unbounded domain. The space derivatives that appear in the equations are of integer or fractional order such as the left and the right Liouville fractional derivative as well as the Riesz fractional derivative. In order to solve this problem we introduce and develop generalized uniformly continuous solution operators and use them to obtain the unique solution on a certain Colombeau space. In our solving procedure, instead of the originate problem we solve a certain approximate problem, but therefore we also prove that the solutions of these two problems are associated. At the end, we illustrate the applications of the developed theory by giving some appropriate examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the dossier ‘Spatializing Transnational History: European spaces and territories’. It examines the intersections between transnational history and the so-called ‘spatial turn’ in social sciences, and points at future directions in historical research. It reviews two main different methodological approaches to the problem of space in transnational, comparative and global history and examines recent contributions on the history of territory. Finally, it introduces the contributions to this dossier, which approach the history of modern Europe from a number of transnational and spatial perspectives. The dossier argues that incorporating a combination of spatial approaches, ranging from the examination of transnational spaces, to the interplay between different scales of analysis, and to the historicization of territoriality, into the practice of transnational, comparative and global history may contribute to a deeper, wider and more complex understanding of ‘Europe’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fractional (nonlocal) diffusion equations replace the integer-order derivatives in space and time by their fractional-order analogs and they are used to model anomalous diffusion, especially in physics. In this paper, we study a backward problem for an inhomogeneous time-fractional diffusion equation with variable coefficients in a general bounded domain. Such a backward problem is of practically great importance because we often do not know the initial density of substance, but we can observe the density at a positive moment. The backward problem is ill-posed and we propose a regularizing scheme by using Tikhonov regularization method. We also prove the convergence rate for the regularized solution by using an a priori regularization parameter choice rule. Numerical examples illustrate applicability and high accuracy of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tracking spatial and temporal trends of events (e.g. disease outbreaks and natural disasters) is important for situation awareness and timely response. Social media, with increasing popularity, provide an effective way to collect event-related data from massive populations and thus a significant opportunity to dynamically monitor events as they emerge and evolve. While existing research has demonstrated the value of social media as sensors in event detection, estimating potential time spans and influenced areas of an event from social media remains challenging. Challenges include the unstable volumes of available data, the spatial heterogeneity of event activities and social media data, and the data sparsity. This paper describes a systematic approach to detecting potential spatiotemporal patterns of events by resolving these challenges through several interrelated strategies: using kernel density estimation for smoothed social media intensity surfaces; utilizing event-unrelated social media posts to help map relative event prevalence; and normalizing event indicators based on historical fluctuation. This approach generates event indicator maps and significance maps explaining spatiotemporal variations of event prevalence to identify space-time regions with potentially abnormal event activities. The approach has been applied to detect influenza activity patterns in the conterminous US usingTwitterdata. A set of experiments demonstrated that our approach produces high-resolution influenza activity maps that could be explained by available ground truth data. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Numerical climate model simulations run at high spatial and temporal resolutions generate massive quantities of data. As our computing capabilities continue to increase, storing all of the data is not sustainable, and thus it is important to develop methods for representing the full datasets by smaller compressed versions. We propose a statistical compression and decompression algorithm based on storing a set of summary statistics as well as a statistical model describing the conditional distribution of the full dataset given the summary statistics. We decompress the data by computing conditional expectations and conditional simulations from the model given the summary statistics. Conditional expectations represent our best estimate of the original data but are subject to oversmoothing in space and time. Conditional simulations introduce realistic small-scale noise so that the decompressed fields are neither too smooth nor too rough compared with the original data. Considerable attention is paid to accurately modeling the original dataset—1 year of daily mean temperature data—particularly with regard to the inherent spatial nonstationarity in global fields, and to determining the statistics to be stored, so that the variation in the original data can be closely captured, while allowing for fast decompression and conditional emulation on modest computers. Supplementary materials for this article are available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frame analysis has been developed and applied across contexts in several disciplines such as policy analysis, where the perspective has proven fruitful to carve out essential differences in the construction of meaning and to understand the responsiveness of the strategic use of ideas. However, this article argues in line with other scholars that the analytical potential of frame analysis is not fully utilized in most empirical studies. The article addresses two points of critique raised against frame analytical perspectives: the limited view of the framing process and the limited understanding of frame effects. We suggest two analytical dimensions that help to develop the analytical potential of frame analysis in policy analysis and beyond: firstly, the institutionalization process of frames which can capture the struggle of meaning within policy processes and also distinguish between the varying influences of different frames over space and time. Secondly, the extension of frame effects that through a reconceptualization of frame effects can capture how a frame has an effect on actors other than the audience and beyond its immediate purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an effort to draw attention to the mobile dimensions of meaning making, this article proposes a pedagogy of transliteracies, supporting educators and learners in critically reflecting on how people, media, and things are connected across space and time. Expanding on the New London Group's (1996) multiliteracies vision of communicative and ideological multiplicities, we articulate the importance of moving from multi- to trans- to highlight the mobile and emergent aspects of meaning making. We work through a classroom example to consider the contours of literacies and learning practices for making meaning on the move. We argue that in a mobile and digitally networked world, a pedagogy of transliteracies draws much needed attention to people and things connecting, relating, and intersecting, and also to how these connections, relations, and intersections occur in unequal ways that support some learners and disenfranchise others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ambient air pollutant levels vary widely in space and time, therefore thorough local evaluation of possible effects is needed. In vitro approaches using lung cell cultures grown at the air-liquid interface and directly exposed to ambient air can offer a reliable addition to animal experimentations and epidemiological studies. To evaluate the adverse effects of ambient air in summer and winter a multi-cellular lung model (16HBE14o-, macrophages, and dendritic cells) was exposed in a mobile cell exposure system. Cells were exposed on up to three consecutive days each 12 h to ambient air from Fribourg, Switzerland, during summer and winter seasons. Higher particle number, particulate matter mass, and nitrogen oxide levels were observed in winter ambient air compared to summer. Good cell viability was seen in cells exposed to summer air and short-term winter air, but cells exposed three days to winter air were compromised. Exposure of summer ambient air revealed no significant upregulation of oxidative stress or pro-inflammatory genes. On the opposite, the winter ambient air exposure led to an increased oxidative stress after two exposure days, and an increase in three assessed pro-inflammatory genes already after 12 h of exposure. We found that even with a short exposure time of 12 h adverse effects in vitro were observed only during exposure to winter but not summer ambient air. With this work we have demonstrated that our simple, fast, and cost-effective approach can be used to assess (adverse) effects of ambient air. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In some esoteric doctrines, time is not linear but cyclical, or even experienced as non-existent. This leads to a conception of music as spatial, rather than temporal, and resulting from the interplay of the universal principles of expansion and contraction. Platonic cosmology, based on the principles of the Same and the Different, also manifests in music on various quasi-fractal levels. The postwar avant-garde, especially, fostered the idea of music as a means for transcending time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Temporal Focus Hypothesis (TFH), space–time mappings in people’s minds are shaped by their attentional focus. Previous research has shown that numerous cultural and individual factors underpinning temporal focus may contribute to the direction of space–time mappings in people’s mental models. However, the role of time of day in shaping spatial conceptions of time has not been investigated. In a series of three experiments, Chinese participants, who were more likely to be future-focused in the morning than afternoon, were also more likely to produce a future-in-front mapping. However, this morning future-minded effect can only be found in morning people, suggesting a mediating role of chronotype processes. Taken together, the findings across studies suggest that people’s representations of time may arise from an interaction between a person’s chronotype and time-of-day, a phenomenon that we refer to as the chronotype future-minded effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managing geophysical data generated by emerging spatiotemporal data sources (e.g. geosensor networks) presents a growing challenge to Geographic Information System science. The presence of correlation poses difficulties with respect to traditional spatial data analysis. This paper describes a novel spatiotemporal analytical scheme that allows us to yield a characterization of correlation in geophysical data along the spatial and temporal dimensions. We resort to a multivariate statistical model, namely CoKriging, in order to derive accurate spatiotemporal interpolation models. These predict unknown data by utilizing not only their own geosensor values at the same time, but also information from near past data. We use a window-based computation methodology that leverages the power of temporal correlation in a spatial modeling phase. This is done by also fitting the computed interpolation model to data which may change over time. In an assessment, using various geophysical data sets, we show that the presented algorithm is often able to deal with both spatial and temporal correlations. This helps to gain accuracy during the interpolation phase, compared to spatial and spatiotemporal competitors. Specifically, we evaluate the efficacy of the interpolation phase by using established machine-learning metrics (i.e. root mean squared error, Akaike information criterion and computation time). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proves the existence of a bounded energy and integrated energy decay for solutions of the massless Vlasov equation in the exterior of a very slowly rotating Kerr spacetime. This combines methods previously developed to prove similar results for the wave equation on the exterior of a very slowly rotating Kerr spacetime with recent work applying the vector-field method to the relativistic Vlasov equation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I propose a novel interpretation of the role of the understanding in generating the unity of space and time. On the account I propose, we must distinguish between the unity that belongs to determinate spaces and times - which is a result of category-guided synthesis and which is Kant's primary focus in §26 of the B-Deduction, including the famous B160-1n - and the unity that belongs to space and time themselves as all-encompassing structures. Non-conceptualist readers of Kant have argued that this latter unity cannot be the product of categorial synthesis. While they are correct that this unity is not the product of any particular act of category-guided synthesis, I argue that conceptualists are right to nevertheless attribute this unity to the understanding. I argue that it is a result of what we can think of as the 'original' synthesis of understanding and sensibility themselves - it is a synthesis, moreover, in which the whole is logically prior to the parts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of the Palaeo-Tethys Ocean played an important role in the Palaeozoic tectono-metallogenesis in Southeast Asia, in which diverse blocks amalgamated due to its closure. Previous researches focused mostly on endogenic metallogenesis related to the evolution of the Palaeo-Tethys Ocean. However, the tectonic control on the numerous Mn ore deposits in the southwestern South China Block (SCB) developed during Palaeo-Tethys evolution is largely unknown. In this article, we review Palaeo-Tethys evolution and define its four evolutionary stages from initial opening, maturity, incipient subduction, to post-closure. This study further investigated the geology and palaeogeography of Mn ore deposits in Upper Devonian, lower Carboniferous, middle Permian, and Lower-Middle Triassic formations in the southwestern SCB. We show that each of the four Mn metallogenic episodes was a response to each of the four evolutionary stages of the Palaeo-Tethys Ocean. Wall rocks of orebodies transitioned from chert-mudstone-carbonate in the Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian to siltstone-mudstone in Lower-Middle Triassic. The ores of the four episodes of Mn mineralization are composed primarily of rhodochrosite, manganocalcite, and rhodonite. The carbonate C–O isotope and ore trace element composition data suggest that ore-forming fluids were dominated by seafloor water with involvement of magmatic hydrothermal fluids and organic matter as well. Palaeogeography reconstructions indicate the Mn-ore deposits formed along the margins or in the centre of the abyssal basins. Despite the diverse tectonic settings of the four Mn mineralization episodes, it is proposed that the crustal sagging, restricted seafloor environment, and hydrothermal activities that occurred in the southwestern margin of SCB contributed to Mn mineralization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We generalize our unique continuation results recently established for a class of linear and nonlinear wave equations□gϕ+σϕ = 𝒢(ϕ,∂ϕ) on asymptotically anti-de Sitter (aAdS) spacetimes to aAdS spacetimes admitting nonstatic boundary metrics. The new Carleman estimates established in this setting constitute an essential ingredient in proving unique continuation results for the full nonlinear Einstein equations, which will be addressed in forthcoming papers. Key to the proof is a new geometrically adapted construction of foliations of pseudo-convex hypersurfaces near the conformal boundary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In The Encounter, Simon McBurney uses binaural technology to recreate the vast Amazonian forest, while reducing the set to a desk, a chair, and a microphone. This study suggests that Complicite’s immersive production is built on a performative contradiction, combining visual distance with auditory intimacy in order to disrupt theatrical scale. These switches in scale are linked to the company’s previous micropoetics, arguing that The Encounter enacts technologically the search for connectivity that was previously explored metaphorically through neurobiology, mathematics, and particle physics in Mnemonic and A Disappearing Number. A comparative approach reveals the company’s development of an organicist aesthetics over the years, which finds its metaphorical roots in the scale-dependent paradigms of contemporary science, and construes microscopic environments as mirror images of the macro-environment. Because it employs the network as both a concrete tool and a cognitive paradigm,The Encounter effectively enacts the neurological substrate of the company’s work. It also offers a new experiment in theatrical perception: the way McBurney plays with the ‘grain’ size of our perception of time creates a unique experience,in which multiple resolutions coexist on stage. This show confirms several key features of Complicite’s organicism: a search for coherence which feeds on biological images, yet plays with scale to connect the microscopic to the environmental, and the individual to the group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographically weight seemingly unrelated regression is a useful technique to explore the temporal and spatial heterogeneity simultaneously in space-time data analysis. In this article, a local linear-based estimating approach is developed to estimate the unknown coefficient functions. Some simulations are conducted to examine the performance of our proposed method and the results are satisfactory. Finally, a real data example is considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Space-time prisms envelop all spatio-temporal locations that moving objects may have visited between two of their known spatio-temporal locations, given a bound on their travel speed. In this context, the known locations are often the result of observations or measurements, and they are called ‘anchor points’. The classic space-time prism, in isotropic two-dimensional space, as well as in transportation networks, assumes that the measurements of these anchor points are exact. Whereas, in many applications, we can assume that time can be measured fairly precisely, this assumption is unrealistic for the spatial components of measured locations (we think of Global Positioning System (GPS) errors, for instance). In this paper, we extend the classical prism from anchor points to circular ‘anchor regions’ that capture the uncertainty or error on their measurement. We define the notion of a space-time prism with uncertain anchor points, called uncertain prism, for short. We study the geometry of uncertain prisms in an arbitrary metric space to make this concept as widely applicable as possible. We also focus on the rims of uncertain space-time prisms, which demarcate the area that a moving object can have visited between two anchor regions (given some local speed limitations). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complex, dynamic and non-linear characteristics of land use change (LUC) modelling necessitate the development of advanced models and methods. In this research, a novel and stepwise approach is developed for modelling integrated LUC at the regional level based on land suitability, land demand and land use conversion rules. The aim of this model is to use different models (i.e. geographic information systems, remote sensing, fuzzy logic, cellular automata and multi-criteria decision analysis) in a logical way to improve model development, model evaluation and prediction of LUC. The proposed model was implemented in ‘Borkhar and Meymeh’ township, Iran, for two periods (1986–1998 and 1998–2005). Results for producer accuracy, user accuracy, overall accuracy and figure of merit were 0.345, 0.357, 0.351, 0.234 respectively in the first period (1986–1998) and 0.302, 0.287, 0.0.294, 0.202 respectively in the second period (1998–2005). Our results suggest that the developed model is accurate, when compared with the results of existing models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have drawn attention to the way that elements of Anne Conway's system anticipate ideas found in Leibniz. This paper explores the relationship between Conway and Leibniz's work with regard to time, space, and process. It argues - against existing scholarship - that Conway is not a proto-Leibnizian relationist about time or space, and in fact her views lie much closer to those of Henry More; yet Conway and Leibniz agree on the primacy of process. This exploration advances our understanding of Conway's system, and the intellectual relationships between Conway, More, and Leibniz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies focused on the linkages between the Bologna Process and system – as well as organizational-level changes – implying significance of the process for higher education policy dynamics. However, what has been lacking is a closer examination of the political importance of Bologna for the different actors involved and whether this varies over time, space and types of actors. The present study investigates the changes in the size and rank of delegations of national governments and European stakeholder organizations to the Bologna ministerial conferences in order to assess Bologna's political saliency in relation to (1) a more concrete interest in the actual European policy preferences for higher education and (2) an interest in the symbolic aspect of European policy coordination in higher education. The results suggest that the Bologna Process is primarily losing political appeal for the national governments of European Union (EU) members, while for the EU candidates and potential members as well as for the European stakeholder organizations it remains politically salient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global wellposedness inLp(ℝ) for the Chern–Simons–Dirac equation in the 1+1 space and time dimension is discussed. We consider two types of quadratic nonlinearity: the null case and the non-null case. We show the time global wellposedness for the Chern–Simon–Dirac equation in the framework ofLp(ℝ), where 1≤p≤∞ for the null case. For the scaling critical case,p = 1, mass concentration phenomena of the solutions may occur in considering the time global solvability. We invoke the Delgado–Candy estimate which plays a crucial role in preventing concentration phenomena of the global solution. Our method is related to the original work of Candy (2011), who showed the time global wellposedness for the single Dirac equation with cubic nonlinearity in the critical spaceL2(ℝ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this article is on what I conceive as a form of comic-chronotope particular to Gilbert Hernandez. His works present a specific interconnection between time and space that radicalises the common chronotopic device of the comic form. I argue that, by carefully organising these essential elements (time and space) in a concrete whole within his narratives, Hernandez is also re-imaging his context, history and sense of identity with the use of the comic form. To make it visible, I will first analyse Hernandez’sLuba Comics(2000–2004),Chance in Hell(2007), to illustrate what I understand by comic-chronotope on a literal level, and also to highlight the use that Hernandez makes of it that is specific to the medium and that at the same time defines his voice. Finally, I will useJulio’s Day(2013) to discuss the unfolding of its spatial and temporal indicators into an explicit form of historicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we develop a unified difference-spectral method for stably solving time–space fractional sub-diffusion and super-diffusion equations. Based on the equivalence between Volterra integral equations and fractional ordinary differential equations with initial conditions, this proposed method is constructed by combining the spectral Galerkin method in space and the fractional trapezoid formula in time. Numerical experiments are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the method, and demonstrate that the unified method can achieve spectral accuracy in space and second-order accuracy in time for solving two kinds of time–space fractional diffusion equations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pursuit of hidden truth and the subtle lies we tell ourselves, the barriers or iron curtains erected that impede a deeper connection to ourselves, others, and the ineffable world of spirit, are themes addressed in this article through the character Carrie Mathieson (Claire Danes), a CIA operative in the Showtime seriesHomeland. Carrie, who suffers from a bipolar disorder, has the gift of uncanny knowing. She is a “shamanic-like” figure who is able to allow for the disintegration of ego boundaries in the service of a higher aim. The author explores the price of maintaining a protective cloak of “normality” and contends that Carrie’ssacredwound takes her behind her defensive structure, opening her to deep truths and transformative love, while also cracking open her psyche into what the physicist David Bohm describes as theImplicate Order—a fundamental order of reality where space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationship between elements. Also drawing on a personal experience of living in the Eastern Block and a series of dreams of going behind the Iron Curtain, the author explores the disruption to the old personality that occurs when moving beyond barriers or defenses. She asks, “Does living on the ‘frontier of your identity’ mean disassembling the personality as we know it?” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the dynamics of anN-link planar pendulum in the perspective of fractional calculus. The proposed methodology leads to a novel point of view for signal propagation as a time-space wave within the system mechanical structure. Numerical simulations show the effectiveness of the approach both for signal visualisation and limit cycle detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we consider the local Cauchy problem for a system of nonlinear Schrödinger equations with non pseudo-conformally invariant interactions in the framework of space of charge and in the framework of space of energy. The main purpose of this study is to construct local solutions in function spaces of analytic vectors for the Galilei generator and the pseudo-conformal generator with data which satisfy exponentially decaying condition at spatial infinity. In particular, we improve the nonlinear estimates have been proved by Hayashi and Kato and Ozawa et al. involving the pseudo-conformal generator with coefficient which depends on time of local existence of solutions and has singularity at finite value. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Brightness temperature (BT) images acquired via satellite platforms are at the core of Earth Observation applications, aiding activities such as agriculture, forestry, and urbanization management. However, said applications may suffer from limitations on the spatial resolution and/or acquisition rate of image sequences. Indeed, due to physical constraints on the sensing devices and on the orbiting platforms, the information is typically sparse in either space or time. This problem can be faced through data fusion techniques that yield improved synthetic images by taking advantage of multisensor data. In this work, we address the specific issue of enhancing image sequences through deterministic interpolation and combination procedures. We assume that an high temporal resolution/low spatial resolution (htr/LSR) sequence is available along with a low temporal resolution/high spatial resolution (ltr/HSR) and propose an approach to obtain an htr/HSR sequence consisting in three steps: (i) spatially interpolating the htr/LSR sequence; (ii) temporally interpolating the ltr/HSR sequence; and (iii) combining the two intermediate sequences. We consider and assess comparatively several options to carry out the three steps on thermal infrared images acquired by the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors acting as the htr/LSR and the ltr/HSR sequence, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As to recover a time-dependent heat source under an extra temperature measured at an interior point, we can reformulate it to be a three-point boundary value problem. We can develop a coupled boundary integral equation method, wherein by selecting two sets of adjoint test eigenfunctions in two sub domains and using polynomials as the trial functions of unknown heat source, the time-dependent heat source is recovered very well and quickly. Four numerical examples, including a discontinuous one, demonstrate the efficiency for the ill-posed inverse heat source problem in a large time duration and under a large noise up to 10–30%. Then, selecting three sets of adjoint test eigenfunctions in three domains: problem domain and two sub domains, and using the Pascal polynomials as trial functions, the unknown space-time-dependent heat source is recovered very fast and accurately from the solution of three coupled boundary integral equations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this study, proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) method is applied to diffusion–convection–reaction equation, which is discretized using space–time discontinuous Galerkin (dG) method. We provide estimates for POD truncation error in dG-energy norm, dG-elliptic projection, and space–time projection. Using these new estimates, we analyze the error between the dG and the POD solution, and the error between the exact and the POD solution. Numerical results, which are consistent with theoretical convergence rates, are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work represents a natural outlet of recent investigation about the well-posed question for the time differential three-phase-lag model of thermoelasticity. We deal with a cylindrical domain filled by an anisotropic and inhomogeneous thermoelastic material and assume that the initial-boundary data as well as the external supply terms that characterize the problem in concern are concentrated in a compact region of the considered volume. Within such a framework, we show the spatial behavior of the solutions in terms of existence of a domain of influence of the assigned data. We will remark that our results are obtained under restrictions involving the constitutive tensors and the delay times that are in complete agreement with the hypotheses that make the time differential three-phase-lag model thermodynamically consistent. The case of a semi-infinite cylindrical domain is also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Space–Time Cube (STC) is a suitable representation to display multiple characteristics of movement data and will especially reveal temporal patterns in the data. By adding annotations to the cube’s paths and stations, the narrative of the display is enhanced. To illustrate the STC’s storytelling capabilities, a historical event, Napoleon’s crossing of the Berezina River during his Russian campaign in 1812 is presented and linked to an event in 2012 when the authors made a similar trip. Also, a set of different visual queries and their results are presented, emphasizing the STC as an alternative addition to a more extended visualization environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines presence as a performed spatio-temporal relationship. It acknowledges Rose and Coonfield’s recent analysis of presence as an “experience of thisness” before employing haiku as an aesthetic and theoretical lens for navigating the performance of presence. The “haiku moment” signals an effort to reconcile aesthetic representation with direct experience through evocative movement across time and space, a movement that emerges in relation to text, context, and audience. Richard Wright’s posthumously published haiku project, “This Other World,” offers a particularly useful case study that demonstrates presence as intertextual, imaginative, and metonymic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a numerical regularization approach to the simultaneous determination of multiplicative space- and time-dependent source functions in a nonlinear inverse heat conduction problem with homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions together with specified interior and final time temperature measurements. Under these conditions a unique solution is known to exist. However, the inverse problem is still ill-posed since small errors in the input interior temperature data cause large errors in the output heat source solution. For the numerical discretisation, the boundary element method combined with a regularized nonlinear optimization are utilized. Results obtained from several numerical tests are provided in order to illustrate the efficiency of the adopted computational methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Kramsch's conceptualization of the multilingual subject and the symbolic self, in this paper, we explore how multilingual children re-signify three intertwined myths about the bilingual student, linguistic diversity and language competence, when, in the researcher-generated activityMy linguistic world 2014, they are invited to map and talk about their lived experiences as multiple language users seen in the light of place and movement. By demythifying themselves and their linguistic worlds, the children also raise important questions about the notion of linguistic competence. By perceiving competences from a subjective child perspective, we learn how children do what we calltimespacing competence. On that basis, we suggest paying attention to how children themselves timespace competence by focusing (more consistently) on the subjective, social, spatial and temporal dimensions of (knowing) language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many physical and sociological processes are represented as discrete events in time and space. These spatio-temporal point processes are often sparse, meaning that they cannot be aggregated and treated with conventional regression models. Models based on the point process framework may be employed instead for prediction purposes. Evaluating the predictive performance of these models poses a unique challenge, as the same sparseness prevents the use of popular measures such as the root mean squared error. Statistical likelihood is a valid alternative, but this does not measure absolute performance and is therefore difficult for practitioners and researchers to interpret. Motivated by this limitation, we develop a practical toolkit of evaluation metrics for spatio-temporal point process predictions. The metrics are based around the concept of hotspots, which represent areas of high point density. In addition to measuring predictive accuracy, our evaluation toolkit considers broader aspects of predictive performance, including a characterisation of the spatial and temporal distributions of predicted hotspots and a comparison of the complementarity of different prediction methods. We demonstrate the application of our evaluation metrics using a case study of crime prediction, comparing four varied prediction methods using crime data from two different locations and multiple crime types. The results highlight a previously unseen interplay between predictive accuracy and spatio-temporal dispersion of predicted hotspots. The new evaluation framework may be applied to compare multiple prediction methods in a variety of scenarios, yielding valuable new insight into the predictive performance of point process-based prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The domestic home is usually theorized as negotiated and structured space-time and as an emotional attachment to people and places. However, the increasing number of people living on their own brings about the question of how home is experienced, embodied, and narrated by solo-living individuals, especially in terms of ordering and stability under the flexible and fluid nature of some other realms, such as paid work. Following the affordance approach in studies of home, our aim is to integrate research on practices, materialities, and narratives of domestic homes. Our main question concerns how home is perceived, experienced, and performed by childless solo-living people and how they understand the stability of their dwelling—one of the main characteristics of home in social theory. To broaden this “traditional” concept of home, we build upon the emphasis on stability with the notion of flow, as presented by Deleuze and Guattari, along with the concept of boundary work, to describe the processes of delineation between these two from the level of mundane “doings.” Through in-depth interviews conducted using the go-along technique, combined with walking through the dwellings and some of the neighborhoods, we explore the ambivalence of stability, permanence, and temporariness, and the interconnection between materialities and meanings. The appropriation of space and time enables solo-living people to dwell comfortably, while also materializing and stabilizing the sometimes unwanted state of singleness or living alone. In contrast, the unfinished nature of some homes indicates a provisional state of being, pointing out that the current situation is still not satisfactory, being more open to change; however, it might lead to permanent living in unpleasant or even un-homey homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental data is typically indexed in space and time. This work deals with modelling spatio-temporal air quality data, when multiple measurements are available for each space-time point. Typically this situation arises when different measurements referring to several response variables are observed in each space-time point, for example, different pollutants or size resolved data on particular matter. Nonetheless, such a kind of data also arises when using a mobile monitoring station moving along a path for a certain period of time. In this case, each spatio-temporal point has a number of measurements referring to the response variable observed several times over different locations in a close neighbourhood of the space-time point. We deal with this type of data within a hierarchical Bayesian framework, in which observed measurements are modelled in the first stage of the hierarchy, while the unobserved spatio-temporal process is considered in the following stages. The final model is very flexible and includes autoregressive terms in time, different structures for the variance-covariance matrix of the errors, and can manage covariates available at different space-time resolutions. This approach is motivated by the availability of data on urban pollution dynamics: fast measures of gases and size resolved particulate matter have been collected using an Optical Particle Counter located on a cabin of a public conveyance that moves on a monorail on a line transect of a town. Urban microclimate information is also available and included in the model. Simulation studies are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed model over existing alternatives that do not model data over the first stage of the hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional information science generally considers an information process, but traditionally uses the probability measure for random events, and Shannon’s entropy measure as an uncertainty function of the states. The cutting process on separated states decreases quantity information concealed in the states correlation, holding hidden process information. Up to now, “information process” has not had a scientifically conclusive definition nor its implicit structure. The presenting information process performs logical operations with discrete information units (Bits) to achieve a goal, integrating the discrete mutually connected sequence of symbols and the extracting process’ hidden information in the structure of an information Observer. The probing time-space observation develops the unit of space-time geometry-memorizing logic. The defined information process starts generating observations of a random process via the logic of probing impulses, sequentially cutting the process entropy measure and creating the discrete information units whose integration enfolds the information geometrical structure of an Observer. Found composite stages of the information process and the synthesized optimal process trajectory minimize observation time in an artificially designed information Observer with intellectual searching logic. The analytical modeling, computer simulations, and experimental applications validate the results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article argues that the personal biographies of people who experience warfare show that control and power are produced from more-than-human relations and that the inclusion of the place of the more-than-human in biography cultural geography can expose the hybridity in warfare. Topics include the spatiality of biography such as the time-space concept of geographer Torsten Hägerstrand, and the desert as a more-than-human space as illustrated by Great Britain's Long Range Desert Group.