Catastrophic Change Research Articles

Applying the Rumsfeld Matrix: Unknown Unknown Climate Risks in an AMOC Collapse Scenario

This paper investigates scientific research using Rumsfeld’s typology to grasp uncertainties in an era of ‘catastrophic climate change and the risk landscape of a ‘2°C-3°C world’. The study highlights the importance of 'unknown unknowns' and the emergence of 'Black Swan' climate events, such as frequent 500-year droughts and discusses how adaptive strategies can be crafted today, building on the “unknown knowns” of the past, such as the Great American Dust Bowl. It emphasizes the need for a structured approach to uncertainty in water resource management, relevant for understanding climate change’s significant impact on water cycles, evident in phenomena like cloudbursts and prolonged droughts. Additionally, research into abrupt climate change, such as the potential mid-century collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is analyzed using the Rumsfeld matrix to understand research gaps and generate insights for further study.

Центральные образы и мотивы поздних стихотворений Геннадия Шпаликова (статья первая)

The material of the late poems by G. Shpalikov, one of the prominent representatives of poetry during the Khrushchev Thaw era, is singled out and examined in terms of the sphere of key images and motifs in the poet’s artistic world, which are encoded by the ontological-tragic situation of the lyrical subject in the enclosed chronotope of society. The central motifs of Shpalikov’s work during this period have been identified: motifs of loneliness, rootlessness, abandonment, vulnerability, farewell, hopelessness, and suicide. The semantic structure of the artistic world of the late (and not only late) poems is marked by a ternary model of “nature — human — civilization/society.” The movement of the “plot” in most late poems is determined by the internal catastrophic change in the psychological state of the lyrical subject, seeking voluntary departure from life, which is reflected in the expressive, emotionally evaluative, and reduced lexicon, the tightness of poetic lines, and tense syntax.

SOCIAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CURRENT PROBLEMS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The development of artificial intelligence technologies is an important condition for the formation of a digital society. However, according to a number of AI developers and researchers, this process can lead to catastrophic changes in the social, economic, and political spheres. The article discusses modern points of view on the risks of AI development: analyses the opinions of AI developers about the possible risks of technology development, describes the directions of philosophical research in AI, analyses forecasts of the social consequences of technology development. The scientific novelty lies in the integrated approach to considering the problem, based on the analysis of the social and ethical risks of AI. The article shows that at the moment the main means of preventing the risks of AI is to improve the system of its ethical and legal regulation. As a result, conclusions are drawn about the possible prospects for the development of the most complex problems of AI in the socio-philosophical context.

(Best Student Poster Award) Energy Harvesting from Carbon Dioxide Capture through an Ionic Liquid Based Supercapacitor

Nowadays, Earth is undergoing effects of climate change due to the exponential increase of greenhouse gasses's emissions. The main component of greenhouse emissions is carbon dioxide (CO2), which is estimated responsible for about 60% of global warming generated by human activities, and its concentration is increased by 40% with respect to the concentration at the beginnings of industrial era. This increase is due to several factors such as the combustion of coal, oil and gas and the progressive deforestation: this last phenomenon generates a sort of bottleneck in the so called biogeochemical "carbon cycle". Deforestation causes the lack of one of the natural regulating sources of carbon dioxide concentration.Scientific community set an increase of 2°C (with respect to the pre-industrial global temperature) as the threshold beyond which there is a much higher risk that dangerous and possibly catastrophic changes in the global environment will occur. At the moment the increase of the temperature has reached about +0,85°C thanks to greenhouse gasses. All technologies developed in CO2 capturing have to be intended in the reduction of global warming.The goal of the presented work is to develop a device able to cut down greenhouse emissions by reusing human produced carbon dioxide. This can be done exploiting the free energy released each time two solutions with different compositions are mixed. Even if this phenomenon holds true both for liquids and gases, in last decades it was deeply investigated for what concerns liquid sources (CapMix), while few technologies are available to harvest free energy coming from gas sources. The adopted structure is an electrical double layer super-capacitor based on ionic liquid electrolyte. Special attention should be paid to the choice of the electrolyte which should work both as an electrolyte and CO2 absorbing medium in a CapMix cell. Among the tested ionic liquids, the choice fell on an Imidazole based ionic liquid, which showed excellent absorption rates of gas, being able to capture 15.67% of CO2 over the total mass.This work is a proof of concept of a novel not yet studied mechanism, which is able to work without any imposed external bias. When a CO2 gas stream is flushed through the supercapacitor, the gas strongly affects the electrode/IL interface and the IL physico-chemical properties, producing a change in the potential difference between the electrodes. In this way it is possible to convert the mixing energy into electrical energy. Figure 1

Forest restoration and fuels reduction work: Different pathways for achieving success in the Sierra Nevada.

Fire suppression and past selective logging of large trees have fundamentally changed frequent-fire-adapted forests in California. The culmination of these changes produced forests that are vulnerable to catastrophic change by wildfire, drought, and bark beetles, with climate change exacerbating this vulnerability. Management options available to address this problem include mechanical treatments (Mech), prescribed fire (Fire), or combinations of these treatments (Mech + Fire). We quantify changes in forest structure and composition, fuel accumulation, modeled fire behavior, intertree competition, and economics from a 20-year forest restoration study in the northern Sierra Nevada. All three active treatments (Fire, Mech, Mech + Fire) produced forest conditions that were much more resistant to wildfire than the untreated control. The treatments that included prescribed fire (Fire, Mech + Fire) produced the lowest surface and duff fuel loads and the lowest modeled wildfire hazards. Mech produced low fire hazards beginning 7 years after the initial treatment and Mech + Fire had lower tree growth than controls. The only treatment that produced intertree competition somewhat similar to historical California mixed-conifer forests was Mech + Fire, indicating that stands under this treatment would likely be more resilient to enhanced forest stressors. While Fire reduced modeled wildfire hazard and reintroduced a fundamental ecosystem process, it was done at a net cost to the landowner. Using Mech that included mastication and restoration thinning resulted in positive revenues and was also relatively strong as an investment in reducing modeled wildfire hazard. The Mech + Fire treatment represents a compromise between the desire to sustain financial feasibility and the desire to reintroduce fire. One key component to long-term forest conservation will be continued treatments to maintain or improve the conditions from forest restoration. Many Indigenous people speak of "active stewardship" as one of the key principles in land management and this aligns well with the need for increased restoration in western US forests. If we do not use the knowledge from 20+ years of forest research and the much longer tradition of Indigenous cultural practices and knowledge, frequent-fire forests will continue to be degraded and lost.

Building Adaptive Coping and Knowledge to Improve Daily Life (Back2Life): A Pilot Feasibility Trial for Youth with Chronic Sickle Cell Pain

Introduction: Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for pain is an effective non-pharmacological treatment for chronic pain management, yet can have limited generalizability, access, and reach for underrepresented populations like youth with sickle cell disease (SCD). We aimed to conduct a single-arm proof-of-concept clinical trial to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of Back2Life, an adapted, culturally congruent CBT intervention for youth with chronic SCD pain and their parents. We hypothesized that Back2Life would be feasible and acceptable as demonstrated by high levels of treatment engagement (≥80% attendance of treatment sessions) and satisfaction. We also expected clinically significant reductions in pain and pain interference and improvements in pain coping efficacy from baseline to 3-month follow-up (primary endpoint) and 6-month follow-up (maintenance endpoint). Methods: Youth receiving care at comprehensive SCD clinics at 3 tertiary care locations within a southeast children's hospital were included if they were aged 10-18 years, any SCD genotype, reported chronic pain (i.e., pain on most days per month for at least 3 months), had English fluency, and had stable disease-modifying treatments in the past 3 months. Youth were excluded if they had comorbid medical conditions typically associated with pain but unrelated to SCD, had significant cognitive or developmental limitations that would interfere with study procedures, or received ≥ 3 sessions of outpatient psychological therapy for pain management in the preceding 6 months. Patients completed assessments at baseline, post-treatment, 3-month follow-up, and 6-month follow-up. Primary outcomes included pain characteristics (i.e., intensity, frequency, burden), pain interference, and coping self-efficacy. Secondary outcomes included depressive symptoms, pain catastrophizing, and sleep quality. The Back2Life program included evidence-based CBT treatment manuals that were adapted based on qualitative feedback from patient and parent stakeholders to optimize the cultural congruence and relevance to chronic SCD pain. Back2Life was an adaptive treatment comprised of 6-10 module-based sessions delivered by a behavioral health coach via telehealth. All participants received 6 core sessions and up to 4 additional sessions were included to optimize tailored treatment components to address individual family needs. Tailored sessions targeted common co-morbidities associated with chronic pain and were identified based on findings of the baseline assessment. Families also could opt-in to tailored sessions based on interest. Descriptive statistics were conducted to evaluate feasibility and acceptability metrics as well as clinically significant changes in primary and secondary clinical outcomes. Results: Youth (n=20) were on average 15.9 years old (SD=1.6), 50% female, 100% Black or African American, and 95% Non-Hispanic/Latinx. Most (80%) had hemoglobin types HbSS or HbSβ 0. Feasibility and acceptability ratings were high, including 85% consent rate, 80% initiated study procedures, 100% treatment session completion, 93% intervention fidelity, 100% reported moderate-high treatment satisfaction, and strong qualitative feedback suggested treatment acceptance. Patients reported clinically significant changes from baseline to 6-month follow-up in pain frequency (>35% reduction), worst and typical pain intensities (>30% reduction), SCD pain burden (>30% reduction), pain interference (moderate to mild severity), and improvement in pain coping self-efficacy (see Table 1). Patients also reported changes in pain catastrophizing (high to moderate severity), depressive symptoms (mild severity to within normal limits), and no change in sleep quality. Conclusions: The Back2Life treatment program demonstrated high feasibility and acceptability, participant engagement, participant retention, and meaningful changes in patient-reported outcomes. An adapted, culturally congruent, telehealth-delivered CBT for pain intervention tailored to meet the unique needs experienced by youth with chronic SCD pain can promote increased access, reach, and health equity in SCD.

Expanding the availability of soybean oil for renewable diesel with a high oil–low protein cultivar

AbstractIt is imperative that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions decrease rapidly to limit global warming and prevent catastrophic climate change. Renewable diesel fuel, made from vegetable oil, is playing an increasingly important role in reducing emissions in the transportation sector that is hard to electrify (long‐haul trucking, shipping, and aviation). Increasing the use of renewable diesel made from soybean oil will increase the competition for crop land between food and fuel. This conflict could be reduced by the development of a high‐yielding soybean cultivar producing seeds containing very high oil and very low protein concentrations. The well‐known inverse relationships between oil and protein concentrations and protein concentration and yield suggest that development of such a cultivar is possible. A high oil–low protein, high yielding cultivar dedicated to oil production would produce substantially more oil per unit area and reduce the food/fuel conflict.

A Web-Based Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Couples Dealing With Chronic Cancer-Related Fatigue: Protocol for a Single-Arm Pilot Trial.

Chronic fatigue is a common symptom among patients who have been treated for cancer. Current psychosocial interventions typically target the patient alone, despite growing evidence suggesting that a couples' approach can increase and broaden the efficacy of an intervention. Therefore, based on an existing web-based mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for patients, the couple intervention COMPANION was developed. The primary objectives of this study are to determine the acceptability of COMPANION and its potential efficacy in reducing fatigue in patients with cancer. Our secondary objectives are to examine the feasibility of the trial procedures and the potential working mechanisms of the couple intervention. We will conduct a single-arm pilot trial for couples (ie, patients with cancer with chronic fatigue and their partners). All couples are allocated to the web-based couple intervention that consists of psychoeducation, mindfulness, and cognitive-behavioral exercises. The 9 sessions of the intervention are supervised remotely by a trained therapist. Patients and partners will complete questionnaires before starting the intervention (T0), 2 weeks after completing the intervention (T1), and 1 month after T1 (T2). They will also fill out weekly diaries during the intervention period. A subsample of patients (n≈5) and partners (n≈5) as well as all the therapists providing COMPANION will participate in the final focus groups. Benchmark values have been defined to determine the acceptability (ie, ≥60% of couples complete the intervention and/or ≥70% of the participants are satisfied with the intervention) and potential efficacy (ie, a significant improvement in fatigue and/or a clinically relevant improvement in fatigue in 45% of the patients between T0 and T1) of the intervention. The trial procedures are deemed feasible if an average of at least three couples are included per recruiting month and/or adherence to the assessments is at least 65% for T1 and the diaries and 60% for T2. To establish potential working mechanisms, changes in affect, sleep, catastrophizing, partner communication and interactions, self-efficacy, mindfulness, and closeness will be examined. Quantitative outcomes will be interpreted along with the results from the focus groups. Data collection is expected to be completed by March 2024. This pilot trial will test the first web-based mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for couples targeting chronic cancer-related fatigue. Findings will indicate whether proceeding with a randomized controlled trial is warranted. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05636696; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05636696. DERR1-10.2196/48329.

Modeling the transformation of the EU’s energy sector and its impact on carbon emissions in the context of an energy collapse

The European Union relies heavily on energy imports from foreign countries, especially for oil and natural gas. This reliance on energy imports exposes the EU to the risks of price fluctuations and interruptions in supply. The likelihood of a complete halt in natural gas deliveries significantly rises following the onset of a hybrid economic war between the Russian Federation and the EU. The use of “dirty fossil fuels” is one of the options for immediate compensation for the natural gas deficit. Therefore, due to the increase in carbon emissions, an energy collapse can have a direct impact on the climate. The goal of the proposed research is to develop a model for the transformation of the EU’s energy sector and its impact on carbon emissions in the context of catastrophic changes in the structure of energy imports. During the research, a simulation model of the development of a three-sector energy market was established. The driver of changes in the model is the minimization of CO2 emissions. The modeling has shown that under normal conditions, the role of renewable energy sources gradually increases. Modeling the conditions of “gas blackmail” has revealed that the emerged deficit in the system will be primarily compensated by the use of dirty fossil fuels.

“I'll take the easiest option please”. Carbon reduction preferences of the public

The depth and breadth of the climate crisis is well known, all sectors, industry, government and the individual have the potential to reduce emissions to slow or stop catastrophic climate change. To determine and evaluate the (revealed) preferences of the public in reducing their personal carbon emissions, a conjoint analysis survey, using the PAPRIKA (Potentially All Pairwise RanKings of all possible Alternatives) method, was distributed to the public in a city in the south of England (Southampton). Knowledge of the deep-seated preferences of the public makes a fundamental contribution to future climate actions because it enables publicly acceptable system change to be developed.Results showed the public were unwilling to make large-scale lifestyle changes, even if they would cause large emission reductions. There was a clear preference for making relatively easy, convenient changes to behaviour rather than making more difficult personal lifestyle changes involving diet and transportation. A significant value-action gap is evident, with the public showing high awareness of the seriousness of climate change but showing an unwillingness to make deep cuts to their personal emissions. Demography and personal factors had a relatively low influence over preferences with trends generally staying the same across demographic groups, aside from income brackets. Participants believed that reductions in emissions should come from a ‘group effort’ from all levels of government, business, environmental groups and individuals. Few participants placed themselves as individual drivers of carbon emission reduction. In order to reduce emissions some form of intervention needs to be made, as the public are not personally willing to make large-scale reductions in carbon emissions, regardless of their environmental awareness or demography.

The great catastrophe: causes of the Permo-Triassic marine mass extinction.

The marine losses during the Permo-Triassic mass extinction were the worst ever experienced. All groups were badly affected, especially amongst the benthos (e.g. brachiopods, corals, bryozoans, foraminifers, ostracods). Planktonic populations underwent a fundamental change with eukaryotic algae being replaced by nitrogen-fixing bacteria, green-sulphur bacteria, sulphate-reducing bacteria and prasinophytes. Detailed studies of boundary sections, especially those in South China, have resolved the crisis to a ∼55 kyr interval straddling the Permo-Triassic boundary. Many of the losses occur at the beginning and end of this interval painting a picture of a two-phase extinction. Improved knowledge of the extinction has been supported by numerous geochemical studies that allow diverse proposed extinction mechanisms to be studied. A transition from oxygenated to anoxic-euxinic conditions is seen in most sections globally, although the intensity and timing shows regional variability. Decreased ocean ventilation coincides with rapidly rising temperatures and many extinction scenarios attribute the losses to both anoxia and high temperatures. Other kill mechanisms include ocean acidification for which there is conflicting support from geochemical proxies and, even less likely, siltation (burial under a massive influx of terrigenous sediment) which lacks substantive sedimentological evidence. The ultimate driver of the catastrophic changes at the end of the Permian was likely Siberian Trap eruptions and their associated carbon dioxide emissions with consequences such as warming, ocean stagnation and acidification. Volcanic winter episodes stemming from Siberian volcanism have also been linked to the crisis, but the short-term nature of these episodes (<decades) and the overwhelming evidence for rapid warming during the crisis makes this an unlikely cause. Finally, whilst the extinction is well studied in equatorial latitudes, a different history is found in northern Boreal latitudes including an earlier crisis which merits further study in order to fully understand the course and cause of the Permo-Triassic extinctions.

Feasibility of Web-Based Single-Session Empowered Relief in Patients With Chronic Pain Taking Methadone or Buprenorphine: Protocol for a Single-Arm Trial.

Chronic pain affects tens of millions of US adults and continues to rise in prevalence. Nonpharmacologic behavioral pain treatments are greatly needed and yet are often inaccessible, particularly in settings where medication prescribing is prioritized. This study aims to test the feasibility of a live-instructor, web-based 1-session pain relief skills class in an underserved and potentially at-risk population: people with chronic pain prescribed methadone or buprenorphine either solely for pain or for comorbid opioid use disorder (OUD). This is a national, prospective, single-arm, uncontrolled feasibility trial. The trial is untethered from medical care; to enhance participants' willingness to join the study, no medical records or drug-monitoring records are accessed. At least 45 participants will be recruited from outpatient pain clinics and from an existing research database of individuals who have chronic pain and are taking methadone or buprenorphine. Patient-reported measures will be collected at 6 time points (baseline, immediately post treatment, 2 weeks, and months 1-3) via a web-based platform, paper, or phone formats to include individuals with limited internet or computer access and low literacy skills. At baseline, participants complete demographic questions and 13 study measures (Treatment Expectations, Body Pain Map, Medication Use, Pain Catastrophizing Scale [PCS], Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System [PROMIS] Measures, and Opioid Craving Scale). Immediately post treatment, a treatment satisfaction and acceptability measure is administered on a 0 (very dissatisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied) scale, with 3 of these items being the primary outcome (perceived usefulness, participant satisfaction, and likelihood of using the skills). At each remaining time point, the participants complete all study measures minus treatment expectations and satisfaction. Participants who do not have current OUD will be assessed for historical OUD, with presence of OUD (yes or no), and history of OUD (yes or no) reported separately. Feasibility threshold is set as an overall group treatment satisfaction rating of 8 of 10. In-depth qualitative interviews will be conducted with about 10 participants to obtain additional data on patient perceptions, satisfactions, needs, and wants. To assess preliminary efficacy, we will examine changes in pain catastrophizing, pain intensity, pain bothersomeness, sleep disturbance, pain interference, depression, anxiety, physical function, global impression of change, and opioid craving at 1 month post treatment. This project opened to enrollment in September 2021 and completed the recruitment in October 2023. The data collection was completed in February 2024. Results are expected to be published in late 2024. Results from this trial will inform the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of Empowered Relief in this population and will inform the design of a future randomized controlled trial testing web-based Empowered Relief in chronic pain and comorbid OUD. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05057988; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05057988. DERR1-10.2196/53784.

Working Like a Dog: Canine Labour, Technological Unemployment, and Extinction in Industrialising England

The turnspit dog, an extinct breed, powered English roasting spits from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries by rotating an apparatus comparable to a hamster wheel. It was not merely a working breed, however. It was an animal labourer. Breeders bred it solely for work. Contemporaries conceived of it as an industrious worker intrinsic to food production. Despite its importance, owners treated it contemptuously due to its utilitarian nature. Cooks replaced the dog with a machine, the smoke-jack, once the latter proved reliable. Rather than repackage it as a companion, the English ceased breeding it due to its inextricable connection with a disparaged trade. Industrialisation’s upheaval triggered the turnspit’s extinction by 1850. Examining its decline explicates how technological unemployment wrought catastrophic change on nonhumans. Elucidating comparable disturbances within cottage industry labour for canines and English workers provides scholars with a more-than-human understanding of industrialisation’s ramifications. Furthermore, uniting animal and labour history reconceives current theorisations of historical animals, affirms working animals’ past contributions and highlights their importance as labourers.

On Identity and the Political in Psychoanalysis

Weaving subjective musings with theoretical speculation, this paper explores various themes on the question of identity. I consider identity as identification with a social location, where that social location is a function of groups. As such, identity is inherently contingent, a relational affair, a soft assembly. Though not a particularly psychoanalytic concept, identity is currently being tasked with considerable work in psychoanalysis: functioning as a hinge between the dual registers of the personal and social unconscious. Like any symptom, the term identity both obscures and indexes, signaling the urgent need for a radical revision of theory. The more we use the contingency of identity—how we find ourselves identified (by others as much as by ourselves) in this place and time, whatever this might be—rather than its fixity, thought to transcend place and time, the more that the concept of identity can be used in a specifically psychoanalytic way to help us explore the terrain of the political, which I distinguish from the terrain of politics proper. These ideas are employed to consider the current moment in psychoanalytic organizational life, which takes place under the sign of a fundamental paradigm shift (that is to say: catastrophic change).

Planetary Health: Capitalism, Ecology and Eco-Socialism

ABSTRACT Adopting a critical anthropology of health perspective, informed by political ecology, we examine planetary health in the era of late capitalism or neoliberalism. The shift to a planetary health thinking was driven by the growing awareness that not only are all human communities now multiply linked together by flows of commodities, ideas, people, and health-related influences from vectors to medicines, but that the health of human communities is multiply linked to the environment including other species within us (e.g. gut flora) and around us. Within the planetary health framework, we focus specifically on both emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic, and the growing impact of anthropogenic climate change on health. While poorer regions of the world need economic development, that is, access to basic resources and health care, much of the developed world and parts of the developing world are, in a sense, overdeveloped. Perhaps more than any other issue, the ecological crisis, which includes catastrophic climate change allows critical scholars to contemplate the contradictions of the capitalist world system, including its implications for health, and to ponder the creation of an alternative world system, namely eco-socialism.

Mindfulness influences the psycho-social dimension of chronic pain: A randomized controlled clinical trial in Indian context.

In India, the awareness about the psycho-social dimension of chronic pain is minimal among physicians and patients. The research with community-based group therapies (like mindfulness) to address the psycho-social aspects in chronic pain patients remains limited. The aim of this randomized controlled trial was to see the effects of mindfulness on pain intensity, pain catastrophizing, chronic pain acceptance, perceived stress, well-being, and mindfulness characteristics. In this two-site, parallel group, clinical trial, 170 patients attending pain outdoors of two government hospitals in West Bengal, India, were randomized to attend five weekly in-person mindfulness sessions (cases) or usual care sessions (controls) within the hospital premises. Pre-program and post-program data were collected and analyzed using statistical methods like repeated measures analysis of variance. In participants of the mindfulness group, significant changes post session were noted in pain intensity [F(1,326) = 15.0122; P = 0.0001291], pain acceptance [F(1,326) = 4.5311; P = 0.03403], and perceived stress score [F(1,326) = 13.2788; P = 0.0003122] compared to pre-session. The changes in pain catastrophizing, World Health Organization well-being and Freiburg mindfulness inventory scores were non-specific. Mindfulness had a positive influence on pain intensity, pain acceptance, and perceived stress of Indian chronic pain patients. The effects on pain catastrophizing, mindfulness characteristics, and well-being (non-specific) were also encouraging. Further studies will be required to substantiate these results.

Forecasting rare earth stock prices with machine learning

Rare earth elements (REEs) are indispensable for producing green technologies and electronics. Demand for REEs in clean energy technologies in 2040 are projected to be three to seven times higher than today and will be critical to the clean technology transition needed to stave off catastrophic climate change. Forecasting rare earth stock prices is critical for making well informed investment decisions concerning this important asset class. Despite the latter, the literature on forecasting rare earth stock prices is scarce. We use machine learning techniques to forecast daily rare earth stock price direction. The analysis reveals that random forests, extremely randomized trees, RNN, and support vector machine have higher prediction accuracy than Lasso or Naïve Bayes. We find that the 10- to 20-day forecasts using random forests, extremely randomized trees, and support vector machine achieve prediction accuracies greater than 85% with some prediction accuracy reaching 90%. Lasso prediction accuracy is higher than Naïve Bayes but never greater than 67%. The MA200, MA50, on balance volume, VIX, and WAD are the most important predictive features of rare earth stock price direction. A switching portfolio that uses trading signals from an Extra Trees model impressively outperforms a buy and hold portfolio. Our results reveal the high prediction accuracy of using machine learning methods in forecasting rare earth stock price direction which should be useful to investors, policy makers and venture capitalists.

UKRAINIAN DIGITAL ART DURING THE FULL-SCALE RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN WAR

The purpose of the article is to find out how the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war and today's technological innovations affected the artistic community, the themes and the creative methods of Ukrainian digital art. The authors of the investigation, on the one hand, consider the digital works of Nikita Titov, Albina Yaloza, Kateryna Lisova, Mykhailo Rai, Oksana Chepelyk, Yulia Shibirkina, Zibra AI, ZViT, Beata Kurkul and Maria Sharlai, and others, and on the other hand, they highlight the biggest events related to the demonstration of digital art, in particular, “Artists support Ukraine”, “Meta History: Museum of War”, “Peace Letters to Ukraine”, “Art on the battlefront”, “UBIENNALE”, “Ukrainian wartime poster”, and others. The analysis of the collected material revealed that the vast majority of war posters are works of digital art, which in general has become one of the leading media in the work of Ukrainian artists. On the one hand, this was the result of a number of steps taken by the Ukrainian authorities aimed at liberalizing the cryptocurrency market, and encouraging computer game developers to fundraise with the help of NFT in support of Ukraine, on the other hand, the threat of Russian air attacks prompted representatives of the creative class to transfer a significant part of their activity to online, and see the benefits of digital art, which, compared to most traditional media, requires significantly less effort and resources to create, securely store, sell and display. The use of neural networks as a tool to create digital art has become one of the trends in war-themed art, but no catastrophic changes for visual art and design have been detected yet. A significant historical event after February 24, 2022 was the unprecedented support of Ukraine from the world cultural community, in particular, international developers of computer games, as well as famous artists of contemporary art, including Marina Abramovych, Ron Arad, Banksy, Francesco Vezzoli, Nan Goldin, Douglas Gordon, Ivan Messak, Lorenzo Quinn, Luke Tuymans, and others.

Great transformations: Social revolutions erupted during energy transitions around the world, 1500–2013

Over the past 500 years, the transition to fossil fuels has been accompanied by sociopolitical upheaval, revolution, and counterrevolution in countries around the world. Previous research found that social revolutions occurred during energy transitions in a limited sample of 38 countries. This research expanded the investigation to examine the relationship between shifts in the energy base of societies and transformative sociopolitical change in 66 countries since 1500, and to address new questions about these transitions. We found that two-thirds of all 52 identified revolutions occurred during the initial phase of the transition to fossil energy use (between 0.7 and 7.2 GJ/cap/year), a “critical energy transition phase” that lasted 42 years on average. This “critical energy transition phase” can be understood as an arena where social and economic adversaries met to contest past and future relations, a contest that resulted in turmoil, violence, and transformative social change. We also assess the impact of revolutions and counterrevolutions on the speed of energy transitions, finding that revolutions might accelerate transitions and repressions might slow them down. We also find that, in our sample, colonial rule slowed the pace of energy transitions for colonized subjects. These findings are significant because similar sociopolitical developments may be associated with the current energy transition in response to catastrophic climate change, a product of the previous transition.

DIFFUSING SUSTAINABILITY

Accelerating the adoption of more sustainable solutions is at the crux of avoiding a complete climate catastrophe. Every nation, industry, business, and individual can improve their sustainability performance. The issue of willingness, perceived and real costs or not knowing how to start may be causal. In this article, methods are given about how adopt sustainability performance improvements impacting respective aggregated adoptions. The objectives surrounding sustainability can be boiled down to three general improvement outcomes: economic/financial, social, and ecological. This article focuses on ecological improvements with emphasis on the human and financial cost avoidance of catastrophic climate change. These methods can be used for social and financial performance by including new data.