The Last 15,000 Years: Climate-Controlled and “Rare-Event”-Triggered/Rise and Fall of Holocene Cultures in the Near/Middle East and in Central Europe—Evidence and Background

Pushed by the results of a preceding publication on the possibly Quaternary Jebel Waqf as Suwwan Meteorite Crater, Jordan [5], where an amazing coincidence of Rapid Climate Changes (RCCs) with Rise and Fall of Neolithic and Bronze Age Cultures became evident for the Near/Middle East, this paper deals with the same subject, however, relating to the complete Holocene period in the same area and, additionally, in Central Europe as well. By application of modern climatic data [6] comprising isotope analysis (δ18O, 14C, 10Be), acid and aerosol events, and greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4) Greenland ice cores as well as other astro-/geophysical and geological parameters, an overwhelming coincidence/relation/interdependence of both natural and cultural evidences becomes obvious throughout the last 15,000 years across the Northern Hemisphere. Apart from solar output and other astrophysical processes, most important climate- and Earth-related parameters are Mega-Volcanism (i.e.Santorini Greece: ~3640 yr cal. B. P.), Impact Events (i.e. during Mesolithic: ~9600 yr cal. B. P), rapid oceanic current change (DO-Events), and Plate Tectonics (possibly Atlantis-Event: ~11,500 yr cal. B.P. = Pleistocene/Holocene boundary). The most essential parameter is a significant temperature change related to more or less restricted latitude realms of the Northern Hemisphere. Thus, glacier advance/retreat controls the mobility of peoples (i.e. Nations' Migration, Teutonic Empires) and the access to ore deposits (Au, Ag, Cu, Sn, Zn, Pb, Fe) located in Alpine Mountain Ranges (i.e. End-Neolithic, Early Bronze Age). Myths like the Gilgamesh Epos and John Apocalypse convincingly reveal realistic contents relating to natural hazards like tsunamis, impact and flooding events. They unmisunderstandably make obvious that Myths may provide valuable contributions, especially to Geosciences. Some of the controlling parameters interrelate with others or present a kind of hierarchy: Mega-Volcanism/impact events à ejecta à wildfires, heat storms à cosmic winter, sint winter à stop of photosynthesis à mass extinction environmental pollution à greenhouse effects. Significant events (21 cases in total) occurred on i.e.

Resilience assessment framework toward interdependent bus-rail transit network:Structure,critical components,and coupling mechanism

Understanding the interdependent nature of multimodal public transit networks(PTNs)is vital for ensuring the resilience and robustness of transportation systems.However,previous studies have predominantly focused on assessing the vulnerability and characteristics of single-mode PTNs,neglecting the impacts of heterogeneous disturbances and shifts in travel behavior within multimodal PTNs.Therefore,this study introduces a novel resilience assessment framework that comprehensively analyzes the coupling mechanism,structural and functional characteristics of bus-rail transit networks(BRTNs).In this framework,a network performance metric is proposed by considering the passengers’travel behaviors under various disturbances.Additionally,stations and subnetworks are classified using the k-means algorithm and resilience metric by simulating various disturbances occurring at each station or subnetwork.The proposed framework is validated via a case study of a BRTN in Beijing,China.Results indicate that the rail transit network(RTN)plays a crucial role in maintaining network function and resisting external disturbances in the interdependent BRTN.Furthermore,the coupling interactions between the RTN and bus transit network(BTN)exhibit distinct characteristics under infrastructure component disruption and functional disruption.These findings provide valuable insights into emergency management for PTNs and understanding the coupling relationship between BTN and RTN.

A Multiple Negotiations Model Considering Interdependence between Discrete Issues Across Negotiations

The research of multiple negotiations considering issue interdependence across negotiations is considered as a complex research topic in agent negotiation. In the multiple negotiations scenario, an agent conducts multiple negotiations with opponents for different negotiation goals, and issues in a single negotiation might be interdependent with issues in other negotiations. Moreover, the utility functions involved in multiple negotiations might be nonlinear, e.g., the issues involved in multiple negotiations are discrete. Considering this research problem, the current work may not well handle multiple interdependent negotiations with complex utility functions, where issues involved in utility functions are discrete. Regarding utility functions involving discrete issues, an agent may not find an offer exactly satisfying its expected utility during the negotiation process. Furthermore, as sub-offers on issues in every single negotiation might be restricted by the interdependence relationships with issues in other negotiations, it is even harder for the agent to find an offer satisfying the expected utility and all involved issue interdependence at the same time, leading to a high failure rate of processing multiple negotiations as a final outcome. To resolve this challenge, this paper presents a negotiation model for multiple negotiations, where interdependence exists between discrete issues across multiple negotiations. By introducing the formal definition of “interdependence between discrete issues across negotiations”, the proposed negotiation model applies the multiple alternating offers protocol, the clustered negotiation procedure and the proposed negotiation strategy to handle multiple interdependent negotiations with discrete issues. In the proposed strategy, the “tolerance value” is introduced as an agent’s consideration to balance between the overall negotiation goal and the negotiation outcomes. The experimental results show that, 1) the proposed model well handles the multiple negotiations with interdependence between discrete issues, 2) the proposed approach is able to help agents in the decision-making process of proposing acceptable offers, 3) an agent can choose a proper “tolerance value” to balance between the success rate of multiple negotiations and its expected utility.