1,599 research outputs found
Who sets the conservation agenda?
The global conservation agenda is constituted and organised through international conferences, congresses, and other fora. These events are key to the construction of established definitions, goals and practices of conservation, and serve as spaces for open debate and contestation of values and interests. Past work has explored such events through direct participation in their public aspects. However, to date there has been little empirical investigation of the decision making that occurs behind the scenes, and how the complex network of actors interacts to shape global conservation. In this thesis we set out four empirical investigations into the shaping of the global conservation agenda using International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) motions process, a unique cross-sector deliberative policy process, as a case study. We investigated how the content raised by organisations has changed over time and is linked to key characteristics such as sector, size, region and preferred language. We then examined motion debates to uncover the discourses mobilised in shaping policy, and what strategies are utilised to generate change. The voting records of participating actors were analysed to uncover the key conceptual divides within IUCN’s Membership, as well as how position on these issues is related to key characteristics. Finally, participation in the motions process was investigated, identifying the type of actors that most influence IUCN’s motions process. We found markedly different interests and ideas shaping global conservation policy, and a key divide over the legitimacy of IUCN’s motions process making demands of nation states. We found that an overarching commitment to consensus in resolving disputes within the motions process seems to create a barrier to properly addressing key conceptual divides within the Membership. Our results prove the worth of investigating the less visible components of global conservation fora and set out a mixed methods approach to incorporating conceptually distinct results
Climate Change and Critical Agrarian Studies
Climate change is perhaps the greatest threat to humanity today and plays out as a cruel engine of myriad forms of injustice, violence and destruction. The effects of climate change from human-made emissions of greenhouse gases are devastating and accelerating; yet are uncertain and uneven both in terms of geography and socio-economic impacts. Emerging from the dynamics of capitalism since the industrial revolution — as well as industrialisation under state-led socialism — the consequences of climate change are especially profound for the countryside and its inhabitants. The book interrogates the narratives and strategies that frame climate change and examines the institutionalised responses in agrarian settings, highlighting what exclusions and inclusions result. It explores how different people — in relation to class and other co-constituted axes of social difference such as gender, race, ethnicity, age and occupation — are affected by climate change, as well as the climate adaptation and mitigation responses being implemented in rural areas. The book in turn explores how climate change – and the responses to it - affect processes of social differentiation, trajectories of accumulation and in turn agrarian politics. Finally, the book examines what strategies are required to confront climate change, and the underlying political-economic dynamics that cause it, reflecting on what this means for agrarian struggles across the world. The 26 chapters in this volume explore how the relationship between capitalism and climate change plays out in the rural world and, in particular, the way agrarian struggles connect with the huge challenge of climate change. Through a huge variety of case studies alongside more conceptual chapters, the book makes the often-missing connection between climate change and critical agrarian studies. The book argues that making the connection between climate and agrarian justice is crucial
LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volume
LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volum
Monomial warm inflation revisited
We revisit the idea that the inflaton may have dissipated part of its energy
into a thermal bath during inflation, considering monomial inflationary
potentials and three different forms of dissipation rate. Using a numerical
Fokker-Planck approach to describe the stochastic dynamics of inflationary
fluctuations, we confront this scenario with current bounds on the spectrum of
curvature fluctuations and primordial gravitational waves. We also obtain
analytical approximations that outperform those frequently used in previous
analyses. We show that only our numerical Fokker-Planck method is accurate,
fast and precise enough to test these models against current data. We advocate
its use in future studies of warm inflation. We also apply the stochastic
inflation formalism to this scenario, finding that the resulting spectrum is
the same as the one obtained with standard perturbation theory. We discuss the
origin and convenience of using a commonly implemented large thermal correction
to the primordial spectrum and the implications of such a term for a specific
scenario. Improved bounds on the scalar spectral index will further constrain
warm inflation in the near future.Comment: 66 pages, 16 figures; v3: improved discussion and additional appendi
Avaliação de PolÃticas Sustentáveis
Sustainability policy evaluation and assessment seeks to answer the key question, sustainability of what and whom? Consequently, sustainability issues are multidimensional in nature and feature a high degree of conflict, uncertainty and complexity. Social multi-criteria evaluation (SMCE) has been explicitly designed for public policies; it builds on formal modelling techniques whose main achievement is the fact that the use of different evaluation criteria translates directly into plurality of values and dimensions underpinning a policy process. SMCE aims at being inter/multi-disciplinary (with respect to the technical team), participatory (with respect to the community) and transparent. SMCE can help deal with three different types of sustainability-related policy issues: 1) epistemological uncertainty (human representation of a given policy problem necessarily reflects perceptions, values and interests of those structuring the problem); 2) complexity (the existence of different levels and scales at which a hierarchical system can be analyzed implies the unavoidable existence of non-equivalent descriptions of it both in space and time); and 3) mathematical manipulation rules of relevant information (compensability versus non-compensability, preference modelling of intensities of preference, mixed information on criterion scores, weights as trade-offs versus weights as importance coefficients, choice of a proper ranking algorithm). This paper focuses on the these three issues and provides an overview of the SMCE approaches to them
Power system adequacy: on two-area models and the capacity procurement decision process
In this work, we explore methodological extensions to modelling practices in power system adequacy for single-area and two-area systems. Specifically, we build on top of some of the practices currently in use in Great Britain (GB) by National Grid, framing this in the context of the current technological transition in which renewable capacity is gradually replacing a considerable share of fossil-fuel-based capacity.
We explore two-area extensions of the methodology currently used in GB to quantify risk in single-area models. By doing this, we also explore the impact of shortfall-sharing policies and wind capacity on risk indices and on the value of interconnection. Furthermore, we propose a model based on the statistical theory of extreme values to characterise statistical dependence across systems in both net demand (defined as power demand minus renewable generation) and capacity surpluses/deficits (defined as power supply minus demand), looking at how statistical dependence strength influences post-interconnection risk and the capacity value of interconnection. Lastly, we analyse the risk profile of a single-area system as reliance on wind capacity grows, looking at risk beyond the standard set of risk indices, which are based on long-term averages. In doing this, we look at trends which are overlooked by the latter, yet are of considerable importance for decision-makers. Moreover, we incorporate a measure of the decision-maker's degree of risk aversion into the current capacity procurement methodology in GB, and look at the impact of this and other parameters on the amount of procured capacity.
We find that shortfall-sharing policies can have a sizeable impact on the interconnector's valuation in terms of security of supply, specially for systems that are significantly smaller than their neighbours. Moreover, this valuation also depends strongly on the risk indices chosen to measure it. We also find that the smoothing effect of parametric extreme value models on tail regions can have a material effect on practical adequacy calculations for post-interconnection risks, and that assumed independence between conventional generation fleets makes capacity shortfall co-occurrences only weakly dependent (in a precisely defined sense) across areas despite much stronger statistical dependence between system net demands. Lastly, as more wind capacity is installed, we find multiple relevant changes in the (single-area) system's risk profile that are not expressed by the standard risk indices: in particular, we find a substantial increase in the frequency of severe events, extreme year-to-year variability of outturn, and a progression to a system with fewer days of potentially much larger shortfalls. Moreover, we show that a high reliance on wind introduces a substantial amount of uncertainty into the calculations due to the limited number of available historic years, which cannot account for the wide range of possible weather conditions the system could experience in the future. Lastly, we also find that the a higher reliance on wind generation also impact the capacity procurement decision process, potentially making the amount of procured capacity considerably more sensitive to parameters such as the value of lost load
Play brick therapy to aid the social skills of children and young people with autism spectrum disorder : the I-SOCIALISE cluster RCT
BACKGROUND: Social skills interventions are commonly recommended to help children and young people with autism spectrum disorder develop social skills, but some struggle to engage in these interventions. LEGO ® (LEGO System A/S, Billund, Denmark) based therapy, a group social skills intervention, aims to be more interesting and engaging. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the clinical effectiveness of LEGO ® based therapy on the social and emotional skills of children and young people with autism spectrum disorder in school settings compared with usual support. Secondary objectives included evaluations of cost-effectiveness, acceptability and treatment fidelity. DESIGN: A cluster randomised controlled trial randomly allocating participating schools to either LEGO ® based therapy and usual support or usual support only. SETTING: Mainstream schools in the north of England. PARTICIPANTS: Children and young people (aged 7-15 years) with autism spectrum disorder, their parent/guardian, an associated teacher/teaching assistant and a facilitator teacher/teaching assistant (intervention schools only). INTERVENTION: Schools randomised to the intervention arm delivered 12 weekly sessions of LEGO ® based therapy, which promotes collaborative play and encourages social problem-solving in groups of three children and young people with a facilitator (trained teacher or teaching assistant). Participants received usual support from school and community services. Participants in the control arm received usual support only. Research assistants and statisticians were blind to treatment allocation. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: The social skills subscale of the Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS), completed by the children and young people's unblinded teacher pre randomisation and 20 weeks post randomisation. The SSIS social skills subscale measures social skills including social communication, co-operation, empathy, assertion, responsibility and self-control. Participants completed a number of other pre- and post-randomisation measures of emotional health, quality of life, loneliness, problem behaviours, academic competence, service resource utilisation and adverse events. RESULTS: A total of 250 children and young people from 98 schools were randomised: 127 to the intervention arm and 123 to the control arm. Intention-to-treat analysis of the main outcome measure showed a modest positive difference of 3.74 points (95% confidence interval -0.16 to 7.63 points, standardised effect size 0.18; p  = 0.06) in favour of the intervention arm. Statistical significance increased in per-protocol analysis, with a modest positive difference (standardised effect size 0.21; p  = 0.036). Cost-effectiveness of the intervention was found in reduced service use costs and a small increase in quality-adjusted life-years. Intervention fidelity and acceptability were positive. No intervention-related adverse events or effects were reported. CONCLUSIONS: The primary and pre-planned sensitivity analysis of the primary outcome consistently showed a positive clinical difference, with modest standardised effect sizes of between 0.15 and 0.21. There were positive health economics and qualitative findings, corroborated by the difference between arms for the majority of secondary outcomes, which were not statistically significant but favoured the intervention arm. Post hoc additional analysis was exploratory and was not used in drawing this conclusion. Given the small positive change, LEGO ® based therapy for children and young people with autism spectrum disorder in schools should be considered. LIMITATIONS: The primary outcome measure was completed by an unblinded teacher (rather than by the facilitator). FUTURE WORK: The study team recommends future research into LEGO ® based therapy, particularly in school environments. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This trial is registered as ISRCTN64852382. FUNDING: This award was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Public Health Research programme (NIHR award ref: 15/49/32) and is published in full in Public Health Research; Vol. 11, No. 12. See the NIHR Funding and Awards website for further award information
DeepRoom: A Deep Learning Rating System for Photography
This thesis explores integrating deep learning techniques into photography, aiming to automate the identification of good images within large datasets. The primary focus is developing a deep learning-based system called DeepRoom that rates and evaluates photographs based on photography-specific technical criteria. To accomplish this, the research methodology encompasses qualitative research alongside developing a system prototype. A section overviews deep learning, photography, and related work and emphasizes its relevance to the research objectives. Implementation details include describing development tools and processes employed to construct the deep learning models and curate the dataset. These models' performance is assessed in the following evaluation phase, and a comparative analysis is conducted against existing software solutions. Encouraging results are observed, particularly in object detection and exposure classification, while identifying areas for improvement, such as refining the blurry and skewed horizon models. In conclusion, this research highlights the contributions of DeepRoom and proposes future work, including dataset expansion and model refinement, to enhance its capabilities further
Unpacking the Area-Based Approach for Sustainable Urban Development in Europe: Policies and Challenges for Migrants Inclusion in the Metropolitan Area of Venice
The paper aims at disentangling the area-based approach as promoted by the EU to bring about integrated sustainable development in European urban areas. In particular, the paper looks at how this approach has evolved over time and to what extent it has been used to foster the inclusion of migrants through a territorialised or spatial perspective.
This paper draws on the experience of the metropolitan area of Venice and the two Sustainable Urban Development strategies implemented there within the framework of the EU cohesion policy 2014-2020. It presents general reflections that shed light on the meaning and scope of the area-based approach in contemporary European cities, as well as the challenges that policy-makers encounter when putting it into practice.
In particular, the paper acknowledges the attention to broader scales ‘beyond the neighbourhood’ that frames current EU policies for urban areas, but considers it insufficient. Instead, attention should also be given to a more granular scale that in certain cases, may involve single streets, part of streets, or even single buildings
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