Noisy Clockwork: Time Series Analysis of Population Fluctuations in Animals by Ottar N.Bjornstad and Bryan T.Grenfell

The century of studies in population ecology has been dominated by a nested set of debates regarding the importance of various dynamical forces. The first controversy concerned the relative impact of biotic versus abiotic control of population fluctuations. The key question was the relative importance of “noise” (small-scale, high-frequency stochastic influences) versus climactic forcing (larger-scale, often lower frequency signals) versus non-linear interactions between individuals of the same or different species. The second question concerned the impact of intrinsic (i.e., intraspecific) processes, as opposed to extrinsic or community-level interactions, an argument that has been particularly heated with reference to population cycles. A third debate, nested within the latter, concerns the “dimensionality” of population fluctuations; given that most populations are embedded in rich communities and affected by numerous interspecific interactions, can simple (low-dimensional) models involving one or a few species capture the patterns of fluctuations? All these questions have been studied through a number of detailed analyses of specific systems in which theoretical models are linked with long-term studies (often 10 or more generations) through time series analysis.

There has been much parallel and intertwined development of these three dynamical themes, and history testifies to a succession of popularity of the various positions (1). Crudely summarized, early focus on extrinsic influences was replaced by the “density-dependent paradigm” (2) in the 1950s and 1960s. This accelerated in the late 1970s, with the assumption of the potential of dynamic complexity even in simple models, leading to a focus in the 1980s on nonlinearity and the detection of deterministic chaos. Research has focused on two fronts in the past decade: (i) the impact of large-scale climactic forcing, coinciding with the rise in popularity of climate change studies through the early 1990s, and (ii) stochastic non-linear models that combine the non-linear deterministic and (largely) linear stochastic theories. The goal in synthesizing these approaches in recent years is to understand how population fluctuations arise from the interplay of noise, forcing, and non-linear dynamics.

II. ИНФОРМАЦИОННО-ЭКСПРЕССИВНЫЕ ТЕКСТЫ

Текст 2

                            Scandal of Royal Mail's rich bosses                                      

Royal Mail workers don't only fear for their jobs as the government presses on with part-privatising the postal service.

Their pensions are under threat, too, because the scheme they paid into for their old age has a £9billion shortfall. But that doesn't apply to Royal Mail's bosses.

They have their own gold-plated scheme which will keep them in luxury for the rest of their lives. Buried in the Royal Mail's accounts is the revelation that the firm's payments into the executive fund more than doubled last year. Meanwhile, the company's payments into the lame-duck workers' fund remained virtually static.

This startling illustration of the Royal Mail's priorities has the unmistakable - and, these days, predictable - whiff of public sector bosses shamelessly enriching themselves while frontline staff bear the brunt of redundancies and cut-backs.

One of the chief beneficiaries of the bosses' pension scheme is the chief executive, Adam Crozier, who received £3million in pay and bonuses last year - despite thousands of post offices being closed, letter volumes falling and delivery targets missed.

There seems no end to the rewards paid to them for failure, weakening still further the morale of rank and file postmen and women who we all depend on to get our mail.

The public spotlight has this week been fixed on Sir Fred Goodwin, the disgraced and reviled boss of RBS, who refuses to give back any of his obscene £693,000-a-year pension from a bank which the taxpayer saved.

Now we learn Mr Crozier, already the UK's highest-paid public servant, has the same sort of fat-cat pension arrangement.

Taxpayers have bailed out the banks - yet the bankers carry on as though nothing has changed. The same should not be allowed to happen at the Royal Mail.

Текст 3.

Bring me your tired, weak, poor, and hungry…

SO I CAN KICK THEM IN THE FACE!

Well that’s what the statue of “liberty” should say. When I think about our country, my country, I think about my dad going to fight a senseless war of imperialism. I think about the senseless war being fought now in Iraq, and the war being waged in Mexico so that we American’s can get stoned, lit-up, or disappear into a nod. Most of all I think of the people who die trying to hold us to our words inscribed on our communal whore: the lady liberty.

Why so angry you wonder? I’ll give you an easy answer: We are hypocrites. We in the United States that claim to be freedom loving upholders of democracy are exactly the reason why democracy is more of a fallacious ideal than communism. The United States is the largest consumer of the world’s narcotics and marijuana. We have created the illicit black market for things that offend religious ideals in a society that was supposedly built on “religious freedom”. It’s baffling the contradiction that runs rampant through every level and facet of society.

We tell the world to “bring us your tired, weak, poor, etc” and then when they try to get here we all but ensure their deaths. We lure people to tell them they can’t come in. We “Christians” hold plates of food out as alms to the poor so that when the neediest and most fragile come to collect we can pull it way; giving a quick blow to the head.

After the invasion of Iraq by the U.S in 2003, the number of people trying to emigrate to the U.S increased rapidly. The violence that we caused drove millions of people from their homes. Many wanted to come to the U.S and live a relatively peaceful life (much like they had under Saddam Hussein, believe it or not). Unfortunately, being the generous invading imperialists we are, we have let in only a small fraction of those seeking political asylum and refugee status. We will not even let people into our country after we destroyed their country.

The immigration issue with Mexico is very similar. The United States has used the country on our southern most border as a step stool for over 150 years. Since the Mexican American War, that ceded the west to the United States, people of Mexican descent have been discriminated against. Their property taken millions were driving south into a land they new as little about as the white “settlers” coming to take their land. Now as the United States continues a forty year love affair with various mind altering substances, they come through Mexico and are fought over with each foot being traveled. The drug cartels are the most powerful force in the country and they continue to grow. This is the fault of the United States who callously purchases and discards the people of Mexico for their cheap labor and cheap goods. But we do not let them live next to us. We can let them clean, cook, tend the yard, drive, etc but they are not allowed to be like us. They must either stay in the shadows or stay in a place that has no future, no safety, and no leadership other than the cartels. The United States refuses to accept responsibility for the problems it causes. I’m afraid that there will be a revolution in Mexico that is not going to leave the U.S in a very opportune place because we refuse to live up to our promises of the “American Dream” and the words written at Lady Liberty’s feet.

So it’s the internet and I can say whatever I want. I know where to find the sources and could give them to you if I wanted but I don’t. I think that I could be nice and give you the easy to understand… err easy to stomach… articles and news stories that detail the many problems to which I am referring, but I don’t feel like being nice.

Учебное издание

Княжева Елена Александровнана,

Яковлева Ирина Николаевна

ПРАКТИЧЕСКИЙ КУРС ПИСЬМЕННОГО ПЕРЕВОДА

Учебное пособие

Подписано в печать __.09.2009. Формат 60´84/16. Усл. печ. л. 1,5.

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