The environment as a challenge for governmental responsibility: The case of the European Water Framework Directive

The European Water Framework Directive is shaping a new conception of integrative water protection. In this article, the consequences of the Water Framework Directive in respect to national environmental policy will be discussed in referring to the notion of responsibility which is a central concept of political philosophy and theory. It will be shown that the new conception of integrative water protection entails a fundamental change in European water protection policy and also environmental policy at all. It implies that environmental policy has not only to prevent environmental damage but in particular has to warrant a good status of the environment, such that it must maintain a good status of water or even achieve it if this status does not exist. Achieving and maintaining a good status of the environment is, however, an encompassing task. Thereby, state power and will eventually be overexerted. The threat of such overexertion has to be kept in mind in discussing the perspective of the so called New Environmental Governance. It will be pointed out that the New Environmental Governance is not primarily a form of some sort of democratic participation but rather designed to improve state power in environmental politics. --Environmental politics,European Water Framework Directive,Responsibility,Environmental Governance

The Composer, the Musicologist, His Wife, and Her Lover: on Lacan’s Relevance to Music

This paper asks what it is to write about music. When we ask students or colleagues to write about music are we asking them to describe music structurally, or to cope with music’s ever-shifting signifieds? The paper attempts to answer this question by clarifying the relationship between composition, musicology, and music “itself” by way of a Lacanian reading of Peter Greenaway\u27s film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. Lacan’s existential concepts of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real are first introduced in relation to music with reference to music by Hans Werner Henze, Lady Gaga, and György Ligeti. The paper then provocatively frames the discipline of musicology as the “thief” of Greenaway’s film by considering the discipline’s proliferation of master signifiers and resulting problematic relationship to music. The paper urges a practice of music writing that acknowledges music’s structural and signifying aspects and the ultimately futile prospect of capturing the Real of music’s “lover.

Design and performance of a vacuum-UV simulator for material testing under space conditions

This paper describes the construction and performance of a VUV-simulator that has been designed to study degradation of materials under space conditions. It is part of the Complex Irradiation Facility at DLR in Bremen, Germany, that has been built for testing of material under irradiation in the complete UV-range as well as under proton and electron irradiation. Presently available UV-sources used for material tests do not allow the irradiation with wavelengths smaller than about $115$ nm where common Deuterium lamps show an intensity cut-off. The VUV-simulator generates radiation by excitation of a gas-flow with an electron beam. The intensity of the radiation can be varied by manipulating the gas-flow and/or the electron beam. The VUV simulator has been calibrated at three different gas-flow settings in the range from $40$ nm to $410$ nm. The calibration has been made by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Berlin. The measured spectra show total irradiance intensities from $24$ to $58$ mW$\rm{m^{-2}}$ (see Table 4.2) in the VUV-range, i.e. for wavelengths smaller than $200$ nm. They exhibit a large number of spectral lines generated either by the gas-flow constituents or by metal atoms in the residual gas which come from metals used in the source construction. In the range from $40$ nm to $120$ nm where Deuterium lamps are not usable, acceleration factors of $3$ to $26.3$ Solar Constants are reached depending on the gas-flow setting. The VUV-simulator allows studies of general degradation effects caused by photoionization and photodissociation as well as accelerated degradation tests by use of intensities that are significantly higher compared to that of the Sun at $1$ AU

Cyclic Sieving of Increasing Tableaux and small Schr\"oder Paths

An increasing tableau is a semistandard tableau with strictly increasing rows and columns. It is well known that the Catalan numbers enumerate both rectangular standard Young tableaux of two rows and also Dyck paths. We generalize this to a bijection between rectangular 2-row increasing tableaux and small Schr\"oder paths. We demonstrate relations between the jeu de taquin for increasing tableaux developed by H. Thomas and A. Yong and the combinatorics of tropical frieze patterns. We then use this jeu de taquin to present new instances of the cyclic sieving phenomenon of V. Reiner, D. Stanton, and D. White, generalizing results of D. White and of J. Stembridge.Comment: 20 page

Beständigkeit im Raum des Sozialen: Der Begriff der Institution bei Arnold Gehlen

Most problems related to biodiversity management have an ecological as well as a socio-economic dimension. Consequently, there has been a growing recognition that adequate management recommendations directed at such problems can only be developed if knowledge from ecology, economics and various social science disciplines is taken into account in an integrated manner. To respond to the need for integrated research, a number of approaches have been proposed over the last decade or so with the aim of integrating knowledge from the natural and social sciences. These approaches emerged in different contexts and have integrated different disciplines. As the recognition of the need for integrated research is rather recent the approaches that integrate natural and social sciences are still in a phase of development. In order to further this development, a better understanding of how to tackle specific challenges that arise when knowledge from different disciplines is integrated may be helpful. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this task by analysing and comparing how selected approaches cope with one key challenge of integration: ensuring that state-of-the-art knowledge from both disciplines is used in the integrated approach. We selected the following approaches for comparison: Ecological-economic modelling, political ecology, the resilience approach, multi criteria analysis, and methods of material and energy flow accounting (MEFA) of socio-ecological systems. We selected these approaches because there is already a significant amount of literature that can be referred to and because they represent integration of different disciplines. For our analysis we used an economic approach: we consider the incentive structure of researchers and focus on asymmetric information between researchers from different disciplines about the quality of scientific research of the involved disciplines and the worldviews behind scientific approaches. We find that in order to attract high quality researchers the integrated approaches need to be attractive to researchers from both disciplines (I) in terms of generating funding opportunities, (II) of publication opportunities in highly ranked journals accepted in each specific discipline and (III) in helping to solve problems related to conservation policies that are of interest to all involved researchers. Approaches that do not fulfil these conditions have to struggle with the problem that they attract researchers of low scientific quality which they cannot identify. They need to be aware of this trap. A possible solution may be to put particular emphasis on external reviews by independent researchers. --

Are We Going in the Right Direction? Concerns about School Counseling

School counseling as a specialty area within the profession of counseling is, in the eyes of many, experiencing a crisis of identity. The crisis, however, truly lies with school counselors struggling to fit the mold impressed upon them by external forces which often contradicts their educational preparation as counselors. We make two main points. First, academic achievement is not the most important domain for the school counselor to place their focus. Rather, personal/social and career development are the areas that school counselors should seek to impact. In addition, school counselors are principally counselors and not educators

Integration of a Local Search Operator into Evolutionary Algorithms for VLSI-Model Partitioning

The application of Evolutionary Algorithms in hierarchical model partitioning for parallel system simulation in VLSI design processes has proven to be successful. Thereby, individuals embody partitions of hardware designs. On the basis of a formal model of parallel cycle simulation a fitness function is chosen combining load balancing and interprocessor communication aspects. As supplement to the concept of superposition we introduce a Local Search Operator to achieve a fast decreasing fitness function during evolution. This operator is based on a modification of a classical iterative partitioning algorithm by Fiduccia-Mattheyses. Results are shown for the partitioning of two real processor models, representing the PowerPC 604 and an IBM S/390 processor

Environmental Scanning Systems: State Of The Art And First Instantiation

The 2008/2009 economic crisis provided a sustainable impulse for improving environmental scanning systems (ESS). Although a rich body of knowledge exists, concepts are not often used in practice. This article contributes a literature review addressing six findings for ESS design to become more applicable than the state of the art. They are structured by the elements of information systems (IS) design theories. Addressing the lack of a sound requirements analysis, our first finding proposes a 360- degree ESS for executives\u27 managing a company task and presents how to select just the most important scanning areas to keep focus. Three other findings cover the IS model perspective focusing on a better grasp of weak signals: define concrete indicators and use IT to identify relevant cause effective- chains, leverage IT to automate day-to-day routines and monitor the variety of indicators\u27 movements, and leverage expert experience and translate indicators\u27 impact into a balanced opportunity-and-threat portfolio. From the methods perspective on ESS, we fifth propose to incorporate scanning results into executives\u27 decision-making process more closely by generating scenarios from a set of assumptions and the development of indicators. Retrospective controls to update the ESS continuously and collaboration to share the scanning findings in day-to-day operation is our sixth finding. Finally, an instantiation at a large international company helped us validate our findings and to highlight how current developments in IS contribute to successful design, implementation, and day-to-day operation of new-generation ESS

A comparison of the information technology knowledge of United States and German auditors

The International Federation of Accountants has stated that competence in information technology is imperative for the professional accountant due to its pervasive use in the business world. Auditors would normally be expected to have higher knowledge than the average accountant since they must audit the work of many different clients with diverse information systems. We surveyed 2,500 United States and German auditing professionals to determine their self-reported knowledge levels (IT self-efficacy) of 36 information technologies, some of which include various emerging technologies. Responses totaled 587 for a 23.5% overall response rate. A factor analysis of the 36 individual technologies revealed five underlying general constructs. Response statistics indicated both countries lacked significant knowledge for three of these five constructs. Scores were then culturally standardized to appropriately compare United States and German responses. German auditors had significantly higher knowledge for the construct of networking and data transfer. U.S. auditors had significantly higher knowledge for three constructs: ecommerce technologies, general office automation, and audit automation technologies. No differences were found for the construct of accounting firm office automation technologies. This study provides a foundation and methodology by which future researchers can measure whether, as an “emerging technology” matures, greater convergence will occur over time across cultures in factor analysis, as in the case of the more mature construct, general office automations.La Federación Internacional de Contables ha declarado que la competencia en la tecnología de la información es obligatoria para los contables profesionales, debido a su uso penetrante en el mundo de los negocios. Los auditores habrían esperado normalmente tener un conocimiento más elevado que un contable medio, ya que ellos deben auditar el trabajo de un gran número de diferentes clientes con sistemas de información diferentes a su vez. Encuestamos a 2.500 profesionales de auditoría de EEUU y Alemania, con el objetivo de determinar sus niveles de conocimiento auto-declarados (autoeficacia informática) en cuanto a las 36 tecnologías de la información, algunas de ellas incluyendo varias tecnologías emergentes. Las respuestas obtenidas fueron 587 por un tasa general de respuesta de 23.5%. Un análisis factorial de esas 36 tecnologías individuales reveló cinco constructos generales subyacentes. Las estadísticas de respuesta indicaron que ambos países no tenían un conocimiento relevante de tres de estos cinco constructos. Las calificaciones estaban entonces estandarizadas culturalmente para comparar de forma apropiada las respuestas de ambos países. Los auditores alemanes tenían un conocimiento mucho más elevado de las constructos de redes y transferencia de datos. Los auditores de EEUU tenían un mayor conocimiento sobre los tres constructos: tecnologías del comercio electrónico, la automatización de oficinas, y las tecnologías de automatización de auditorías. No se encontraron diferencias en cuanto al constructo de tecnologías ofimáticas para empresas de contabilidad. Este estudio proporciona una base y metodología con la que los futuros investigadores puedan medir si, a medida que una “tecnología emergente” madura, se producirá una mayor convergencia con el tiempo entre las culturas en el análisis factorial, como en el caso de un constructo más maduro, las automatizaciones de oficina