Energy supply security in the EU: Benchmarking diversity and dependence of primary energy

We evaluate energy supply security in all the EU countries. For the first time a proxy indicators for diversity and concentration Shannon Wiener index and Herfindahl-Hirschman index and dependence metrics are used for the detailed primary energy fuel mix of all EU member states. The geographic coverage of this work allows for useful comparisons between countries and for a means of benchmarking against the indices. Overall, it is found that energy supply diversity in the EU has been significantly improved since 1990 by 14.2% (SWI) and 22.6% (HHI). We demonstrate the interrelations between dependence and diversity and the role of renewables on dependence and diversity. Renewable energy, particularly wind, solar and biomass has been the main driver for diversity growth and has a positive contribution to indigenous energy use; thus reducing energy import dependence. We argue that alongside renewable energy there exists a wide range of factors contributing to energy dependence and that renewable energy has had a positive contribution to almost all EU28 country's diversity

Energy Supply Sustainability For Island Nations: A Study on 8 Global Islands

Energy supply sustainability is a multifaceted challenge for all countries and especially for small island nations that might have limited adaptive capacity. Previous studies showed that islands experience energy scarcity and isolation from energy markets due to their remote location. Our focus is on a range of islands spread out globally: Malta, Cyprus, Curacao, Mauritius, Iceland, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Bahrain. They are selected for their varying energy development paradigms that facilitate cluster elicitation. For the first time, we combine the estimation of fuel mix diversity and energy import dependence with established metrics Shannon-Wiener index (SWI), Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI) and Energy Import Dependence to assess energy supply security. SWI and Energy Import Dependence are then presented against carbon intensity to highlight two angles of sustainable energy supply. We argue that islands are clustered to those that have fossil fuel reserves and are locked in low diversity, low dependence and high carbon intensity, those that rely almost exclusively on imported fossil fuel reserves and have low diversity and high dependence and high carbon intensity and finally those that have entered a decarbonization trajectory that allows them to reduce their fossil fuel import dependence, increase their diversity and reduce their carbon intensity

Energy Supply Security in Southern Europe and Ireland

Energy supply security is of paramount importance to all countries, however, not all countries present the same capacity to respond to energy security threats. Financial wealth is one of the means that can support access to energy resources and as such countries that have been hit the hardest by the 2008 financial crisis present energy supply vulnerabilities. We focus on Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece and find that they have continuously improved their energy supply diversity. At the same time, we argue that during, and as a result of the financial crisis our focus countries reduced their exposure to expensive imported resources predominantly in the transport sector and increased the role of renewables. Overall, we find improved supply security which could be strengthened further if financial resources were directed towards innovation for renewable energy sources

QM/MM description of platinum-DNA interactions: comparison of binding and DNA distortion of five drugs

Hybrid QM/MM calculations on adducts of five platinum-based anti-cancer drugs, namely cisplatin, oxaliplatin, lobaplatin, and heptaplatin are reported. Starting from the NMR structure of a cisplatin–DNA octamer complex (PDB entry 1AU5), we compare DNA binding of drugs that differ in their carrier ligands, and hence in their potential interactions with DNA. It is shown that all drugs induce broadly similar changes to the regular helical structure of DNA, but that variations in ligand lead to subtle differences in complex geometry, with cisplatin exhibiting notably different properties to other drugs. Cisplatin is also the most weakly bound of drugs considered here, and heptaplatin the most strongly bound. Differences in binding appear to be due to changes in the pattern of non-covalent interactions between drug and DNA, especially hydrogen bonding to oxygen in guanine and phosphate groups. Despite adopting very similar geometries, two isomers of lobaplatin (RRS and SSS) are found to have quite different binding energies, the latter being bound by up to 30 kcal mol−1 more than the former

Energy and carbon intensity: A study on the cross-country industrial shift from China to India and SE Asia

The potential relocation of various industrial sectors from China to India and countries of the SE Asian region presents low cost opportunities for manufacturers, but also risks rising for energy demand and CO2 emissions. A cross-country shift of industrial output would present challenges for controlling emissions since India and SE Asian countries present higher industrial emissions intensity than China. We find that although there is a convergence in emissions intensity in the machinery manufacturing and paper and pulp industries, there are significant variations in all other industrial sectors. Indian emissions intensity is double that of China in the iron and steel and textile and leather industries and almost triple in the cement industry; Indonesian emissions intensity is almost double that of China in the non-metallic minerals and textile and leather industries and 50% higher in the chemical and petrochemical industry. We demonstrate that the expected higher emissions are driven by both a higher carbon fuel mix intensity in the recipient countries and higher energy intensity in their industrial activities. While industrial relocation could benefit certain countries financially, it would impose considerable threats to their energy supply security and capacity to comply with their Paris Agreement commitments

Grammar-Aware Question-Answering on Quantum Computers

Natural language processing (NLP) is at the forefront of great advances in contemporary AI, and it is arguably one of the most challenging areas of the field. At the same time, with the steady growth of quantum hardware and notable improvements towards implementations of quantum algorithms, we are approaching an era when quantum computers perform tasks that cannot be done on classical computers with a reasonable amount of resources. This provides a new range of opportunities for AI, and for NLP specifically. Earlier work has already demonstrated a potential quantum advantage for NLP in a number of manners: (i) algorithmic speedups for search-related or classification tasks, which are the most dominant tasks within NLP, (ii) exponentially large quantum state spaces allow for accommodating complex linguistic structures, (iii) novel models of meaning employing density matrices naturally model linguistic phenomena such as hyponymy and linguistic ambiguity, among others. In this work, we perform the first implementation of an NLP task on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) hardware. Sentences are instantiated as parameterised quantum circuits. We encode word-meanings in quantum states and we explicitly account for grammatical structure, which even in mainstream NLP is not commonplace, by faithfully hard-wiring it as entangling operations. This makes our approach to quantum natural language processing (QNLP) particularly NISQ-friendly. Our novel QNLP model shows concrete promise for scalability as the quality of the quantum hardware improves in the near future

Προβλήματα Ικανοποίησης Περιορισμών: Επιλυτές Περιορισμών ή Επιλυτές Ικανοποιησιμότητας;

Σκοπός αυτής της εργασίας είναι να πραγματοποιηθεί μια έρευνα πάνω στην επίλυση προβλημάτων ικανοποίησης περιορισμών (CSP – Constraint Satisfaction Problem). Συγκεκριμένα, αντικείμενο της μελέτης είναι η παράλληλη σύγκριση δύο διαφορετικών προσεγγίσεων για την επίλυση CSP προβλημάτων. Η πρώτη προσέγγιση αφορά την απευθείας επίλυση του προβλήματος από ένα εξειδικευμένο λογισμικό επίλυσης CSP προβλημάτων (CSP Solver). Η δεύτερη προσέγγιση εξετάζει αρχικά την κωδικοποίηση του προβλήματος σε ένα ισοδύναμο πρόβλημα SAT (Boolean Satisfiability Problem) και στη συνέχεια την επίλυση αυτού μέσω ενός λογισμικού επίλυσης SAT προβλημάτων (SAT Solver). Για να γίνει αυτή η σύγκριση, επιλέχθηκαν τρία κλασσικά CSP προβλήματα (N queens, Map Coloring, Car Sequencing) τα οποία εξετάστηκαν και με τις δυο προσεγγίσεις. Τα προβλήματα αυτά μοντελοποιήθηκαν ως CSP και SAT και στη συνέχεια επιλύθηκαν από τους αντίστοιχους CSP και SAT Solvers. Για την περίπτωση των CSP, η μοντελοποίηση έγινε με τη χρήση του λογισμικού MiniZinc και η επίλυση καλώντας εσωτερικά τον Gecode solver. Αντίστοιχα, για την περίπτωση των SAT, υλοποιήθηκαν τα προβλήματα σε C++ περιβάλλον και επιλύθηκαν με τη βοήθεια του πακέτου MiniSat. Από τα αποτελέσματα που προέκυψαν, φαίνεται πως η γνήσια CSP προσέγγιση υπερέχει της αντίστοιχης SAT. Αν και το συμπέρασμα αυτό δεν είναι απόλυτο και καθολικό, ωστόσο σημειώνεται πως το ιδιαίτερο πλεονέκτημα της CSP στρατηγικής είναι η συνέπεια και η αξιοπιστία της σε σχέση με την αντίστοιχη SAT.The purpose of this paper is to investigate Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSP). In particular, the subject of the study is the parallel comparison of two different approaches to CSP solving. The first approach is to solve the problem directly by a dedicated CSP Solver. The second one investigates encodings of the initial problem into an equivalent Boolean Satisfiability Problem (SAT) and then solves it through a general SAT Solver. In order to accomplish this comparison, three classic CSP were selected (N queens, Map Coloring, Car Sequencing) and examined by both approaches. These problems were modeled as CSP and SAT instances and then solved by the corresponding CSP and SAT Solvers. For the CSP case, the models were created using the MiniZinc software and their solution was searched by internally calling the Gecode Solver. Respectively, in the case of SAT, the problems were implemented in C++ environment and solved by the MiniSat package. From the results obtained, the pure CSP approach seems to be superior to the alternative SAT approach. Although this conclusion is not universal, however, it is noted that the special advantage of the CSP strategy is its consistency and reliability in contrast of the corresponding SAT

The case for islands’ energy vulnerability: Electricity supply diversity in 44 global islands

Energy supply security is a multifaceted challenge for all countries and especially for small island nations that might have limited adaptive capacity. Previous studies showed that islands experience energy scarcity and isolation from energy markets due to their remote location making energy supply security a challenging issue. We estimate energy supply diversity and concentration for 44 islands in order to provide an island specific benchmark approach for energy supply security. We use established metrics Shannon-Wiener index (SWI), Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI) with Energy Information Administration (EIA) fuel mix data. To confront the issues of supply security and sustainability we test energy diversity against energy and emissions intensity. The global character of the research along with the wide range of islands covered allows useful comparisons between countries and for a means of benchmarking against the indices while creating certain defined country clusters. Overall it is found that average island energy intensity increased by 23.4% with a corresponding increase of 12.4% on their emissions intensity for the period 2000–2015. On the other hand, diversity has improved by 21.3% (SWI) and by 2% (HHI) since 2000. We argue that fossil-fuel lock-in for islands must break in order to UN Sustainable Development Goal 7 to be achieved particularly for vulnerable island nations