Canary in the coalmine: Norwegian attitudes towards climate change and extreme long-haul air travel to Aotearoa/New Zealand

Accelerating global climate change poses considerable challenges to all societies and economies. The European Union now targets a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020. Indeed, the Labour-led Norwegian government is committed to carbon neutrality across all sectors of the economy by 2030. Aviation has been identified as a rapidly growing contributor to CO2 emissions. This article reports on a research project that explored Norwegian attitudes towards climate change, particularly as they relate to extreme long-haul air travel to Aotearoa/New Zealand. It reveals that the 'dream trip' to New Zealand for Norwegians is still largely intact. It also finds evidence of 'air travel with a carbon conscience' arising from growing concern for high frequency discretionary air travel. Evidence of denial of the climate impact of air travel that recent studies have revealed was largely absent. Interviewees expressed a greater concern for short-haul air travel emissions than for the climate impact of long-haul travel. However, intentions to adapt long-haul travel behaviours were expressed, highlighting the need to monitor consumer attitudes towards the impact of air travel on climate change. We conclude that Norway is a vanguard European tourism market in terms of climate sensitivity

Tourist attitudes towards water use in the developing world: A comparative analysis

This paper examines tourists' attitudes towards water use based on comparative data from interviews with tourists in Zanzibar, The Gambia and Dominican Republic. Unsustainable water use, accentuated by climate change, threatens access to water which potentially forms a source of conflict between tourists, tourism businesses, residents and the environment. Additionally it raises issues about rights of access to water. The results emphasise the actual nature and scale of tourist use of water and their lack of awareness of the impacts of this use on the local environment and community. This lack of awareness becomes an added indicator of the growing unsustainability of tourism in certain destinations and needs to be considered alongside the longer-term scenarios of climate change. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd

Device Information Modeling in Automation - A Computer-Scientific Approach

This thesis presents an approach for device information modeling that is meant to ease the challenges of device manufacturers in the automation domain. The basis for this approach are semantic models of the application domain. The author discusses the challenges for integration in the automation domain and especially regarding field devices, device description languages and fieldbuses. A method for the generation of semantic models is presented and an approach is discussed that is meant to help the generation of device descriptions for different device description languages. The approach is then evaluated

A comparison of range value at risk forecasting models

Risk forecasting is an important and helpful process for investors, fund managers, traders, and market makers. Choosing an inappropriate risk forecasting model can trigger irreversible losses. In this context, this study aims to evaluate the quality of different models to forecast the Range Value at Risk (RVaR), in both univariate and multivariate analysis, and compare the forecasts to other important risk measures like Value at Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES). To assess the performance of both the univariate and multivariate models to RVaR forecasting, we consider an empirical exercise with different asset classes, rolling window estimations, and significance levels. We also evaluate prediction accuracy using Monte Carlo simulations in the univariate analysis, considering different scenarios. We evaluate the empirical forecasts with the score functions of each risk measure. We identified that different models could forecast better different assets, and the GARCH model with Johnson’s SU distribution overcoming the other distributions. We observed the RVine and CVine copulas as better models in the multivariate study. Besides that, we noted that the models with Student’s t marginal distribution have better performance according to realized loss (score function). We identified that even if a model can forecast RVaR well, that does not imply that the same model will forecast other risk measures well

Video analysis in Design-Based Research – Findings of a project on self-organised learning at a vocational school

The use of video analysis in Design-Based Research (DBR) seems to be promising, because the quality of video data matches the reality of educational fields. Educational fields are multidimensional and complex. And more than other types of data, video may capture, for example, the simultaneity of verbal and non-verbal interactions. This seems to be valuable in the quest for new insights and better designs of educational interventions. However, to date there has been limited use of video data in researching their design. This paper aims at reflecting how the benefits of video-based analysis may be utilised in DBR. Experiences with the collection and analysis of video data in a project to design self-organised learning (SOL) at a vocational school in Germany will be used as a case study to illustrate the type of findings that may feed into the DBR process. In this case, the project school had already introduced a sophisticated SOL model but was experiencing various implementation difficulties. Resolving issues like this requires insights into how exactly a concept is realised and what happens in the field. Therefore, video data on classroom interactions was gathered and sub-sequently analysed using the documentary method. This led to the reconstruction of two different types of orientation that were guiding the students when they dealt with their self-organised learning environment. In a subversive orientation, students playfully infiltrate the formal learning space with peer activities. In a confirming orientation, students stick to both, the (informal) rules of the (formal) learning arrangement and of the peer environment, thus expressing respect for the boundary between these two worlds. These findings have been used to redesign the SOL intervention

Binge flying: Behavioural addiction and climate change

Recent popular press suggests that ‘binge flying’ constitutes a new site of behavioural addiction. We theoretically appraise and empirically support this proposition through interviews with consumers in Norway and the United Kingdom conducted in 2009. Consistent findings from across two national contexts evidence a growing negative discourse towards frequent short-haul tourist air travel and illustrate strategies of guilt suppression and denial used to span a cognitive dissonance between the short-term personal benefits of tourism and the air travel’s associated long-term consequences for climate change. Tensions between tourism consumption and changing social norms towards acceptable flying practice exemplify how this social group is beginning to (re)frame what constitutes ‘excessive’ holiday flying, despite concomitantly continuing their own frequent air travels

Dual Study Programmes as a Design Challenge: Identifying Areas for Improvement as a Starting Point for Interventions

The proportion of freshmen enrolled in dual study programmes has steadily increased in recent years. From the perspective of potential students, these programmes are highly attractive because they combine types of learning that used to be largely separate at an institutional level: vocational and academic learning. In training-integrated dual study programmes, different institutional contexts, governance regimes, teaching styles and learning environments make bridging these two worlds of learning a challenge for both educators and learners. However, these programmes also allow leeway for didactic innovation, through the cooperation of different types of educational institutions and through new ways of using available didactic methods, and for establishing a new relationship between higher education (HE) and vocational education and training (VET). This paper positions training-integrated dual study programmes as an object of design-based research (DBR). By developing and using an extended model for the pedagogic development of HEIs, “pädagogische Hochschulentwicklung” (Brahm, Jenert, & Euler, 2016a, p. 19; Euler, 2013, p. 360), the paper systematically identifies generic educational problems in these hybrids. Based on a literature review, this paper classifies and explains the design challenges at the level of the learning environment, the study programme and the organisation. The challenges revolve mainly around the cooperation and integration of HE and VET. The paper concludes with an outlook on future DBR projects designing dual studies. &nbsp

Sharing versus collaborative economy : how to align ICT developments and the SDGs in tourism?

Abstract: Great hopes have been placed in the sharing economy to provide a new business model based on peer-to-peer (P2P) exchanges of underutilized assets. As a model, the sharing economy has been expected to make significant contributions to sustainability, providing new opportunities for entrepreneurship, more sustainable use of resources, and consumer co-operation in tight economic networks. However, in recent years, digital platforms have turned into the most important actors in the global sharing economy, turning global corporations, such as AirBnB, Booking, or TripAdvisor into intermediaries controlling and profiting from most transactions. Focused on accommodation, this paper conceptualizes the sharing economy in comparison to the wider collaborative economy, and discusses its social, economic, environmental, and political impacts in comparison to the sustainable development goals. It concludes that the sharing economy has great potential to make very significant contributions to sustainability, though the model is increasingly being replaced by the collaborative economy, which performs as an extension and acceleration of neoliberal economic practices

Mott-Hubbard exciton in the optical conductivity of YTiO3 and SmTiO3

In the Mott-Hubbard insulators YTiO3 and SmTiO3 we study optical excitations from the lower to the upper Hubbard band, d^1d^1 -> d^0d^2. The multi-peak structure observed in the optical conductivity reflects the multiplet structure of the upper Hubbard band in a multi-orbital system. Absorption bands at 2.55 and 4.15 eV in the ferromagnet YTiO3 correspond to final states with a triplet d^2 configuration, whereas a peak at 3.7 eV in the antiferromagnet SmTiO3 is attributed to a singlet d^2 final state. A strongly temperature-dependent peak at 1.95 eV in YTiO3 and 1.8 eV in SmTiO3 is interpreted in terms of a Hubbard exciton, i.e., a charge-neutral (quasi-)bound state of a hole in the lower Hubbard band and a double occupancy in the upper one. The binding to such a Hubbard exciton may arise both due to Coulomb attraction between nearest-neighbor sites and due to a lowering of the kinetic energy in a system with magnetic and/or orbital correlations. Furthermore, we observe anomalies of the spectral weight in the vicinity of the magnetic ordering transitions, both in YTiO3 and SmTiO3. In the G-type antiferromagnet SmTiO3, the sign of the change of the spectral weight at T_N depends on the polarization. This demonstrates that the temperature dependence of the spectral weight is not dominated by the spin-spin correlations, but rather reflects small changes of the orbital occupation.Comment: Strongly extended version; new data of SmTiO3 included; detailed discussion of temperature dependence include