How to increase cross border transmission capacity? A case study: Belgium.

Cross border capacity allows electric energy to be traded internationally. The electricity sector used to be vertically integrated and often state-owned. High voltage grids were generally developed within the borders of a country. Connecting different national high voltage grids was done to improve the security of the system and to accomodate for a few historical long term contracts. By doing so, the different systems could share their reserve generation capacity. Since the liberalization of the electricity sector, cross border capacity has gained a renewed interest as this can increase the competition in the market. This paper aims to give an overview of recent and planned investments which increase the cross border capacity of Belgium. Also we give an insight into the different technologies which can be used and their advantages and drawbacks are discussed.

The Long-Lived Disks in the Eta Chamaeleontis Cluster

We present IRS spectra and revised MIPS photometry for the 18 members of the Eta Chamaeleontis cluster. Aged 8 Myr, the Eta Cha cluster is one of the few nearby regions within the 5-10 Myr age range, during which the disk fraction decreases dramatically and giant planet formation must come to an end. For the 15 low-mass members, we measure a disk fraction ~50%, high for their 8 Myr age, and 4 of the 8 disks lack near-IR excesses, consistent with the empirical definition of "transition'' disks. Most of the disks are comparable to geometrically flat disks. The comparison with regions of different ages suggests that at least some of the "transition" disks may represent the normal type of disk around low-mass stars. Therefore, their flattened structure and inner holes may be related to other factors (initial masses of the disk and the star, environment, binarity), rather than to pure time evolution. We analyze the silicate dust in the disk atmosphere, finding moderate crystalline fractions (~10-30%) and typical grain sizes ~1-3 micron, without any characteristic trend in the composition. These results are common to other regions of different ages, suggesting that the initial grain processing occurs very early in the disk lifetime (<1 Myr). Large grain sizes in the disk atmosphere cannot be used as a proxy for age, but are likely related to higher disk turbulence. The dust mineralogy varies between the 8-12micron and the 20-30 micron features, suggesting high temperature dust processing and little radial mixing. Finally, the analysis of IR and optical data on the B9 star Eta Cha reveals that it is probably surrounded by a young debris disk with a large inner hole, instead of being a classical Be star.Comment: 35 pages, 6 tables, 8 figures; Accepted by Ap

Proceedings of 7th Environmental Taxation Conference

People's self-regulatory focus may determine the effectiveness of stop-smoking campaigns. An experiment with 226 young smokers investigated the persuasiveness of different emotional appeals for different self-regulatory foci. A congruency effect emerges for attitude toward the advertisement and behavioral intentions: Young smokers with a promotion focus are more persuaded by sadness–joy than fear–relief campaigns, and the opposite is true for those with a prevention focus. As predicted by the regulatory relevancy principle, ad involvement mediates this effect

Evaluation of economic merger control techniques applied to the European electricity sector

With European electricity markets not yet functioning on a competitive basis and consolidation increasing, the European Commission has said it intends to more intensively apply competition law in the electricity sector. Yet economic techniques and theories used in EC merger control fail to take sufficiently into account some specific features of electricity markets. The authors offer suggestions to enhance their reliability and applicability in the electricity sector