10,653 research outputs found
The Principle of Subsidiarity and Innovation Support Measures
Innovation is a policy area in which the European Union (EU) has the competence to support, coordinate and supplement Member States policies according to the new Lisbon Treaty (2007). The Member States (MS) have the primacy in this area and the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality are applicable to decide whether EU support, coordination or supplementation of MS policies is justified. This paper presents a detailed subsidiarity test. It is applied to three innovation support measures as part of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme of the European Commission. These measures are access to finance for the start-ups and growth of SMEs and investment in innovation activities, networks in support of business and innovation-community grants (new Enterprise Europe Network), and the Intellectual Property Rights Helpdesk.
Post-peak ICT: graceful degradation for communication networks in an energy constrained future
In recent years, rising energy prices and increasing environmental concerns have boosted research in the so called green ICT and green networking research tracks, aimed at improving the energy efficiency of communications while still offering maximal functionality. In this article we explore a future scenario in which low power networking is no longer optional, but instead becomes a necessity due to fluctuating energy availability. The contribution of this work is twofold. First, we argue why a so called post-peak future scenario, in which we can no longer rely on fossil fuels as our main resource for electricity production, is not unlikely, and what it might entail. Second, we explore the consequences of such a scenario for ICT: How well can current and future infrastructures cope with temporary energy limitations? As an illustration, we present a case study showing the impact of reduced energy availability on a wireless access network
Policy-Making in the EU: Achievements, Challenges and Proposals for Reform. CEPS Paperbacks. June 2009
This report is the product of a joint project initiated by the Centre for European Policy Studies and the Swedish Confederation of Enterprise. Three expert groups of academics, policy-makers, business representatives and other stakeholders were formed to analyse the major issues and challenges facing the European Union today and to put forward recommendations for reform that can realistically be implemented in the short and medium term. The expert groups focused on EU Decision-Making, Better Regulation and Implementation & Subsidiarity
On the feasibility of collaborative green data center ecosystems
The increasing awareness of the impact of the IT sector on the environment, together with economic factors, have fueled many research efforts to reduce the energy expenditure of data centers. Recent work proposes to achieve additional energy savings by exploiting, in concert with customers, service workloads and to reduce data centersâ carbon footprints by adopting demand-response mechanisms between data centers and their energy providers. In this paper, we debate about the incentives that customers and data centers can have to adopt such measures and propose a new service type and pricing scheme that is economically attractive and technically realizable. Simulation results based on real measurements confirm that our scheme can achieve additional energy savings while preserving service performance and the interests of data centers and customers.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
Low cost multimedia sensor networks for obtaining lighting maps
In many applications, video streams, images, audio streams and scalar data are
commonly used. In these fields, one of the most important magnitudes to be collected and
controlled is the light intensity in different spots. So, it is extremely important to be able to
deploy a network of light sensors which are usually integrated in a more general Wireless
Multimedia Sensor Network (WMSN). Light control systems have increasing applications in
many places like streets, roads, buildings, theaters, etc. In these situations having a dense grid
of sensing spots significantly enhances measuring precision and control performance. When a
great number of measuring spots are required, the cost of the sensor becomes a very important
concern. In this paper the use of very low cost light sensors is proposed and it is shown how to
overcome its limited performance by directionally correcting its results. A correction factor is
derived for several lighting conditions. The proposed method is firstly applied to measure light
in a single spot. Additionally a prototype of a sensor network is employed to draw the lighting
map of a surface. Finally the sensor grid is employed to estimate the position and power of a
set of light sources in a certain region of interest (street, building,âŠ). These three applications
have shown that using low cost sensors instead of luxmeters is a feasible approach to estimate
illuminance levels in a room and to derive light sources maps. The obtained error measuring
spots illuminance or estimating lamp emittances are quite acceptable in many practical
applications.Telefonica Chair "Intelligence in Networks" of the University of Seville (Spain
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