A long-haul change : differential object marking in early Slavonic

This article uses extensive treebank data from the PROIEL and TOROT treebanks to track the much-debated rise of the animacy category in Russian, which in this article will be analysed as a change from at least partly definiteness-driven differential object marking in Old Church Slavonic via constructionally-conditioned variation in Old East Slavonic to fully fledged animacy subgender marking in late Middle Russian. The change is interest-ing from a methodological point of view as well, since it requires us to anno-tate data through an ongoing change, and also since conventional treebank annotation is not enough to capture the conditions of the observed variation and change: annotation for semantics and information structure is necessary too. The article describes and defends a conservative approach to annotation in the face of change: the analysis that fits the first attested stage of a change is retained as long as possible

Accessible decision support for sustainable energy systems in developing countries

With rising electricity demand through digitization and innovation, the urgency of climate change mitigation, and the recent geopolitical crisis, stakeholders in developing countries face the complex task to build reliable, affordable, and low-emission energy systems. Information inaccessibility, data unavailability, and scarce local expertise are major challenges for planning and transitioning to decentralized solutions. Motivated by the calls for more solution-oriented research regarding sustainability, we design, develop, and evaluate the web-based decision support system NESSI4Dweb+ that is tailored to the needs and capabilities of various stakeholders in developing countries. NESSI4Dweb+ is open access and considers location-specific circumstances to facilitate multi-energy planning. Its applicability is demonstrated with a case study of a representative rural village in southern Madagascar and evaluated through seven interviews with experts and stakeholders. We show that NESSI4Dweb+ can support the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and enable the very prerequisite of digitization: reliable electrification

Sustainable Energy System Planning in Developing Countries: A Decision Support System Considering Variations Over Time

Planning energy systems is subject to changes in components’ health and installation costs, fossil fuel prices, and load demand. Especially in developing countries, electrical loads are reported to increase drastically after electrification. Improper sizing of the energy system’s components can lead to reduced environmental sustainability, decreased reliability, and long-term project failures. As no tools for energy system planning exist that aim at developing countries and sufficiently account for temporal variations, we modify the software NESSI4D in a design science cycle to provide the comprehensive decision support system NESSI4D+. We conduct an applicability check with a representative rural village in mountainous Nepal that validates NESSI4D+’s relevance and shows the importance of considering temporal variations for economically, ecologically, and socially long-term sustainable energy projects

Tool-based renewable energy system planning using survey data: A case study in rural Vietnam

Renewable energies provide effective sustainable development by raising living standards, accelerating economic growth, and mitigating pollution. However, specifically in developing countries, the lack of information, data, and local expertise challenges the design process and long-term success of renewable energy systems. Following the call for inter-disciplinary, solution-oriented research, this work uses a design science research-approach to facilitate multi-energy planning. The decision support system NESSI4D is developed, which considers site-specific economic, environmental, technological, and social factors and is tuned for stakeholder needs in developing countries. Following a step-by-step process model manual, the artifact’s applicability is demonstrated in a use case for a rural community in Thua Thien-Hue, Vietnam. Missing load data are synthesized from the TVSEP with the software RAMP. The results show that the implementation of renewable energy technologies only enables affordable, low-emission electrification with governmental financial incentives. Several sensitivity tests illustrate the impact of changing assumptions and highlight the importance of detailed analyses with highly specialized tools. The demonstrating use case validates the method’s relevance for research and practice towards the goals of effective sustainable development

Sustainable Energy System Planning in Developing Countries: Facilitating Load Profile Generation in Energy System Simulations

Successful energy system planning is dependent on detailed electricity demand information. Especially in developing countries, pre-generated load profiles are often unsuitable as appliance ownership and usage vary significantly across borders, between urban and rural areas, and on household and industry levels. Synthesizing load profiles is often hindered by the inaccessibility of tools due to cost barriers, global unavailability, or required technical knowledge. As currently, no easily accessible and usable tool is available during energy system planning in rural areas of developing countries, we incorporate the open-source load profile generator RAMP into our web-based energy system simulator NESSI4Dweb+ to provide an intuitive user interface. We conduct an applicability check with self-collected data from a guesthouse in Sri Lanka, analyzing the impact of load distribution and magnitude on the economic, environmental, and reliable energy supply, that validates the artifact's relevance and ability to empower local decision-makers

Sustainable Energy System Planning in Developing Countries: Facilitating Load Profile Generation in Energy System Simulations

Successful energy system planning is dependent on detailed electricity demand information. Especially in developing countries, pre-generated load profiles are often unsuitable as appliance ownership and usage vary significantly across borders, between urban and rural areas, and on household and industry levels. Synthesizing load profiles is often hindered by the inaccessibility of tools due to cost barriers, global unavailability, or required technical knowledge. As currently, no easily accessible and usable tool is available during energy system planning in rural areas of developing countries, we incorporate the open-source load profile generator RAMP into our web-based energy system simulator NESSI4Dweb+ to provide an intuitive user interface. We conduct an applicability check with self-collected data from a guesthouse in Sri Lanka, analyzing the impact of load distribution and magnitude on the economic, environmental, and reliable energy supply, that validates the artifact's relevance and ability to empower local decision-makers

Lines pinning lines

A line g is a transversal to a family F of convex polytopes in 3-dimensional space if it intersects every member of F. If, in addition, g is an isolated point of the space of line transversals to F, we say that F is a pinning of g. We show that any minimal pinning of a line by convex polytopes such that no face of a polytope is coplanar with the line has size at most eight. If, in addition, the polytopes are disjoint, then it has size at most six. We completely characterize configurations of disjoint polytopes that form minimal pinnings of a line.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figure

Open access decision support for sustainable buildings and neighborhoods: The nano energy system simulator NESSI

The urgency of climate change mitigation, rising energy prices and geopolitical crises make a quick and efficient energy transition in the building sector imperative. Building owners, housing associations, and local governments need support in the complex task to build sustainable energy systems. Motivated by the calls for more solution-oriented, practice-focused research regarding climate change and guided by design science research principles, we address this need and design, develop, and evaluate the web-based decision support system NESSI. NESSI is an open-access energy system simulator with an intuitive user flow to facilitate multi-energy planning for buildings and neighborhoods. It calculates the technical, environmental, and economic effects of 14 energy-producing, consuming, and storing components of the electric and thermal infrastructure, considers time-dependent effects, and accounts for geographic as well as sectoral circumstances. Its applicability is demonstrated with the case of a single-family home in Hannover, Germany, and evaluated through twelve expert interviews

Analogues of the central point theorem for families with dd-intersection property in Rd\mathbb R^d

In this paper we consider families of compact convex sets in $\mathbb R^d$ such that any subfamily of size at most $d$ has a nonempty intersection. We prove some analogues of the central point theorem and Tverberg's theorem for such families

Bounding Helly numbers via Betti numbers

We show that very weak topological assumptions are enough to ensure the existence of a Helly-type theorem. More precisely, we show that for any non-negative integers $b$ and $d$ there exists an integer $h(b,d)$ such that the following holds. If $\mathcal F$ is a finite family of subsets of $\mathbb R^d$ such that $\tilde\beta_i\left(\bigcap\mathcal G\right) \le b$ for any $\mathcal G \subsetneq \mathcal F$ and every $0 \le i \le \lceil d/2 \rceil-1$ then $\mathcal F$ has Helly number at most $h(b,d)$. Here $\tilde\beta_i$ denotes the reduced $\mathbb Z_2$-Betti numbers (with singular homology). These topological conditions are sharp: not controlling any of these $\lceil d/2 \rceil$ first Betti numbers allow for families with unbounded Helly number. Our proofs combine homological non-embeddability results with a Ramsey-based approach to build, given an arbitrary simplicial complex $K$, some well-behaved chain map $C_*(K) \to C_*(\mathbb R^d)$.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figure