Multi criteria decision analysis for sustainability assessment of 2nd generation biofuels

This paper presents results of the comparative sustainability assessment of three renewable and fossil fuel production routes, i.e. gasoline from straw or wood, and conventional gasoline. For the simultaneous consideration of the ecological, economic and social dimension a MS Excel-based tool is developed, which enables the assessment of energy technologies by choosing different MCDA (Multi Criteria Decision Analysis) methods, weighting sets, weighting methods and normalization methods for ecological indicators. Results for the MCDA method TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) show, that stakeholders who prioritize the economic dimension (Individualist) would choose conventional gasoline, while stakeholders who prioritize the ecological and the social dimension (Hierarchist and Egalitarian) would choose gasoline from wood

From the Western Alps across Central Europe: Postglacial recolonisation of the tufa stream specialist Rhyacophila pubescens (Insecta, Trichoptera)

Background: Dispersal rates, i.e. the effective number of dispersing individuals per unit time, are the product of dispersal capacity, i.e. a species physiological potential for dispersal, dispersal behaviour, i.e. the decision to leave a habitat patch in favour of another, and connectivity of occupied habitat. Dispersal of species that are highly specialised to a certain habitat is thus strongly limited by habitat availability. Additionally, species inhabiting very stable environments may adopt a sedentary life-style. Both factors should lead to strong genetic differentiation in highly specialised species inhabiting stable environments. These two factors apply to our model species Rhyacophila pubescens a highly specialised freshwater insect that occurs in tufa springs, a very stable habitat. Results: We examined the genetic population structure and phylogeography using range-wide mtCOI sequence and AFLP data from 333 individuals of R. pubescens. We inferred the location of Pleistocene refugia and postglacial colonisation routes of R. pubescens, and examined ongoing local differentiation. Our results indicate intraregional differentiation with a high number of locally endemic haplotypes, that we attributed to habitat specificity and low dispersal rates of R. pubescens. We observed high levels of genetic diversity south of the Alps and genetic impoverishment north of the Alps. Estimates of migrants placed the refugium and the source of the colonisation in the Dauphine Alps (SW Alps). Conclusions: This is the first example of an aquatic insect with a colonisation route along the western margin of the Alps to the Central European highlands. The study also shows that specialisation to a stable environment may have promoted a behavioural shift to decreased dispersal rates, leading to stronger local population differentiation than in less specialised aquatic insects. Alternatively, the occurrence of highly specialised tufa spring habitats may have been more widespread in the past, leading to range regression and fragmentation among present day R. pubescens populations

Prospective assessment of energy technologies: a comprehensive approach for sustainability assessment

Background: A further increase in renewable energy supply is needed to substitute fossil fuels and combat climate change. Each energy source and respective technologies have specific techno-economic and environmental characteristics as well as social implications. This paper presents a comprehensive approach for prospective sustainability assessment of energy technologies developed within the Helmholtz Initiative “Energy System 2050” (ES2050).Methods: The “ES2050 approach” comprises environmental, economic, and social assessment. It includes established life cycle based economic and environmental indicators, and social indicators derived from a normative concept of sustainable development. The elaborated social indicators, i.e. patent growth rate, acceptance, and domestic value added, address three different socio-technical areas, i.e. innovation (patents), public perception (acceptance), and public welfare (value added).Results: The implementation of the “ES2050 approach” is presented exemplarily and different sustainability indicators and respective results are discussed based on three emerging technologies and corresponding case studies: (1) synthetic biofuels for mobility; (2) hydrogen from wind power for mobility; and (3) batteries for stationary energy storage. For synthetic biofuel, the environmental advantages over fossil gasoline are most apparent for the impact categories Climate Change and Ionizing Radiation—human health. Domestic value added accounts for 66% for synthetic biofuel compared to 13% for fossil gasoline. All hydrogen supply options can be considered to become near to economic competitiveness with fossil fuels in the long term. Survey participants regard Explosion Hazard as the most pressing concern about hydrogen fuel stations. For Li-ion batteries, the results for patent growth rate indicate that they enter their maturity phase.Conclusions: The “ES2050 approach” enables a consistent prospective sustainability assessment of (emerging) energy technologies, supporting technology developers, decision-makers in politics, industry, and society with knowledge for further evaluation, steering, and governance. The approach presented is considered rather a starting point than a blueprint for the comprehensive assessment of renewable energy technologies though, especially for the suggested social indicators, their significance and their embedding in context scenarios for prospective assessments

A resource efficient approach for quantum and classical simulations of gauge theories in particle physics

Gauge theories establish the standard model of particle physics, and lattice gauge theory (LGT) calculations employing Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods have been pivotal in our understanding of fundamental interactions. The present limitations of MCMC techniques may be overcome by Hamiltonian-based simulations on classical or quantum devices, which further provide the potential to address questions that lay beyond the capabilities of the current approaches. However, for continuous gauge groups, Hamiltonian-based formulations involve infinite-dimensional gauge degrees of freedom that can solely be handled by truncation. Current truncation schemes require dramatically increasing computational resources at small values of the bare couplings, where magnetic field effects become important. Such limitation precludes one from `taking the continuous limit' while working with finite resources. To overcome this limitation, we provide a resource-efficient protocol to simulate LGTs with continuous gauge groups in the Hamiltonian formulation. Our new method allows for calculations at arbitrary values of the bare coupling and lattice spacing. The approach consists of the combination of a Hilbert space truncation with a regularization of the gauge group, which permits an efficient description of the magnetically-dominated regime. We focus here on Abelian gauge theories and use $2+1$ dimensional quantum electrodynamics as a benchmark example to demonstrate this efficient framework to achieve the continuum limit in LGTs. This possibility is a key requirement to make quantitative predictions at the field theory level and offers the long-term perspective to utilise quantum simulations to compute physically meaningful quantities in regimes that are precluded to quantum Monte Carlo.Comment: 25 pages, 9 figures, journal versio

Quantifying the Grimm Corpus: Transgressive and Transformative Bodies in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales

What do bodies mean in fairy tales? Donald Haase’s engagement with the Grimms’ fairy tales has offered some hints, ranging from his attention to feminist scholarship on the Grimms to his multifaceted review of recent Grimm scholarship that addresses various meanings of bodies in the language and translation of their tales. Inspired by Haase’s work and encouragement, I created a database that lists every mention or description of a body in the Grimms’ tales and in five other European tale collections. I detailed the results of this quantitative investigation in my dissertation, generally treating all the tale collections as part of one large corpus. In this essay, however, to add to the conversation that Haase has generated and curated, I refilter the data to solely examine which body parts (nouns, adjectives, and actions) appear in the Grimm tales. A major thematic focus is transgression and transformation, especially their gendered dimensions

Comparative patent analysis for the identification of global research trends for the case of battery storage, hydrogen and bioenergy

Patent documents provide knowledge about which countries are investing in certain technologies and make it possible to identify potential innovation trends. The aim of this article is to analyze trends in patenting that might result in innovations for three energy technologies: thermochemical conversion of biomass (Bioenergy), lithium-ion battery storage, and hydrogen production by alkaline water electrolysis. Based on different patent indicators, the most active countries are compared to provide insights into the global market position of a country, particularly Germany which is used as a reference here. In line with this, a freely available patent analysis software tool was developed directly using the European Patent Office database through their Open Patent Services. The results for named technologies show that patenting activity of Germany is low in comparison to other countries such as Japan, China, and the US. Whereas the position of Germany for batteries and hydrogen is comparable, bioenergy shows different results regarding the identified countries and the number of patents found. However, a broader context beyond patenting is suggested for consideration to make robust statements about particular technology trends. The presented tool and methodology in this study can serve as a blueprint for explorative assessments in any technological domain

Towards simulating 2D effects in lattice gauge theories on a quantum computer

Gauge theories are the most successful theories for describing nature at its fundamental level, but obtaining analytical or numerical solutions often remains a challenge. We propose an experimental quantum simulation scheme to study ground state properties in two-dimensional quantum electrodynamics (2D QED) using existing quantum technology. The proposal builds on a formulation of lattice gauge theories as effective spin models in arXiv:2006.14160, which reduces the number of qubits needed by eliminating redundant degrees of freedom and by using an efficient truncation scheme for the gauge fields. The latter endows our proposal with the perspective to take a well-controlled continuum limit. Our protocols allow in principle scaling up to large lattices and offer the perspective to connect the lattice simulation to low energy observable quantities, e.g. the hadron spectrum, in the continuum theory. By including both dynamical matter and a non-minimal gauge field truncation, we provide the novel opportunity to observe 2D effects on present-day quantum hardware. More specifically, we present two Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) based protocols for the study of magnetic field effects, and for taking an important first step towards computing the running coupling of QED. For both instances, we include variational quantum circuits for qubit-based hardware, which we explicitly apply to trapped ion quantum computers. We simulate the proposed VQE experiments classically to calculate the required measurement budget under realistic conditions. While this feasibility analysis is done for trapped ions, our approach can be easily adapted to other platforms. The techniques presented here, combined with advancements in quantum hardware pave the way for reaching beyond the capabilities of classical simulations by extending our framework to include fermionic potentials or topological terms

Simulating 2D lattice gauge theories on a qudit quantum computer

Particle physics underpins our understanding of the world at a fundamental level by describing the interplay of matter and forces through gauge theories. Yet, despite their unmatched success, the intrinsic quantum mechanical nature of gauge theories makes important problem classes notoriously difficult to address with classical computational techniques. A promising way to overcome these roadblocks is offered by quantum computers, which are based on the same laws that make the classical computations so difficult. Here, we present a quantum computation of the properties of the basic building block of two-dimensional lattice quantum electrodynamics, involving both gauge fields and matter. This computation is made possible by the use of a trapped-ion qudit quantum processor, where quantum information is encoded in $d$ different states per ion, rather than in two states as in qubits. Qudits are ideally suited for describing gauge fields, which are naturally high-dimensional, leading to a dramatic reduction in the quantum register size and circuit complexity. Using a variational quantum eigensolver, we find the ground state of the model and observe the interplay between virtual pair creation and quantized magnetic field effects. The qudit approach further allows us to seamlessly observe the effect of different gauge field truncations by controlling the qudit dimension. Our results open the door for hardware-efficient quantum simulations with qudits in near-term quantum devices

Towards a national ecosystem assessment in Germany

We present options for a National Ecosystem Assessment in Germany (NEA-DE) that could inform decision-makers on the state and trends of ecosystems and ecosystem services. Characterizing a NEA-DE, we argue that its cross-sectoral, integrative approach would have the advantages of increased scientific understanding, addressing specific policy questions and creating science-policy dialogues. Challenges include objections against a utilitarian perspective, reservations concerning power relations, and responsibilities concerning the funding