Europeanisation, globalisation, and unconventional energy: a stepwise comparison of telecommunications and energy in Estonia and Poland, 1990-2011

To what extent did Europeanisation matter in the policy transformation telecommunications and energy of new member states? While Europeanisation literature has traced the EU’s influence during the accession period, the task for the second generation of researchers is to identify rigorously the impact of Europeanisation by untangling it from other possible processes, particularly globalisation, and to identify the continuation of Europeanisation after membership. Using semi-structured interviews and policy documents, I trace liberalisation and independent regulation in Estonia and Poland’s telecommunications and energy. By using the stepwise comparative method, I argue that the link between the EU level regulatory regime and policy transformations in public utilities is weak. Instead, I forward that Estonia and Poland are able to internalise globalisation by managing and harnessing its economic and political opportunities. Specifically, this can be seen in two levels. First, for public utilities, the type of capitalism and state size are organising logics of policy transformation, which largely influence the extent and form of market and governance shifts. While some argue that globalisation leads to a process of economic and social institutionalisation, I argue that, alongside public policy literature, it is convergence towards regulatory capitalism. Although there are generated pressures from the EU to push for policy transformation before and after membership, the EU mainly facilitates the agenda of policy transformation, but the reasons for policy shifts in public utilities go back to the organising logics of state capitalism and state size. Second, I argue that, specific to the energy sector, that unconventional energy influences the state’s expectations of globalisation by opening new political and economic spaces. In particular, it indirectly influences policy transformation in energy by giving opportunities to states and involving more actors. Resources are not just technical and natural objects to empower the state, but they parlay social relations. Shale energy in both countries modifies the social relations of the state and society within, between, and amongst the international community. The key point is that resources modify the state’s expectations of globalisation by opening new political and economic spaces.http://www.ester.ee/record=b4084392*es

Enhanced Accessibility for People with Disabilities Living in Urban Areas

[Excerpt] People with disabilities constitute a significant proportion of the poor in developing countries. If internationally agreed targets on reducing poverty are to be reached, it is critical that specific measures be taken to reduce the societal discrimination and isolation that people with disabilities continue to face. Transport is an important enabler of strategies to fight poverty through enhancing access to education, employment, and social services. This project aims to further the understanding of the mobility and access issues experienced by people with disabilities in developing countries, and to identify specific steps that can be taken to start addressing problems. A major objective of the project is to compile a compendium of guidelines that can be used by government authorities, advocacy groups, and donor/loan agencies to improve the access of people with disabilities to transport and other services in urban areas

Analysis of the finite difference time domain technique to solve the Schrödinger equation for quantum devices

An extension of the finite difference time domain is applied to solve the Schrödinger equation. A systematic analysis of stability and convergence of this technique is carried out in this article. The numerical scheme used to solve the Schrödinger equation differs from the scheme found in electromagnetics. Also, the unit cell employed to model quantum devices is different from the Yee cell used by the electrical engineering community. A bound for the time step is derived to ensure stability. Several numerical experiments in quantum structures demonstrate the accuracy of a second order, comparable to the analysis of electromagnetic devices with the Yee cell.a!Electronic mail: [email protected] b!Electronic mail: [email protected] c!Electronic mail: [email protected] d!Electronic mail: [email protected]

Putting the Ecosystem Services idea at work: applications on impact assessment and territorial planning

South America is experiencing profound land use and land cover changes. Their consequences on the Ecosystem Services (ES) supply and human well-being need to be diagnosed and monitored in order to support informed decisions both in management and territorial planning. The ES concept provides a key framework to evaluate human impacts on nature. The use of spatially explicit indicators able to characterize ES supply can turn operative the ES framework, enabling for sustainability assessment. The Ecosystem Services Supply Index (ESSI) is a synoptic indicator that estimates and maps supporting and regulating ES related to water and carbon dynamics from data provided by remote sensors of free access and wide spatial coverage. The ESSI merges two attributes of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) annual dynamics: the annual average (NDVIMEAN, a proxy of total C gains) and the intra-annual coefficient of variation (NDVICV, an indicator of seasonality). In this article we proposed two objectives: 1) to describe the conceptual foundation of the ESSI and to gather the empirical support that shows its ability to explain the spatial-temporal variation in different ES, and to present a new case of empirical ESSI assessment, and 2) to synthesize the contribution of the ESSI in socio ecosystem diagnosis, monitoring and territorial planning stages in 8 existing cases of application. We also explored the links to the decision-making process by diverse stakeholders including local research and development institutions, NGOs and government agents. Cases corresponded to a wide range of situations from humid and dry forests to grasslands, and from local to subcontinental scales in southern South America. We found that ESSI was successfully applied for diagnosis, planning and monitoring processes which helped to better define interventions in management decisions and also to empower the most vulnerable stakeholders under territorial and environmental conflicts

A New Approach to the Modeling of Anisotropic Media with the Transmission Line Matrix Method

A reformulation of the Transmission Line Matrix (TLM) method is presented to model non-dispersive anisotropic media. Two TLM-based solutions to solve this problem can already be found in the literature, each one with an interesting feature. One can be considered a more conceptual approach, close to the TLM fundamentals, which identifies each TLM in Maxwell's equations with a specific line. But this simplicity is achieved at the expense of an increase in the memory storage requirements of a general situation. The second existing solution is a more powerful and general formulation that avoids this increase in memory storage. However, it is based on signal processing techniques and considerably deviates from the original TLM method, which may complicate its dissemination in the scientific community. The reformulation presented in this work exploits the benefits of both methods. On the one hand, it maintains the direct and conceptual approach of the original TLM, which may help to better understand it, allowing for its future use and improvement by other authors. On the other hand, the proposal includes an optimized treatment of the signals stored at the stub lines in order to limit the requirement of memory storage to only one accumulative term per field component, as in the original TLM versions used for isotropic media. The good behavior of the proposed algorithm when applied to anisotropic media is shown by its application to different situations involving diagonal and off-diagonal tensor properties

Design & Optimization of Large Cylindrical Radomes with Subcell and Non-Orthogonal FDTD Meshes Combined with Genetic Algorithms

The word radome is a contraction of radar and dome. The function of radomes is to protect antennas from atmospheric agents. Radomes are closed structures that protect the antennas from environmental factors such as wind, rain, ice, sand, and ultraviolet rays, among others. The radomes are passive structures that introduce return losses, and whose proper design would relax the requirement of complex front-end elements such as amplifiers. The radome consists mostly in a thin dielectric curved shape cover and sometimes needs to be tuned using metal inserts to cancel the capacitive performance of the dielectric. Radomes are in the near field region of the antennas and a full wave analysis of the antenna with the radome is the best approach to analyze its performance. A major numerical problem is the full wave modeling of a large radome-antenna-array system, as optimization of the radome parameters minimize return losses. In the present work, the finite difference time domain (FDTD) combined with a genetic algorithm is used to find the optimal radome for a large radome-antenna-array system. FDTD uses general curvilinear coordinates and sub-cell features as a thin dielectric slab approach and a thin wire approach. Both approximations are generally required if a problem of practical electrical size is to be solved using a manageable number of cells and time steps in FDTD inside a repetitive optimization loop. These approaches are used in the full wave analysis of a large array of crossed dipoles covered with a thin and cylindrical dielectric radome. The radome dielectric has a thickness of ~λ/10 at its central operating frequency. To reduce return loss a thin helical wire is introduced in the radome, whose diameter is ~0.0017λ and the spacing between each turn is ~0.3λ. The genetic algorithm was implemented to find the best parameters to minimize return losses. The inclusion of a helical wire reduces return losses by ~10 dB, however some minor changes of radiation pattern could distort the performance of the whole radome-array-antenna system. A further analysis shows that desired specifications of the system are preserved

Nuevas citas para la flora algológica de Baleares

In the study that we are carrying out about the algological flora of Mallorca, two new species for the Balearic islands have been determined: they are Hypnea cervicornis J. Agardh and Galaxaura oblongata (Ellis and Solander) Lamouroux, two tipically tropical species.En el estudio que estamos llevando a cabo sobre la flora algológica de Mallorca, se han determinado dos especies nuevas para las Baleares. Son Hypnea cervicornis J. Agardh y Galaxaura oblongata (Ellis and Solander) Lamouroux, especies típicamente tropicales

Influencia del pH sobre las algas edáficas

We clear-up the relationship between the soil pH and the algal presence, on a total of 40 samples. The algae belong to 60 different genera of the classes Cyanophyta, Bacillariophyta and Chlorophyta which have been isolated using the enrichment culture technique. We also relate these algae groups wits the percentage of organic matter present in the substratum.Se ponen de manifiesto las relaciones entre el pH del suelo y la presencia de algas, en un total de 40 muestras. Las algas pertenecen a 60 ge?neros de las divisiones Cyanophyta, Bacillariophyta y Chlorophyta que han sido aisladas usando la te?cnica de cultivos de enriquecimiento. Tambie?n se relacionan estos grupos algales con el porcentaje de materia orga?nica presente en el substrato

Influencia del pH sobre las algas edáficas

We clear-up the relationship between the soil pH and the algal presence, on a total of 40 samples. The algae belong to 60 different genera of the classes Cyanophyta, Bacillariophyta and Chlorophyta which have been isolated using the enrichment culture technique. We also relate these algae groups wits the percentage of organic matter present in the substratum.Se ponen de manifiesto las relaciones entre el pH del suelo y la presencia de algas, en un total de 40 muestras. Las algas pertenecen a 60 géneros de las divisiones Cyanophyta, Bacillariophyta y Chlorophyta que han sido aisladas usando la técnica de cultivos de enriquecimiento. También se relacionan estos grupos algales con el porcentaje de materia orgánica presente en el substrato