International climate regime beyond 2012 - are quota allocation rules robust to uncertainty?

Bringing the United States and major developing countries to control their greenhouse gas emissions will be the key challenge for the international climate regime beyond the Kyoto Protocol. But in the current quantity-based coordination, large uncertainties surrounding future emissions and future abatement opportunities make the costs of any commitment very difficult to assess ex ante, hence a strong risk that the negotiation will be stalled. The authors use a partial equilibrium model of the international allowance market to quantify the economic consequences of the main post-Kyoto quota allocation rules proposed in the literature and to assess how robust these consequences are to uncertainty on future population, economic, and emissions growth. They confirm that, regardless of the rule selected, the prices of allowances and the net costs of climate mitigation for all parties are very sensitive to uncertainty, and in some scenarios very large. This constitutes a strong barrier against adopting any of these schemes if no additional mechanism is introduced to limit the uncertainty on costs. On the other hand, parties'preferred (least-cost) rules are essentially robust to uncertainty. And although these preferences differ across countries, the authors'analysis suggest some bargaining is possible if developing countries make a commitment and join the allowance market earlier in exchange for tighter quotas in the North. This underscores the importance of the rules governing the entry of new parties into the coordination. But the magnitude of the win-win potential strongly depends on how different abatement costs are assumed to be between industrial and developing countries, and on how long that gap is assumed to persist.Montreal Protocol,Climate Change,Global Environment Facility,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Climate Change,Energy and Environment,Carbon Policy and Trading,Montreal Protocol

From Interactive Open Learner Modelling to Intelligent Mentoring: STyLE-OLM and Beyond

STyLE-OLM (Dimitrova 2003 International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 13, 35–78) presented a framework for interactive open learner modelling which entails the development of the means by which learners can inspect, discuss and alter the learner model that has been jointly constructed by themselves and the system. This paper outlines the STyLE-OLM framework and reflects on the key challenges it addressed: (a) the design of an appropriate communication medium; this was addressed by proposing a structured language using diagrammatic presentations of conceptual graphs; (b) the management of the interaction with the learner; this was addressed by designing a framework for interactive open learner modelling dialogue utilising dialogue games; (c) the accommodation of different beliefs about the learner’s domain model; this was addressed with a mechanism for maintaining different views about the learner beliefs which adapted belief modal logic operators; and (d) the assessment of any resulting improvements in learner model accuracy and learner reflection; this was addressed in a user study with an instantiation of STyLE-OLM for diagnosing a learner’s knowledge of finance concept, as part of a larger project that developed an intelligent system to assist with learning domain terminology in a foreign language. Reviewing follow on work, we refer to projects by the authors’ students and colleagues leading to further extension and adoption of STyLE-OLM, as well as relevant approaches in open learner modelling which have cited the STyLE-OLM framework. The paper points at outstanding research challenges and outlines future a research direction to extend interactive open learner modelling towards mentor-like intelligent learning systems

AI in Education needs interpretable machine learning: Lessons from Open Learner Modelling

Interpretability of the underlying AI representations is a key raison d'\^{e}tre for Open Learner Modelling (OLM) -- a branch of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) research. OLMs provide tools for 'opening' up the AI models of learners' cognition and emotions for the purpose of supporting human learning and teaching. Over thirty years of research in ITS (also known as AI in Education) produced important work, which informs about how AI can be used in Education to best effects and, through the OLM research, what are the necessary considerations to make it interpretable and explainable for the benefit of learning. We argue that this work can provide a valuable starting point for a framework of interpretable AI, and as such is of relevance to the application of both knowledge-based and machine learning systems in other high-stakes contexts, beyond education.Comment: presented at 2018 ICML Workshop on Human Interpretability in Machine Learning (WHI 2018), Stockholm, Swede

Specification management for the cost constraint optimisation in microelectronic design

International audienceIn the preliminary design phase the integration of the economic constraints of a product is a difficult engineering task since there is a real lack of dedicated tools. This paper illustrates a specification software solution method making it possible to meet this need, applied to the microelectronics field

Distributed Leadership: A Review of Literature

A review of empirical research studies of distributed leadership from public and private sector settings completed since 1995

Analysis of Information System Success in the Colleges in East Java with Wijayanto’s Approach of Information System Success Model

The era of globalization, which is marked by reforms in the field of information, requires good top management support and can support the application of information systems for the creation of quality, useful, and competitive information. Information systems in colleges are tools for managers to complete both new roles and traditional roles, enabling managers to monitor, plan, and predict more precisely and quickly to respond quickly to changes in the business environment. The purpose of this study is to analyze the role of top management support as a moderating variable effect of product quality on use and analyze the role of organizational culture as a moderating variable the effect of the use on benefits. The population of this study was colleges in East Java, a sample of 164 colleges consisting of 57 colleges ranked in Webometrics, and 107 colleges ranked in Webometrics. The analysis came with the SEM-Amos 22 program. The results showed that top management support moderated the effect of product quality on pure use of moderation, and organization culture moderated the effect of the use on benefits in a quasi-moderation manner

Best Practices for Archival Term Positions

This document presents best practices for administrators, hiring managers, and supervisors to put into action when planning for and employing archival term positions. At the foundation of this document is the recognition that temporary labor is detrimental to employees, as well as to sustainable and holistic collection stewardship. This document is on a 5 year review cycle; it will be reviewed for potential updates in 2027