DIGITAL TEHNOLOGIES. AN OVERVIEW OF CURRENT EVOLUTIONS AND IMPACT

Various observers describe today's global economy as one in transition to aknowledge economy, as an extension of an information society. The transition requires thatthe rules and practices that determined success in the industrial economy need rewriting in aninterconnected, globalized economy where knowledge resources such as know-how andexpertise are as critical as other economic resources. According to analysts of the knowledgeeconomy, these rules need to be rewritten at the levels of firms and industries in terms ofknowledge management and at the level of public policy as knowledge policy or knowledge-related policy. The digital and ICT revolutions are twin revolutions. Information andcommunications technology (ICT) refers to a broad field encompassing computers,communications equipment and the services associated with them. It includes the telephone,cellular networks, satellite communication, broadcasting media and other forms ofcommunication.digital revolutions, communication equipment, broadcasting media

Sunspots that matter: The effect of weather on solar technology adoption

This paper tests for the presence of behavioral biases in household decisions to adopt solar photovoltaic installations using exogenous variation in weather. I find that residential technology uptake responds to exceptional weather, defined as deviations from the long-term mean, in line with the average time gap between decision-making and completion of the installation. In particular, a one standard deviation increase in sunshine hours during the purchase period leads to an approximate increase of 4.7% in weekly solar PV installations. This effect persists in aggregate data. I consider a range of potential mechanisms and find suggestive evidence for projection bias and salience as key drivers of my results.I would like to thank Jerome Adda, Stefan Ambec, Bryan Bollinger, Sylvain ChabeFerret, Antonia Diaz, Andreas Gerster, Ken Gillingham, Sebastian Houde, Andrea Ichino, Martin Kesternich, Matt Kotchen, Matt Neidell, Francois Salanie, Fabiano Schivardi, Joe Shapiro, and seminar participants at the Atlantic Workshop on Energy & Environmental Economics, EMEE, Energy and Climate Conference Toulouse, FAERE, IAERE, Northeast Workshop on Energy Policy & Environmental Economics, Workshop on Economic Theories & Low-Carbon Policies, World Congress of the Econometric Society, European University Institute, Goteborg University, RWI Essen, Toulouse School of Economics, Yale University, and ZEW Mannheim for helpful comments and suggestions. I am also indebted to the Editor and two anonymous referees for their insightful feedback. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement No 772331). A previous version of this article has been circulated under the name "Projection Bias in Solar Electricity Markets". Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature

Frontiers of Adaptive Design, Synthetic Biology and Growing Skins for Ephemeral Hybrid Structures

The history of membranes is one of adaptation, from the development in living organisms to man-made versions, with a great variety of uses in temporary design: clothing, building, packaging, etc. Being versatile and simple to integrate, membranes have a strong sustainability potential, through an essential use of material resources and multifunctional design, representing one of the purest cases where “design follows function.” The introduction of new engineered materials and techniques, combined with a growing interest for Nature-inspired technologies are progressively merging man-made artifacts and biological processes with a high potential for innovation. This chapter introduces, through a number of examples, the broad variety of hybrid membranes in the contest of experimental Design, Art and Architecture, categorized following two different stages of biology-inspired approach with the aim of identifying potential developments. Biomimicry, is founded on the adoption of practices from nature in architecture though imitation: solutions are observed on a morphological, structural or procedural level and copied to design everything from nanoscale materials to building technologies. Synthetic biology relies on hybrid procedures mixing natural and synthetic materials and processes

Scheduling Problems

Scheduling is defined as the process of assigning operations to resources over time to optimize a criterion. Problems with scheduling comprise both a set of resources and a set of a consumers. As such, managing scheduling problems involves managing the use of resources by several consumers. This book presents some new applications and trends related to task and data scheduling. In particular, chapters focus on data science, big data, high-performance computing, and Cloud computing environments. In addition, this book presents novel algorithms and literature reviews that will guide current and new researchers who work with load balancing, scheduling, and allocation problems