Warum Partizipation? : Einige Überlegungen am Beispiel der Umweltdebatte

Theorie und Praxis der Partizipation stehen in sehr unterschiedlichen Traditionen und Diskussionszusammenhängen. Die Frage, was unter Partizipation zu verstehen ist, wird je nach historischer Phase, gesellschaftlichem Bereich, Politikfeld und Zielstellung unterschiedlich beantwortet; dabei spielen zeitgenössische gesellschaftspolitische Entwicklungen eine große Rolle. Es ist daher nicht verwunderlich, dass sich Inhalte und Formen von Partizipation auch im Kontext der Umweltdebatte über die Jahrzehnte verändert haben - und weiterhin verändern werden, sollen sie den Herausforderungen der Zukunft gerecht werden

Co-operatives and climate protection: housing co-operatives in Germany

This chapter focuses on the role of the co-operative model in promoting environmental protection, focusing on the experience of German housing co-operatives. It offers case studies of three housing co-operatives: Spar-und Bauverein Hannover eG (Hanover); Weiberwirtschaft eG (Berlin) and Möckernkiez eG (Berlin). The chapter argues that co-operatives offer great potential for climate protection activities at the local level, because their democratic structures facilitate participation and solidarity, and should be viewed as potential partners in pursuing environmental change by political, economic, and civil society groups

Age, work and pensions in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong: an institutional perspective

This article explores whether comparative institutionalism can be used to identify path-dependent approaches to the management of ageing workforces in the United Kingdom (UK) and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), and considers whether and how the global phenomenon of population ageing is leading to a convergence of approaches between Western and Eastern economies. Using semi-structured expert interviews, the article discusses these countries’ approaches to employment regulation, welfare provision and public sector employment. The findings show that the two economies exhibit a converging trend: namely shifting responsibilities for extended longevity from the state and employer towards the individual worker. However, stakeholder pressure (especially from trade unions) has tempered this trend in the UK more than in HKSAR. This indicates that stakeholders’ relative ability to use their agency in setting and pursuing agendas that diverge from public policy paths influences not only national-level policy-making but also organisational-level HRM

Physically Uncloneable Functions in the Stand-Alone and Universally Composable Framework

In this thesis, we investigate the possibility of basing cryptographic primitives on Physically Uncloneable Functions (PUF). A PUF is a piece of hardware that can be seen as a source of randomness. When a PUF is evaluated on a physical stimulus, it answers with a noisy output. PUFs are unpredictable such that even if a chosen stimulus is given, it should be infeasible to predict the corresponding output without physically evaluating the PUF. Furthermore, PUFs are uncloneable, which means that even if all components of the system are known, it is computational infeasible to model their behavior. In the course of this dissertation, we discuss PUFs in the context of their implementation, their mathematical description, as well as their usage as a cryptographic primitive and in cryptographic protocols. We first give an overview of the most prominent PUF constructions in order to derive subsequently an appropriate mathematical PUF model. It turns out that this is a non- trivial task, because it is not certain which common security properties are generally necessary and achievable due to the numerous PUF implementations. Next, we consider PUFs in security applications. Due to the properties of PUFs, these hardware tokens are good to build authentication protocols that rely on challenge/response pairs. If the number of potential PUF-based challenge/response pairs is large enough, an adversary cannot measure all PUF responses. Therefore, the at- tacker will most likely not be able to answer the challenge of the issuing party even if he had physical access to the PUF for a short time. However, we show that some of the previously suggested protocols are not fully secure in the attacker model where the adversary has physical control of the PUF and the corresponding reader during a short time. Finally, we analyze PUFs in the universally composable (UC) framework for the first time. Although hardware tokens have been considered before in the UC framework, designing PUF-based protocols is fundamentally different from other hardware token approaches. One reason is that the manufacturer of the PUF creates a physical object that outputs pseudorandom values, but where no specific code is running. In fact, the functional behavior of the PUF is unpredictable even for the PUF creator. Thus, only the party in possession of the PUF has full access to the secrets. After formalizing PUFs in the UC framework, we derive efficient UC-secure protocols for basic tasks like oblivious transfer, commitments, and key exchange

Ein Erfolgsmodell aus Asien

Japan hat zur Reduzierung der Treibhausgasemissionen ein höchst innovatives Instrument entwickelt, den so genannten Toprunneransatz. Der Ansatz basiert auf der Verknüpfung von staatlicher Regulierung und Verbraucherinformation durch Label. Der vorliegende Artikel untersucht dieses viel versprechende In­strument des Klimaschutzes und den Kontext, in dem es entwickelt und umge­setzt wurde

The management of an ageing workforce: organisational policies in Germany and Britain

Demographic change as well as pressure from the European Union and national government are forcing organisations to change age-discriminatory Human Resource Management (HRM) approaches. Based on a qualitative analysis of eight British and German organisations, we found that commitment, scope, coverage and implementation of age management differ due to country-specific institutions, particularly government, in nudging employers and unions to preferred age practices. This confirms the path-dependency concept suggested by institutional theory. Nevertheless, we also found that industry-specific factors mediate the implementation of age management, leading to some convergence across countries. This indicates that organisations deviate from the institutional path to implement practices that they deem important

Impact of effervescent atomization on oil drop size distribution of atomized oil-in-water emulsions

In this work the application of effervescent atomization to spray drying of food liquids like emulsions is explored. Therefore the influence of the atomization process on the breakup of oil drops inside the emulsion is investigated. It is expected that the oil drop size distribution of the emulsion is influenced by the stress inside the nozzle orifice and the following atomization. According to Grace the viscosity ratio between disperse and continuous phase is a crucial factor for drop breakup. A model oil-in-water emulsion was used. The viscosity of the continuous phase was adjusted by adding maltodextrin or gelatinized corn starch thus varying the viscosity ratio in the range between 15 and 0.1. The dry matter content and corresponding viscosity show only low influence on the spray drop size distribution. However, the atomized emulsions contain mostly smaller oil drops compared to the original emulsions. The influence of the atomization on the oil drop size distribution decrease with decreasing viscosity ratios. An influence of increasing stress due to increased atomization gas mass flow is present but less significant. The viscosity ratio thus allows controlling the influence of the atomization on the oil drop size distribution in the spray. The invariance of the spray drop size distribution on minor changes in fluid properties like viscosity is a favorable characteristic in food processing where such changes are common