A matter of information - The influence of international bureaucracies in global climate governance networks

International bureaucracies, also called International Public Administrations (IPAs), have been identified as potentially influential actors within the global climate change regime complex. To assess how these organizations exert influence, scholars have predominantly relied on case studies, interviews and descriptive (network) statistics. This article aims to contribute to this literature with a systematic analysis that is not limited to an organization, issue or region, but applies exponential random graph models (ERGMs) to data from an original large-N survey (n=342) of participants of global climate negotiations. Our findings indicate that IPAs have a considerable potential to influence global climate policy outputs. This potential influence is associated with the information they provide to regime stakeholders.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Interconnected bureaucracies? Comparing online and offline networks during global climate negotiations

Measuring the influence of international public administrations has traditionally been conducted with ‘offline’ data, using interviews, surveys or official documents. However, an emerging strand of the literature argues that influence can also be observed ‘online’, with data based on online social networks, such as Twitter. Our contribution aims at bringing these two strands closer together. We triangulate offline data from a large-N survey with online data from Twitter to examine to what extent they provide distinct theoretical and methodological insights into the role of international public administrations in global governance. As a case study, we use the policy area of global climate governance, an issue area where the influence of international public administrations has raised increasing scholarly interest. Our findings show that international public administrations occupy potentially influential positions in both ‘offline’ and ‘online’ networks. They are more often central actors in the survey network than in Twitter network, but in both networks, they constitute the primary source of issue-specific information.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Education for sustainable development and climate change education: the potential of social network analysis based on twitter data

Education is considered as an essential tool for achieving sustainability-related goals. In this regard, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Climate Change Education (CCE) have become prominent concepts. Central characteristics of both concepts influence the non-hierarchical network governance structure that has formed around them: (1) their international origin, (2) the conceptual ambiguity that surrounds them, and (3) the limited implementing power of international organizations, who developed these concepts. Hence, networks are essential to ESD and CCE, however, only few studies have used Social Network Analysis (SNA) techniques to analyze their governance structure. The aim of this article is to illustrate how to use SNA, based on Twitter data, as an approach to examine the governance structure that has developed around ESD and CCE. We conduct an illustrative SNA, using Twitter data during three global climate change summits (2015-2017) to examine CCE-specific debates and identify actors exerting the most influence. We find that international organizations and international treaty secretariats are most influential across all years of the analysis and moreover, are represented most often. These findings show that using SNA based on Twitter data offers promising possibilities to better understand the governance structure and processes around both concepts.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

International public administrations on Twitter: a comparison of digital authority in global climate policy

International organizations and their secretariats, called international public administrations (IPAs), have been found to hold considerable authority in world politics. This study conceptualizes and measures IPA authority in the digital sphere. It proposes the concept of digital authority to measure the authority of actors in online social networks (OSN), such as Twitter. Applying exponential random graph models (ERGMs) based on Twitter data during climate change negotiations the article compares the authority of IPAs to that of other actors. The findings show that IPAs are attributed as much authority as state actors in global climate communication networks on Twitter.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Cultivated ties and strategic communication: Do international environmental secretariats tailor information to increase their bureaucratic reputation?

The past few years have witnessed a growing interest among scholars and policy-makers in the interplay of international bureaucracies with civil society organizations, other non-profit entities, and the private sector. This article extends the state of research by investigating whether and how secretariats try to strengthen their reputation within their respective policy regimes through information provision and alliance building. Based on reputation theory, the article argues that ties cultivated with stakeholders as well as appearance and presentation of information are decisive in this regard. Methodologically, the study implements a mixed-methods design that combines a quantitative survey with social network analysis and qualitative content analysis of interviews with stakeholders within the climate and biodiversity regime. We show that the secretariats of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) maintain relationships with a wide range of state and non-state actors to enhance their reputation. Moreover, different types of actors receive different types of information from the two secretariats studied. Our findings reveal that both secretariats use their limited resources for investing strategically into networks with different types of actors (in the broader transnational policy network), either via the tailored provision of information or through strategic networking with multipliers. They also indicate that reputation does not simply depend on characteristics of bureaucracies, but also on framework conditions and different communication strategies.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Brokering climate action: the UNFCCC secretariat between parties and non-party stakeholders

Our article aims to better understand the role of the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the increasingly complex global climate governance structure. We employ an innovative approach to addressing this issue by systematically examining the climate secretariat’s relations with the main groups of actors involved in this policy domain, in particular with nonparty actors. In a first step, we use social network analysis (SNA) to examine the secretariat’s relations with nonparty and state stakeholders and to identify its position in the UNFCCC policy network. An understanding of where the climate secretariat stands in the global climate governance network and which actors it interacts with most allows us to draw preliminary conclusions about the ways in which it connects with other stakeholders to influence global climate policy outputs. In a second step, we conduct thirty-three semistructured interviews to corroborate the results of the SNA. Our findings lend support to the argument that the climate secretariat may gradually be moving from a rather neutral and instrumental stance to playing a proactive and influential role in international climate governance. It aims to increase its political influence by establishing strategic links to actors other than the formal negotiation parties.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Development and mechanical modeling of Si1-XGex/Si MQW based uncooled microbolometers in a 130 nm BiCMOS

This paper presents the development of process integration and mechanical modeling of a Si1-xGex/Si MQW based uncooled micro-bolometer. The recent progress on layer transfer based integration scheme of Si1-xGex/Si based micro-bolometer into a 130 nm BiCMOS process is presented. The two important parts of the process integration, namely the layer-transfer and stress compensation of the arms are studied. The initial successful results on layer transfer and the FEM modeling for the stress compensation of the thin and narrow arms of the bolometer is presented. Finally, the developed FEM model is compared with the fabricated cantilevers. The results show that the developed FEM model has a very good matching with the experimental results; thus very convenient to use for the FEM modeling of the full bolometer structure

Polydendrocytes Display Large Lineage Plasticity following Focal Cerebral Ischemia

Polydendrocytes (also known as NG2 glial cells) constitute a fourth major glial cell type in the adult mammalian central nervous system (CNS) that is distinct from other cell types. Although much evidence suggests that these cells are multipotent in vitro, their differentiation potential in vivo under physiological or pathophysiological conditions is still controversial

Drug-induced activation of SREBP-controlled lipogenic gene expression in CNS-related cell lines: Marked differences between various antipsychotic drugs

BACKGROUND: The etiology of schizophrenia is unknown, but neurodevelopmental disturbances, myelin- and oligodendrocyte abnormalities and synaptic dysfunction have been suggested as pathophysiological factors in this severe psychiatric disorder. Cholesterol is an essential component of myelin and has proved important for synapse formation. Recently, we demonstrated that the antipsychotic drugs clozapine and haloperidol stimulate lipogenic gene expression in cultured glioma cells through activation of the sterol regulatory element-binding protein (SREBP) transcription factors. We here compare the action of chlorpromazine, haloperidol, clozapine, olanzapine, risperidone and ziprasidone on SREBP activation and SREBP-controlled gene expression (ACAT2, HMGCR, HMGCS1, FDPS, SC5DL, DHCR7, LDLR, FASN and SCD1) in four CNS-relevant human cell lines. RESULTS: There were marked differences in the ability of the antipsychotic drugs to activate the expression of SREBP target genes, with clozapine and chlorpromazine as the most potent stimulators in a context of therapeutically relevant concentrations. Glial-like cells (GaMg glioma and CCF-STTG1 astrocytoma cell lines) displayed more pronounced drug-induced SREBP activation compared to the response in HCN2 human cortical neurons and SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells, indicating that antipsychotic-induced activation of lipogenesis is most prominent in glial cells. CONCLUSION: Our present data show a marked variation in the ability of different antipsychotics to induce SREBP-controlled transcriptional activation of lipogenesis in cultured human CNS-relevant cells. We propose that this effect could be relevant for the therapeutic efficacy of some antipsychotic drugs

The Adult Human Brain Harbors Multipotent Perivascular Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Blood vessels and adjacent cells form perivascular stem cell niches in adult tissues. In this perivascular niche, a stem cell with mesenchymal characteristics was recently identified in some adult somatic tissues. These cells are pericytes that line the microvasculature, express mesenchymal markers and differentiate into mesodermal lineages but might even have the capacity to generate tissue-specific cell types. Here, we isolated, purified and characterized a previously unrecognized progenitor population from two different regions in the adult human brain, the ventricular wall and the neocortex. We show that these cells co-express markers for mesenchymal stem cells and pericytes in vivo and in vitro, but do not express glial, neuronal progenitor, hematopoietic, endothelial or microglial markers in their native state. Furthermore, we demonstrate at a clonal level that these progenitors have true multilineage potential towards both, the mesodermal and neuroectodermal phenotype. They can be epigenetically induced in vitro into adipocytes, chondroblasts and osteoblasts but also into glial cells and immature neurons. This progenitor population exhibits long-term proliferation, karyotype stability and retention of phenotype and multipotency following extensive propagation. Thus, we provide evidence that the vascular niche in the adult human brain harbors a novel progenitor with multilineage capacity that appears to represent mesenchymal stem cells and is different from any previously described human neural stem cell. Future studies will elucidate whether these cells may play a role for disease or may represent a reservoir that can be exploited in efforts to repair the diseased human brain