Measuring Emotions in the COVID-19 Real World Worry Dataset

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a dramatic impact on societies and economies around the world. With various measures of lockdowns and social distancing in place, it becomes important to understand emotional responses on a large scale. In this paper, we present the first ground truth dataset of emotional responses to COVID-19. We asked participants to indicate their emotions and express these in text. This resulted in the Real World Worry Dataset of 5,000 texts (2,500 short + 2,500 long texts). Our analyses suggest that emotional responses correlated with linguistic measures. Topic modeling further revealed that people in the UK worry about their family and the economic situation. Tweet-sized texts functioned as a call for solidarity, while longer texts shed light on worries and concerns. Using predictive modeling approaches, we were able to approximate the emotional responses of participants from text within 14% of their actual value. We encourage others to use the dataset and improve how we can use automated methods to learn about emotional responses and worries about an urgent problem.Comment: Accepted to ACL 2020 COVID-19 worksho

Optimization of motor and gearbox for an ultra light electric vehicle

The integrated design of the drivetrain of a single person ultra light electric vehicle powered by batteries is optimized towards high efficiency and low mass. The drivetrain of each front wheel consists of an outer rotor permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM), a gearbox and the power electronics with converter and control print. The complete drivetrain is optimized for the New European Driving Cycle and the Federal Test Procedure. For the optimization of the complete drivetrain analytical models are used to calculate the losses and the efficiency. The analytical models are fast, and useful for designing a good PMSM in combination with a gearbox. The optimization of the drivetrain over the driving cycles makes it possible to choose the optimal combination of motor and gearbox for different gear ratios in order to have high efficiency and low weight. Comparing a single-stage gearbox with a twostage gearbox, a single-stage gearbox has a higher efficiency, but also a higher weight than a two-stage gearbox with the same properties. The optimization of the dynamic behavior of the drivetrain over the driving cycles yields a compromise between the total efficiency and the total mass of the drivetrain. The optimum choice will depend on the intended use of the vehicle (drive cycle)

What do politicians think of the common consolidated corporate tax base? A Belgian case study

This paper analyzes the views of Belgian politicians on the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB), an ambitious project to harmonize corporate taxation in the EU. Applying case study methodology, the results show that most politicians were proponents of this new tax system. During the discussions in several political institutions, the politicians referred to the macro-economic impact, the legal certainty and their party’s view to found their opinion. Besides several agreements, certain aspects of CCCTB like the optionality and the applied tax rate involved clear differences in view between left and right-wing politicians, which could hamper a political agreement on CCCTB