Lifting the fog of oil? Exploring the framing of ambitious local climate politics in an oil city

How can an oil city pursue ambitious local climate politics and policies? Through a critical discussion of the process and debates over the making of an ambitious climate and energy action plan (CAP) in Norway’s oil capital, Stavanger, this paper dissects the paradoxes evident in pursuing local climate policy and politics in a city with high dependence on oil revenue and an identity closely tied to the oil industry. With an analysis of how different actors frame place, scale and knowledge, the paper explores politicians’ arguments, understandings and contestations, revealing how such a plan came into being. The analysis shows a discrepancy in how the actors understand climate change in terms of scale, whether it is an issue suitable for local governance and politics or not, and how they regard the city’s potential role in climate transformation. By mobilizing Stavanger’s past transformation from a poor fishery city into an oil capital to a future as a low-carbon sustainable city, the idea of the city’s transformative capacity became clear. This made space for politicians and parties to change their view on climate change as a matter for local governance and politics, culminating in the passing of a very ambitious CAP.publishedVersio

Breaking silos: can cities break down institutional barriers in climate planning?

Climate and energy transformation has become one of the core issues municipalities must address, and there is a recognition that the local scale is essential if we are to address the fundamental changes needed to face global climate change. However, the nature of climate change as a wicked problem is not compatible with the specialised and sectorised nature of policy-making institutions. Urban and municipal responses to societal problems often involve making a plan. In this article, the potential of climate action plans to break institutional silos is examined. Overcoming institutional obstacles can bring forth new opportunities to shrink the gap between targets and results through knowledge transfer, identification of co-benefits and anchoring of the plan beyond the municipal department in charge. Two cases demonstrating two different approaches to ambitious local climate planning are discussed. Mainstreaming of the planning process can be observed in Trondheim, whilst in Bergen, the process has been highly politically driven. Three factors appear to be important to overcome institutional barriers at the local level: broad processes, political will and institutional entrepreneurs.acceptedVersio

Research to advance our understanding of off-target dicamba movement in United States agriculture

The commercialization of dicamba-resistant (DR) crops and subsequent increase in post-emergent applications of dicamba has contributed to millions of acres of dicamba injury to sensitive plant species since 2016. The research presented in this dissertation is designed to provide a better understanding of the environmental conditions and transport mechanisms that influence dicamba volatility and off-target movement and also evaluate the spectral response and yield effects following dicamba and 2,4-D exposure in sensitive soybean. The first study evaluates the effect of soil pH on the volatility of dicamba products. In this study, three commercially-available and one experimental dicamba formulation were applied to trays containing soil at 5 distinct pH values. These trays were placed near sensitive soybean plants to evaluate dicamba volatility. The results of this research found that dicamba applied to soil with lower pH had a higher likelihood of volatilization. The experimental formulation, dicamba choline, had a reduction in volatility compared to the other formulations tested. The second study evaluates the potential of atmospheric accumulation and subsequent rainwater scavenging as a mechanism for dicamba off-target movement. Weekly combined rainwater and dry deposition samples were collected from 12 regions of Missouri. The results of this research found that it is common for dicamba to accumulate in the atmosphere in Missouri and that regional adoption of DR crops is largely responsible for detected concentrations. Stable atmospheric conditions also increased detected concentrations. Lastly, the levels of dicamba detected in regions of Missouri with the highest DR trait adoption were sufficient to cause injury symptoms to sensitive soybean. The final study evaluated the utility of UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) mounted sensors to predict end of season yield loss in soybean following sub-lethal 2,4-D and dicamba exposure. The results of this research determined that the normalized difference red-edge index was the most consistent vegetative index for predicting end of season yield loss in soybean

Multilevel techniques and learning automata for the Maximum Satisfiability (MAXSAT) problem

The Maximum Satisfiability (MAXSAT) Problem is a propositional logic and an optimization based problem that has great importance in the theoretical and practical domain. In the recent years MAXSAT has risen great interest in the industry. Example problems from the industry that can be encoded as MAXSAT problems are circuit design and debugging, hardware verification, bioinformatics and scheduling. These kind of problems often tend to be large and increase exponentially with the problem size, and therefore algorithms for solving such problems incorporate different techniques and methods to solve the problems in a smart and efficient manner. In this thesis we introduce a range of algorithms that extend the well-known Stochastic Local Search (SLS) algorithm called WalkSAT. WalkSAT is extended with the multilevel paradigm and Learning Automata. The multilevel paradigm is a technique that splits large and difficult problems into smaller problems. These problems are expectedly less complex and therefore easier to solve. Learning Automata are a branch of machine learning that can be seen as a decision-making entity that is employed in an unknown environment. Through feedback from the environment the Learning Automata try to learn the optimal actions. The core of this thesis is the observations and findings of how these dissimilar techniques affect the performance and behaviour of WalkSAT when solving industrial MAXSAT problem instances. Through extensive experiments our results confirm that combining multilevel techniques and Learning Automata with WalkSAT, separately and together, give promising results. We compare these composite algorithms with WalkSAT on selected industrial MAXSAT problems throughout the thesis, and show that all these composite algorithms perform better than WalkSAT

Displacing Conflicting Goals in Planning for Sustainability? Insights from Three Norwegian Cities

Sustainable transformation is hampered by conflicting goals. Here we examine how goal conflicts are handled in planning practice, focusing on processes around municipal climate and sustainability governance. We investigate local manifestations of goal conflicts between transport and land use planning and emissions reductions in three Norwegian cities, using document analysis, interviews and observation. We find that governance actors handle goal conflicts through what we term strategies of displacement. We identify three such strategies: temporal, sectorial and scalar. The research contributes to explaining how and why goal conflicts persist in planning practice.publishedVersio

Søvnveiledning til spedbarnsforeldre - en kvalitativ deskriptiv studie om helsesykepleieres erfaringer

Søvn er et viktig tema i helsesykepleiers arbeid ettersom det har stor betydning for barnets og foreldrenes fysiske og psykiske helse. Barns søvnregulering påvirkes av sammensatte faktorer og er knyttet til samspill og andreregulering fra foreldrene. Hensikten med studien var å empirisk utforske helsesykepleieres erfaringer med veiledning til foreldre som har spedbarn (6- 12 måneder) med søvnvansker. Formålet med studien var å få innblikk i vurderinger og kriterier helsesykepleiere brukte for å gjøre seg kjent med foreldrenes situasjon og hvilke rammer som la grunnlag for videre råd og veiledning. Studiens forskningsdesign var kvalitativ deskriptiv metode med et induktivt utgangspunkt. Det ble gjennomført semistrukturete individuelle intervju med seks kvinnelige helsesykepleiere, som var valgt ut strategisk med tilgjengelighetsutvalg og snøballmetode. Intervjuene ble transkribert til totalt 74 siders datamateriale. Elo og Kyngäs (2008) sin innholdsanalyse ble benyttet i analyseprosessen. Analysen resulterte i tre hovedkategorier med navnene: «Erfaringsbasert kunnskap danner grunnlaget», «Forhandler og klargjør premisser» og «Må ta hensyn til barnets behov og situasjon». Helsesykepleierne var opptatt av å etablere en god relasjon til foreldrene og kartlegge familiens situasjon og behov, for å tilpasse søvnmetoden individuelt. Dermed ble veiledningen beskrevet som en forhandling om hva foreldrene kunne klare å gjennomføre og hva som burde gjennomføres. Studien viser at helsesykepleierne erfarer søvnveiledning til spedbarnsforeldre som en relasjonell forhandling og klargjøring av premiss, i en andreregulering av foreldrenes atferd som videre ville påvirke barnet. Denne transaksjonssekvensen måtte alltid ta utgangspunkt i helheten i familien og foreldrenes opplevelse

The effect of agile workspace and remote working on experiences of privacy, crowding and satisfaction

Occupant density is an important and basic metric of space use efficiency. It affects user experience of privacy, crowding and satisfaction. The effect of agile working has been two fold. Firstly, offices have an increasing range of workspace settings such as break out space, collaborative space and contemplative space in contrast to the traditional workspace settings of assigned desks and formal meeting rooms. Secondly, office workers have become increasingly mobile as they are able to work from a greater variety of locations both in and out of their main place of work. This study asks whether workers who occupy agile workspaces and those with greater mobility experience privacy differently from workers with more conventional offices and work patterns. The experience of privacy can be considered in terms of retreat from people, control of information flow and control of interactions. Our results show that agile workspaces improve the ability to control information compared with open plan offices. It was also found that highly mobile workers are more sensitive to the negative effects of interacting with people. From this a taxonomy of offices is defined in terms of the features that contribute to the experience of privacy

Hva kan forklare de regionale forskjellene i boligprisutvikling i Norge? En tidsserieanalyse av Oslo, Stavanger, Kristiansand, Bergen og Tromsø 2005-2018

Master´s thesis in Business Administration (BE501)I denne masterutredningen vil vi undersøke boligprisutviklingen i det norske boligmarkedet. Vi vil undersøke boligprisutviklingen på et regionalt nivå, og vi vil studere utviklingen i henholdsvis Oslo, Stavanger, Kristiansand, Bergen og Tromsø. Utviklingen i boligpriser har variert vidt mellomdisse byene, og målet med oppgaven er derfor å undersøke om fundamentale faktorer kan bidra til å forklare disse regionale forskjellene. Vi forsøker å forklare utvikling i boligpris med følgende fundamentale faktorer: inntekt, rente, arbeidsledighet, boligbygging og en forventningsindikator.I første del av utredningen presenterer vi sentral teori for oppgaven, og videre ser vi nærmere på boligmarkedet i Norge, hvor vi tar for oss utvikling i boligpris og andre sentrale faktorer. Vi gjennomgår deretter vårt datagrunnlag for oppgaven og økonometrisk metode som benyttes i de empiriske analysene. Vi konstruerer boligprismodeller for hver av de respektive regionene med utgangspunkt i empirisk metode samt boligprismodellen Dag Henning Jacobsen og Bjørn E. Naug konstruerer i sin artikkel. Vi konstruerer også en paneldatamodell.Vi bruker modellene til å foreta økonometriske analyser av de regionale boligmarkedene i perioden første kvartal 2005 til fjerde kvartal 2018. Resultatene viser at 38-58% av variasjonen iboligpriser blir forklart av de fundamentale faktorene vi bruker som forklaringsvariabler i modellene våre. Vi finner at modellen for Tromsø har lavest forklaringskraft (38,5%), mens boligprisene i Bergen og Oslo forklares best av modellen (57-58%). Vi finner at forventning har en langsiktig signifikant påvirkning på boligprisene i et flertall av byene. Vi ender opp med få signifikante koeffisientestimat for forklaringsvariablene. Dog forkaster vi ikke etablert teori om hvilke faktorer som antas å ha en påvirkning på boligpriser. Estimering av samtlige modeller og økonometriske tester er utført i STATA 16 Øvrig databehandling er utført i Excel