The energy divide: Integrating energy transitions, regional inequalities and poverty trends in the European Union

Energy poverty can be understood as the inability of a household to secure a socially and materially necessitated level of energy services in the home. While the condition is widespread across Europe, its spatial and social distribution is highly uneven. In this paper, the existence of a geographical energy poverty divide in the European Union (EU) provides a starting point for conceptualizing and exploring the relationship between energy transitions – commonly described as wide-ranging processes of socio-technical change – and existing patterns of regional economic inequality. We have undertaken a comprehensive analysis of spatial and temporal trends in the national-scale patterns of energy poverty, as well as gas and electricity prices. The results of our work indicate that the classic economic development distinction between the core and periphery also holds true in the case of energy poverty, as the incidence of this phenomenon is significantly higher in Southern and Eastern European EU Member States. The paper thus aims to provide the building blocks for a novel theoretical integration of questions of path-dependency, uneven development and material deprivation in existing interpretations of energy transitions.</jats:p

De-centering transitions : Low-carbon innovation from the peripheries

Altres ajuts: Acord transformatiu CRUE-CSICUnidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-MSocio-technical transitions have garnered significant attention in recent years. Both in theory and practice, however, concerns have been raised about the elitist character of low-carbon transitions. Such dynamics are predominantly imagined through core-periphery relationships. More recently, calls to 'decentre' transitions draw attention to the social and spatial dynamics of transitions in the peripheries. recognizing and fostering transitions from the peripheries offers important opportunities for progressing low-carbon innovation in practice and opens the door to deeper structural transformations. This perspective must nevertheless acknowledge the risk of transitions creating new core-periphery dependencies and reinforcing the strength of elites

Enhancing Historical Reasoning: A Strategy Including Formative Assessment with Systematic Continuous Feedback

Learning History promotes students’ reasoning. According to Van Drie &amp; Van Boxtel (2008), historical reasoning involves six elements: substantive concepts, metaconcepts, asking historical questions, using sources, contextualization, and argumentation. Although there are didactic strategies that promote historical reasoning, these do not include systematic continuous feedback using rubrics, which can be useful both in assessing and promoting students’ progress and progression of ideas on metaconcepts. This study described the development of the six historical reasoning elements in a strategy that included formative assessment for K8 students. A case study was carried out in Mexico City: four teams of three students were formed according to their knowledge of history, with a single History teacher providing continuous systematic feedback on metaconcepts by using graded rubrics. Results showed that the six historical reasoning elements were developed in different ways and suggested possible methods for use in future didactics

Pobreza energética y vivienda: una perspectiva de justicia social

Equitable access to energy and housing are primary concerns for social justice. Despite the evident links between these two basic needs, the theoretical frameworks of justice and energy poverty have dealt with the issue of housing primarily through the narrow lens of residential energy efficiency. In response to this conceptual deficiency, this paper calls for the re-integration of housing into the framework of justice and energy poverty, thinking along the following three axes: material and temporal dimensions; political dimensions; and ethical and legal dimensions. To empirically illustrate the relevance of the housing-energy nexus in applied energy justice research, we present the example of two closely-related Barcelona-based social movements jointly advocating for both the right to energy and the right to housing: the Platform of People affected by Mortgages (Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca, PAH) and the Alliance against Energy Poverty (Aliança contra la Pobresa Energètica, APE). To conclude, the paper highlights the importance of housing and energy as the material foundations of a dignified life and their conflicting nature of being essential needs as well as tradable commodities.El acceso equitativo a la energía y a la vivienda es una preocupación básica de la justicia social. A pesar de los numerosos vínculos entre estos dos bienes esenciales, los marcos teóricos de la justicia y la pobreza energética se han referido casi exclusivamente a la cuestión de la vivienda en términos de la eficiencia energética de los edificios residenciales. En respuesta a esta carencia conceptual, se propone la reintegración del factor vivienda en el marco de la justicia y pobreza energética a lo largo de los siguientes tres ejes: dimensiones materiales y temporales; dimensiones políticas; y dimensiones éticas y legales. Como ejemplo empírico de la importancia del nexo vivienda-energía en la práctica de la justicia social, se presenta el caso de dos movimientos sociales surgidos en Barcelona que trabajan con una perspectiva conjunta de derecho a la vivienda y a la energía: la Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) y la&nbsp;Aliança contra la Pobresa Energètica&nbsp;(APE). El artículo subraya la importancia de la vivienda y la energía como fundamentos materiales de una vida digna y su naturaleza conflictiva como necesidades esenciales y bienes de mercado

Effects of addition of exogenous fibrolytic enzymes on digestibility and milk and meat production: A systematic review

El articulo esta publicado en una revista de Open accessExogenous fibrolytic enzymes (EFE) added to the ruminant diet can increase fiber digestibility and production efficiency. A systematic review was conducted to understand the interactions between EFE and diet on digestibility and animal performance. The database included variables from 384 experiments with EFE and 264 controls from 85 papers published since 2000 (classification criteria: 1) type of study (in vitro, in situ, in vivo), 2) type of ruminants (sheep, Buffaloes, goats, beef and dairy cattle), 3) primary EFE activity (Cellulases (Cel) or Xylanases (Xyl)), 4) forage proportion (FP), 5) type of plant (TP: legumes or grasses), 6) number of ingredients in diets, and 7) application time (AT)). In over of 52.85% of cases, EFE improved the degradability of dry matter (DMD), neutral and acid detergent fiber (NDFD and ADFD), in vitro gas production (GP), volatile fatty acids (VFA), the acetate: propionate ratio (A:P ratio), protein and fat milk, milk yield and average daily gain (ADG) (by 7.78–21.85%). Cel improved organic matter degradability (OMD), GP, VFA, milk yield, and milk protein and fat content. EFE in FP≥40% diets enhanced the ADG, and in grass-based diets increased the dry matter intake (DMI). The AT of EFE affected the DMD, NDFD, and ADFD. Significant correlations were found between the improvements of NDFD or ADFD with DMD (r>0.59), milk yield (r=0.64), and ADG (r=0.59). In conclusion, many factors interact with EFE supplementation effects, but EFE consistently enhanced the DMD, NDFD, and ADFD of ruminant diets, which are related to improvements in productive performance

Nuevas variables canónicas para la integración analítica del problema principal-ecuatorial del satélite artificial

Las órbitas geoestacionarias y su estudio y modelización matemática son de una importancia capital en la tecnología de comunicaciones. El objetivo principal de la presente memoria es construir una teoría analítica, basada en un conjunto especial de variables canónicas, que sirva para describir los satélites geoestacionarios o cuasi-geoestacionarios. Para ello se ha centrado el estudio en el modelo denominado “principal-ecuatorial”, basado en un sistema dinámico kepleriano considerando la perturbación de mayor magnitud, esto es, la producida por el achatamiento polar de la Tierra, e igualmente limitado a orbitas ecuatoriales Mediante la aplicación de la ecuación de Hamilton-Jacobi se ha obtenido un nuevo conjunto de variables canónicas, pero debido a la imposibilidad matemática de expresar los parámetros de la órbita a partir de dichas variables, se ha desarrollado un procedimiento para encontrar una expresión equivalente a la ecuación de Kepler. Con ese objetivo se ha planteado el problema principal-ecuatorial como un oscilador armónico perturbado, y este ha sido resuelto mediante la aplicación del método de Krylov-Bogoliuvov-Mitropolsky, que se basa en la obtención de aproximaciones asintóticas y que permite una integración analítica de la solución. Con ello hemos obtenido una solución del problema planteado que hemos denominado “Ecuación de Kepler generalizada”

Disconnected, yet in the spotlight: Emergency research on extreme energy poverty in the Cañada Real informal settlement, Spain

Cañada Real is a 15-km informal settlement located in Madrid, Spain. With over 8000 inhabitants most dwellers live below the poverty line in informal, low-quality housing. Due to the impossibility to have legal supply contracts with utility providers, Cañada Real settlers have relied on irregular connections to nearby electricity and water distribution networks for decades. However, in October 2020, technical changes implemented by the distribution system operator left some 4000 people without access to power, and more than two years later a large share of them remain in those conditions. Emergency research has been conducted to document the change in living conditions experienced by Cañada Real residents. Census data have been analysed together with primary data from a 39-household survey, data retrieved from electricity service continuity sensors and direct measurements of indoor thermal comfort in 12 households. This set of data provides unique evidence on the impact of a collective disconnection event of an unprecedented magnitude in an EU context. Results give evidence of a case of &#8216;extreme energy poverty&#34; that existing datasets and indicators fail to capture. The collective adaptation response displayed by a group of residents, who agreed on an intermittent, predictable disconnection schedule, highlights social fabric, self-organization and local capacities as resilience factors that provide temporary relief. Still, collective reconnection appears as a necessary first step to secure a minimum level of material living conditions. Political action is needed to modify the existing framework that marginalizes vulnerable dwellers as non-compliant customers, without any provisions against supply disconnections.Sergio Tirado-Herrero acknowledges funding from the 'Ramón y Cajal' program supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant RYC2020-029750-I). Raúl Castaño-Rosa acknowledges for the support provided by Tampere University and The RESCUE-Real Estate and Sustainable Crisis management in Urban Environments-Academy of Finland funded project (number 339711). The article publishing charges were funded by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Read & Publish Agreement CRUE-CSIC 2023)

Non-linear excitation of polariton cavity modes in ZnO single nanocombs

Tunable second harmonic (SH) polaritons have been efficiently generated in ZnO nanocombs, when the material is excited close to half of the band-gap. The nonlinear signal couples to the nanocavity modes, and, as a result, Fabry-Pérot resonances with high Q factors of about 500 are detected. Due to the low effective volume of the confined modes, matter-light interaction is very much enhanced. This effect lowers the velocity of the SH polariton in the material by 50 times, and increases the SH confinement inside the nanocavity due to this higher refractive index. We also show that the SH phase-matching condition is achieved through LO-phonon mediation. Finally, birrefringence of the crystal produces a strong SH intensity dependence on the input polarization, with a high polarization contrast, which could be used as a mechanism for light switching in the nanoscale.Fil: Capeluto, Maria Gabriela. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Grinblat, Gustavo Sergio. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Tecnología. Departamento de Física. Laboratorio de Física del Solido; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Tucumán; ArgentinaFil: Tirado, Monica Cecilia. Universidad Nacional de Tucuman. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Tecnologia. Departamento de Fisica. Departamento de Nanomateriales y Propiedades Dielectricas; ArgentinaFil: Comedi, David Mario. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Tecnología. Departamento de Física. Laboratorio de Física del Solido; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Tucumán; ArgentinaFil: Bragas, Andrea Veronica. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentin