Of temporality and plurality: an epistemic and governance agenda for accelerating just transitions for energy access and sustainable development

The complementarity of sustainable energy transitions and energy access provision are one of the key characteristics of both the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change. In this perspective piece, we offer an epistemic and governance agenda to advance the imperative of speed in meeting both ambitions and to acknowledge the plurality of disciplines, actors, and institutions involved. Recognizing that the processes required to achieve these global goals entail navigating tensions, we suggest that shifts in ways knowledge is produced and transitions are governed could be based on a justice framework

Exploring the Stimulus Organism Response (SOR) Framework that Shapes Impulse Buying in the Epoch of E-Wallets in the Philippines

 In the progressing digital financial landscape of the Philippines, the surge in e-wallet applications has vastly captured the interest of Filipino users. As e-wallets restructure how consumers manage their finances, a crucial question emerges: Can they influence impulsive buying tendencies? Using the (S-O-R) framework, the study reconnoitered the factors that incite impulse buying, expanding prior models by integrating both intrinsic and extrinsic stimuli. A total of 828 active e-wallet users were gathered using homogenous purposive sampling. After employing a Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis, the results elucidated five significant stimuli (i.e., perceived risk, visual appeal, subjective norms, convenience, and monetary savings) in shaping user satisfaction and perceived enjoyment. Conversely, information quality demonstrated statistical significance only in association with satisfaction. Moreover, the study highlighted those three factors (i.e., perceived enjoyment, subjective norms, and monetary savings) that directly impact impulse buying. Ultimately, it accentuates the full mediating role of perceived enjoyment in linking visual appeal with impulsive buying whilst showcasing a partial mediation effect in the relationship between cost savings and impulsive buying. Edifice on these findings, e-wallet providers have a strategic outlook to further invest in the following: (a) user-centric design strategies, (b) process enhancement for seamless user experience, and (c) optimization of user education.&nbsp

Towards codes of practice for navigating the academic peer review process

Peer review is the bedrock of modern academic research and its lasting contributions to science and society. And yet, reviewers can submit “poor” peer review reports, authors can blatantly ignore referee advice, and editors can contravene and undermine the peer review process itself. In this paper, we, the Editors of Energy Research & Social Science (ER&SS), seek to establish peer review codes of practice for the general energy and social science research community. We include suggestions for three of the most important roles: peer reviewers or referees, editors, and authors. We base our 33 recommendations on a collective 60 years of editorial experience at ER&SS. Our hope is that such codes of practice can enable the academic community to navigate the peer review process more effectively, more meaningfully, and more efficiently

Corpuscular Event-by-Event Simulation of Quantum Optics Experiments: Application to a Quantum-Controlled Delayed-Choice Experiment

A corpuscular simulation model of optical phenomena that does not require the knowledge of the solution of a wave equation of the whole system and reproduces the results of Maxwell's theory by generating detection events one-by-one is discussed. The event-based corpuscular model gives a unified description of multiple-beam fringes of a plane parallel plate and single-photon Mach-Zehnder interferometer, Wheeler's delayed choice, photon tunneling, quantum eraser, two-beam interference, Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm and Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiments. The approach is illustrated by application to a recent proposal for a quantum-controlled delayed choice experiment, demonstrating that also this thought experiment can be understood in terms of particle processes only.Comment: Invited paper presented at FQMT11. Accepted for publication in Physica Scripta 27 June 201

Nesting biology of the bee Caupolicana yarrowi.

20 pages : illustrations (some color), color maps ; 26 cm. Appendix: Use of nectar by the desert bee Caupolicana yarrowi (Colletidae) in cell construction / James H. Cane and Jerome G. Rozen, Jr.The first part of this publication, written by a group of participants in Bee Course 2018, results from the discovery of three nests of Caupolicana yarrowi (Cresson, 1875) at the base of the Chiricahua Mountains in southeastern Arizona. The nests are deep with branching laterals that usually connect to large vertical brood cells by an upward turn before curving downward and attaching to the top of the chambers. This loop of the lateral thus seems to serve as a "sink trap," excluding rainwater from reaching open cells during provisioning. Although mature larvae had not yet developed, an egg of C. yarrowi was discovered floating on the provisions allowing an SEM examination of its chorion, the first such study for any egg of the Diphaglossinae. Larval food for this species at this site came from Solanum elaeagnifolium Cav. (Solanaceae). Nests were parasitized by Triepeolus grandis (Friese, 1917) (Epeolini), which previously was known to attack only Ptiloglossa (Diphaglossinae: Caupolicanini). The subterranean nest cells of the desert bee Caupolicana yarrowi (Colletidae), which are enveloped by a casing of hardened soil that easily separates from the surrounding matrix, are discussed in a separate appendix. Chemical analysis revealed the casing to be rich in reducing sugars, indicating that the mother bee had regurgitated floral nectar onto the rough interior walls of the cell cavity before smoothing and waterproofing them. This novel use of nectar in nest construction is compared with that of other bee species that bring water to a nest site to soften soil for excavation

The role of war in deep transitions: exploring mechanisms, imprints and rules in sociotechnical systems

This paper explores in what ways the two world wars influenced the development of sociotechnical systems underpinning the culmination of the first deep transition. The role of war is an underexplored aspect in both the Techno-Economic Paradigms (TEP) approach and the Multi-level perspective (MLP) which form the two key conceptual building blocks of the Deep Transitions (DT) framework. Thus, we develop a conceptual approach tailored to this particular topic which integrates accounts of total war and mechanisms of war from historical studies and imprinting from organisational studies with the DT framework’s attention towards rules and meta-rules. We explore in what ways the three sociotechnical systems of energy, food, and transport were affected by the emergence of new demand pressures and logistical challenges during conditions of total war; how war impacted the directionality of sociotechnical systems; the extent to which new national and international policy capacities emerged during wartime in the energy, food, and transport systems; and the extent to which these systems were influenced by cooperation and shared sacrifice under wartime conditions. We then explore what lasting changes were influenced by the two wars in the energy, food, and transport systems across the transatlantic zone. This paper seeks to open up a hitherto neglected area in analysis on sociotechnical transitions and we discuss the importance of further research that is attentive towards entanglements of warfare and the military particularly in the field of sustainability transitions

Transformative capacity and local action for urban sustainability.

There is a consensus about the strategic importance of cities and urban areas for achieving a global transformation towards sustainability. While there is mounting interest in the types of qualities that increase the capacity of urban systems to attain deep transformations, empirical evidence about the extent to which existing institutional and material systems exhibit transformative capacity is lacking. This paper thereby seeks to determine the extent to which sustainability initiatives led by local governments and their partners reflect the various components that the literature claims can influence the emergence of transformative capacity as a systemic property of urban settings. Using an evaluative framework consisting of ten components of transformative capacity and associated indicators, the specific objective is to identify patterns in these initiatives regarding the presence of individual components of transformative capacity and their interrelations with other components. The analysis of 400 sustainability initiatives reveals thin evidence of transformative capacity. When detected, evidence of transformative capacity tended to emerge in relation to wider processes of institutional- and social-learning and initiatives that linked outcomes to a city-wide vision of planning and development. However, instances of such initiatives were rare. This widespread lack of evidence for transformative capacity raises concerns that this set of attributes normalised in the literature is in fact rarely found in sustainability action on the ground

Can Energy Democracy Thrive in a Non-democracy?

This paper argues that energy democracy could manifest in terms of public engagement at the community level, free of state intervention, government fostering, and donor support, even in locations where governments have been in flux from a democracy to a non-democracy. In currently non-democratic Thailand, for example, public engagement on community energy transitions had occurred, were sustained, and proved to be durable over time. The spaces of deliberation, created and nurtured by Thai citizens in this community, had become effective sites for navigating and negotiating the ebbs and flows of democratically organized sociotechnical energy transitions. This paper further argues that these spaces for public engagement had revealed that energy democracy is collective, cultural, consequential, co-produced, co-existent, and critical phenomenon that can be used to shore up an energy democracy framework