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Background Vaccination can help control the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic but is undermined by vaccine hesitancy. Social media disseminates information and misinformation regarding vaccination. Tracking and analyzing social media vaccine sentiment could better prepare health professionals for vaccination conversations and campaigns. Methods A real-time big data analytics framework was developed using natural language processing sentiment analysis, a form of artificial intelligence. The framework ingests, processes, and analyzes tweets for sentiment and content themes, such as natural health or personal freedom, in real time. A later dataset evaluated the relationship between Twitter sentiment scores and vaccination rates in the United States. Results The real-time analytics framework showed a widening gap in sentiment with more negative sentiment after vaccine rollout. After rollout, using a static dataset, an increase in positive sentiment was followed by an increase in vaccination. Lag cross-correlation analysis across US regions showed evidence that once all adults were eligible for vaccination, the sentiment score consistently correlated with vaccination rate with a lag of around 1 week. The Granger causality test further demonstrated that tweet sentiment scores may help predict vaccination rates. Conclusions Social media has influenced the COVID-19 response through valuable information and misinformation and distrust. This tool was used to collect and analyze tweets at scale in real time to study sentiment and key terms of interest. Separate tweet analysis showed that vaccination rates tracked regionally with Twitter vaccine sentiment and might forecast changes in vaccine uptake and/or guide targeted social media and vaccination strategies. Further work is needed to analyze the interplay between specific populations, vaccine sentiment, and vaccination rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advent of climate change as a major challenge of our time, Earth system modeling has become highly policy‐relevant regulatory science. In this situation, the social mechanisms that play a role in any scientific endeavor become particularly exposed. By discussing historical, philosophical, and sociological (HPS) aspects of the field's current "cultures of prediction" together with the physical science community in a physical science journal, we aim to provide an entry point into HPS reasoning for climate scientists interested in reflecting on their field and science in general. This paper, first, introduces our perspective on "science as culture" and climate modeling as "regulatory science" and, second, highlights and connects relevant ideas from the three commentaries that follow it. In so doing, we hope to give a fuller picture of climate science, the interplay it engenders between HPS and the physical sciences, the distinctions that it gives rise to as compared to some of the more traditional, exact, sciences in which it is rooted and its place in society including its role in scientific policy advice. Key Points: With the advent of climate change as a major challenge of our time, Earth system modeling has become highly policy relevantIn this situation, the social mechanisms that play a role in any scientific endeavor become particularly exposedThis paper introduces perspectives on "science as culture" and highlights relevant ideas from the three subsequent commentaries [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including supply of mineral resources, economic aspects of World War II and oil price crisis of 1970s.

Perceptions of climatic challenges have changed significantly during the twentieth century. In recent decades, the question of global climate change received more attention than regional climatic challenges and the problems of arid regions. Historians have shown that persistent misconceptions and a lack of understanding of arid zones rooted in misguided colonial ideologies were propagated by United Nations (UN) initiatives such as the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Arid Zone Programme. Alarmist narratives of progressive desertification proliferated and put the blame on destructive local practices such as deforestation and overgrazing. This article investigates UNESCO's interests in natural resources (section 1) and takes a closer look at the development and scientific elements of the Arid Zone Programme (sections 2 and 3). It argues that the Arid Zone Programme offered an effective framework that helped develop and spread new interdisciplinary research approaches to improve knowledge about arid zones. The myth of progressing desertification and misguided colonial expertise characterized much of its political rhetoric, but not its scientific work, which reflected balanced and more critical appraisals of out-dated colonial expertise. In its conclusion, the article suggests that broader contexts need to be taken into account to understand a resurgence of alarmist narratives of desertification such as shifting interests in climatology from local climatic issues to the global atmospheric circulation and a neglect of the climatology of arid zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the nineteenth century, access to and the development of natural resources became an important element of national and international politics. Resource security emerged as an issue vital to national security; and resource competition and crises gave rise to international tensions as well as to technological innovation and new modes of transnational cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An algorithm is proposed to calculate the minimum energy path (MEP). The algorithm is based on a variational formulation in which the MEP is characterized as the curve minimizing a certain functional. The algorithm performs this minimization using a preconditioned steepest-descent scheme with a reparametrization step to enforce a constraint on the curve parametrization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary provides a critical account of Earth system modeling history. It argues that Earth system modeling is not simply a domain of science but also a form of politics. Earth system science carries the ideas and social and cultural norms of the peculiar historical eras in which it emerged and grew. Systems thinking and a strong belief in the power of modeling have its roots in the early Cold War era. When the Cold War era gave way to a time characterized by economic stagnation, social unrest, and rising environmentalism, climate science absorbed the new cultural trend of environmental concern, while retaining an optimism and enthusiasm in the modeling paradigm. The post-1990s era reveals particularly clearly the political power that climate scientists unleashed. The modeling paradigm assumed hegemonic status, seized economic and social processes, and created not only scientific knowledge but also conceptions of political management of the Earth. The modeling paradigm, once a scientific strategy largely in the hands of scientists, has turned into a political agent in its own right, beyond the full control of the scientific community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The decade of the 1970s has recently received a lot of attention in historical research. It is commonly described as ‘a turn of an era’, a time of deep economic, social and cultural transformation. Where do the sciences feature in this picture of the 1970s? This spotlight sheds light on an understudied period of time in the history of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With this introduction we aim to illuminate Western Europe's place on the map of Cold War science and, specifically, to draw attention to the differences in and the diversity of Western European Cold War science in comparison to the United States. By discussing narratives of Cold War science in small states and asking how they fit into the European condition, we suggest that the fact of being a small state affects the conditions for and the scope of Cold War science. As a whole, this special issue also emphasizes the importance of the spatial dimension; that is, the significant dependence of Cold War science on geographical relations and geopolitical interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineers play an important role in communicating technology and its socioeconomic implications. In this paper, based on research into the recent history of wind power technology in Denmark and in Germany, we will investigate the communication efforts of engineers and its role in the success and failure of new wind power technology. We argue that effective communication by engineers and technicians was a crucial component for the rapid success of Danish wind power technology, while a lack of communication contributed to early failures in Germany. As part of their efforts in developing and promoting wind power technology, Danish engineers not only built informal and professional networks of communication in which knowledge and objects could be shared, but also acted as public spokespersons for wind power interests. The case of wind power technology shows that engineering communication comprised different forms, modes, and tasks of communication involving different types of actors and serving different needs and scopes. Engineering communication is not a simple tool at hand, but requires favorable social conditions and adequate institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer modeling, a new form of knowledge production implying new theoretical and experimental practices, has since the 1950s become an important tool in scientific investigation. This paper analyzes computer simulation in two cases of atmospheric transport modeling. First, it investigates pioneering efforts by the meteorologist Heinz Fortak in the 1960s to construct Gaussian models of local and regional air pollution transport. Second, it deals with the much more complex simulation efforts by a Norwegian group around Anton Eliassen in the 1970s and 1980s to model long distance transport and transformation of pollutants. In both cases, the simulation of air pollution phenomena implied a set of specific practices. The use of the computer as a tool required drastic simplifications; the collection and preparation of an enormous amount of input data; the adoption of control procedures to validate the models; and the execution of "computer experiments" in sensitivity studies. Because of uncertainty and ignorance, scientists enjoyed a large freedom of choice in the construction of models and simulation runs, and great interpretative flexibility of their outcome. Nevertheless, by relying on tacit expert knowledge and intuition, scientists were ultimately able to approach coherence and stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the development of wind technology in Germany, Denmark, and the United States between 1940-1990. Information on the shaping of technologies; In-depth look at the regional and national characteristics of technological developments; Details on the history of wind power.

The article presents information on several papers presented at the conference Exploring Epistemic Shifts in Computer Based Environmental Sciences at Aarhus University in Denmark. Topics discussed include the epistemic uncertainty in meteorology, problems with 20th century hydrology models and creating models that simulate climate.