Growth of human population shows no signs of stagnation. The only small disturbance is identified as being probably associated with the coinciding impacts of five demographic catastrophes. The concept of the Epoch of Malthusian Stagnation is convincingly contradicted by empirical evidence.

A social welfare function treating all generations equally is derived from a set of axioms that, contrary to the Utilitarian approach, allows for preferences for Catastrophe Avoidance. Implications for the case where there is a risk of world extinction are studied. We show that substantial time discounting can arise from the planner’s taste for Catastrophe Avoidance, even if the probability of ...

We briefly review three ways that environmental noise can slow-down (or speed-up) quantum transitions; (i) Lamb shifts, (ii) over-damping and (iii) orthogonality catastrophe. We compare them with the quantum Zeno effect induced by observing the system. These effects are relevant to poor qubits (those strongly coupled to noise). We discuss Berry phases generated by the orthogonality catastrophe,...

A cusp catastrophe model Y. Xiao et al.

Every year, we are reminded about the challenges of disaster management when a catastrophe strikes and makes thousands of casualties. Every year, we are experiencing the frustrating feeling that coping effectively with disaster management is a never-ending story and that everything has still to be done. This is obviously inaccurate but it reflects the complexity of the topic. Among the various ...