Cultures within a culture: the role of nationality and religion for environmentally significant behaviour in students living in university accommodation

Reducing global warming cannot be achieved through technological interventions alone; it requires a change in human behaviour. Households are a major contributor to carbon emissions, and thus play an integral part in strategies aiming at a more sustainable living. Behaviour changes in the household can make a significant contribution towards reducing CO2 emissions. However, people vary strongly in their household practices; differences in behaviour account for a substantial amount of variance in heat, electricity, and water consumption (Gill et al., 2010). What causes these differences? In addition to age and education, nationality and religion play a role: They impact on physical aspects of well-being and on environmental attitudes (e.g., Isaacs et al., 2010; Guth et al., 1995). The physical aspect such as perception of warmth is of importance insofar as that comfort practices could influence on environmentally significant behaviour. The Eurobarometer 295 (2008), a study on the attitudes of European citizens towards the environment, also revealed differences in attitudes and behaviour of Europeans towards the environment. Therefore, steps to promote more sustainable living have to be adapted to different cultures. Rising globalization brings about more heterogeneous populations, meaning that there will be increasingly "cultures within a culture." An important question is what happens to cultural differences in environmentally significant behaviour in such a setting. It could be that differences are diluted by a largely shared environment, or that they continue to persist, thanks to being deeply rooted in one’s origin and to the non-shared part of the environment. Our study: The aim of this study was to examine the variation in pro-environmental attitudes, behaviour, and values in members of a community now living in a very similar setting but coming from diverse backgrounds. If personal background accounts for differences in the variables at stake, then this has important implications, e.g. for all national interventions launched to change behaviour. Data was collected through a web-based survey. The survey was sent out to first-year students living in university accommodation at the University of Greenwich. Religion, strength of religion, nationality, years living in the UK, program studied, gender and age were recorded and the impact of these variables on a variety of measures such as pro- environmental attitudes, values, and actual behaviour was assessed. Results are currently being analysed but preliminary data suggest that sub-culture does play a role and thus needs to be considered when developing carbon reduction interventions. The implications of these findings for the University and national policies are discussed

Collective vs local measurements in qubit mixed state estimation

We discuss the problem of estimating a general (mixed) qubit state. We give the optimal guess that can be inferred from any given set of measurements. For collective measurements and for a large number $N$ of copies, we show that the error in the estimation goes as 1/N. For local measurements we focus on the simpler case of states lying on the equatorial plane of the Bloch sphere. We show that standard tomographic techniques lead to an error proportional to $1/N^{1/4}$, while with our optimal data processing it is proportional to $1/N^{3/4}$.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, minor style changes, refs. adde

Saving energy with light? Experimental studies assessing the impact of colour temperature on thermal comfort

We tested whether the colour temperature of the illumination (realised through manipulating the ceiling light) impacted on thermal comfort, based on the hypothesis that a lower colour temperature is associated with feeling warmer and a higher colour temperature with feeling cooler. If confirmed, then light might be a tool for energy-saving through allowing ambient air temperatures to vary over a wider range and hence reducing the need for space heating and cooling.Testing took place in a climate chamber. In Study 1, comfort ratings were collected using thermal comfort surveys (N = 32). In Study 2, an observational design was used, where changes in clothing level, interpreted as thermal discomfort responses, were observed (N = 32). We compared comfort ratings and changes in clothing level under light with a colour temperature of 2700 K vs. 6500 K. Results partly confirmed the hypotheses: both self-report and observation indicated higher comfort under the low colour temperature. Further research will need to replicate findings in a real-world setting to see if light might indeed be a tool to modulate thermal comfort, and hence reduce usage of heating and cooling

Experimentelle Untersuchungen grossflaechiger ebener Spaltdichtungen aus elastisch gebetteten Verschleissplaettchen Schlussbericht

The wear resistance in wide sliding ring seals in pump-lock devices for manganese nodules pumping has been studied in order to optimize the life cycle of the seals. Different ceramic materials (alumina, silicon carbide, zirconium oxide) have been subjected to tribological investigations, and the influence of the working parameters on the wear behaviour has been studied in long-term tests. As a result, the construction of the seals could be improved, and a theoretical discription of the seals is presented. (WEN)SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover: F94B1631+a / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekBundesministerium fuer Forschung und Technologie (BMFT), Bonn (Germany)DEGerman