Red card, red herring: introducing Cameron’s EU ‘red card procedure’ will have limited impact

The UK’s proposal for a “red card procedure” for national parliaments to stop EU policy proposals would have affected less than two per cent of votes in the EU Council of Ministers – and that’s assuming governments lose the plot. Sara Hagemann, Chris Hanretty and Simon Hix discuss

Would Brexit matter? The UK’s voting record in the Council and the European Parliament

The UK is the most outvoted Member State in the EU Council. However, it has supported more than 97% of the EU laws adopted in the last 12 years, a new report published by VoteWatch Europe shows. The analysis looked at the role played by the UK’s Government and its MEPs in shaping the EU policy over the past 12 years. According to the study, the UK seems to have diminished its influence in the European Parliament in recent years, as a result of self-distancing of some of its own party delegations from the EU’s mainstream political families, as well as due to the results of the latest EU elections in the UK. Nevertheless, UK MEPs have captured many powerful agenda-setting positions, such as rapporteurships of key EU legislation and EP committee chairmanships Professor Simon Hix, chairman and co-founder of VoteWatch Europe, explained that “the British opposition to EU decisions occurred especially on budget, foreign policy and foreign aid. Nevertheless, the UK was not the most oppositional government on several important issue areas: internal market, legal affairs, transport, environment, and fisheries”. The data shows that Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark are UK’s closest allies in the EU Council and would lose an important ally if Brexit occurs. The study also argues that the main losers of Brexit among EU’s stakeholders are those that promote less regulatory burden for EU businesses and stronger protection of copyright. Last but not least, a possible Brexit would also push the remaining EU governments to pay more to EU’s coffer

Hybrid Artificial Intelligence System for the Design of Highly-Automated Production Systems

The automated design of production systems is a young field of research which has not been widely explored by industry nor research in recent decades. Currently, the effort spent in production system design is increasing significantly in automotive industry due to the number of product variants and product complexity. Intelligent methods can support engineers in repetitive tasks and give them more opportunity to focus on work which requires their core competencies. This paper presents a novel artificial intelligence methodology that automatically generates initial production system configurations based on real industrial scenarios in the automotive field of body-in-white production. The hybrid methodology reacts flexibly against data sets of different content and has been implemented in a software prototype

Benjamin Beil, Thomas Hensel, Andreas Rauscher, Hrsg., Game Studies

Les game studies ou les sciences du jeu (vidéo) sont particulièrement riches en interférences avec d’autres disciplines. La partie esthétique d’un jeu vidéo peut être abordée avec des approches issues des études littéraires, des études cinématographiques, des études théâtrales ou des études musicales, pendant que l’interaction entre humain et ordinateur peut être analysée par exemple avec des approches informatiques, psychologiques ou cognitives et que les effets des jeux vidéo peuvent être é..

Performing Lampedusa – Über europäische Grenz- und Migrationspolitik in Elfriede Jelineks Die Schutzbefohlenen, Hans-Werner Kroesingers FRONTex security und BBMs Po.W.E.R.

Depuis les accords de Schengen, la politique de sécurité des frontières et de l’immigration s’est davantage européanisée. Mais, après certains accidents maritimes en Méditerranée, cette politique est constamment mise au banc d’essai. En outre, la réaction aux événements qui se déroulent sur les frontières extérieures de l’Europe ainsi que la situation de l’accueil des migrants ne sont pas sans influence sur l’identité et l’image d’une région du monde où le discours sur les droits de l’homme a traditionnellement une grande importance. Ces deux dernières années, trois travaux émanant de protagonistes de la scène artistique théâtrale de l’espace germanophone ont été présentés au public avec cette problématique : le texte théâtral Die Schutzbefohlenen (2013) d’Elfriede Jelinek, le travail de théâtre documentaire de Hans-Werner Kroesinger FRONTex security (2013), ainsi que la pièce Po.W.E.R. (2014) d’Olaf Arndt de BBM (Beobachter der Bediener von Maschinen). L’article analyse la façon dont ces trois travaux, qui se caractérisent par des recherches approfondies et une grande intertextualité, mettent à l’épreuve de manière assez différente la politique européenne des frontières et des migrations, et interrogent l’écart entre utopie européenne et Realpolitik. Pour cela, à côté des textes d’Arndt, Kroesinger et Jelinek, leurs mises en scène par Kroesinger, BBM et Nicolas Stemann sont également prises en compte dans l’analyse.Since the Schengen Agreement, the politics of border security and immigration have become increasingly Europeanized. But these policies have been put to the test again and again after naval incidents in the Mediterranean Sea. Events at the EU’s external borders as well as the reception of immigrants have had a bearing on the identity and image of a region where the discourse on human rights traditionally has great significance. In the past two years, three works which deal with this issue have been published by protagonists of the German-speaking performance art scene: Elfriede Jelinek’s theatre text Die Schutzbefohlenen (2013), the documentary theatre work by Hans-Werner Kroesinger FRONTex security (2013), as well as the piece Po.W.E.R. (2014) by Olaf Arndt from BBM (Beobachter der Bediener von Maschinen). These free works are characterized by in-depth research and high intertextuality. This article investigates in which different ways they put to the test European border and immigration politics, and how they evoke the discrepancy between a European utopia and real politics. With that end in mind, the analysis of Arndt’s, Kroesinger’s and Jelinek’s texts is complemented by that of Kroesinger’s, BBM’s and Nicolas Stemann’s staging of comparable plays.Seit den Schengener Verträgen hat sich die Grenzsicherheits- und Migrationspolitik zunehmend europäisiert. Aber immer wieder wird nach Schiffsunglücken im Mittelmeer diese Politik neu auf den Prüfstand gestellt. Die Vorgänge an Europas Außengrenzen sowie die Situation der Aufnahme der Einwanderer sind nicht folgenlos für die Identität und das Bild einer Region der Welt, in welcher der Menschenrechtsdiskurs traditionell eine wichtige Rolle spielt. In den letzten zwei Jahren sind drei Arbeiten von Protagonisten der deutschsprachigen Theaterkunstszene erschienen, die sich mit genau dieser Problematik beschäftigen: Elfriede Jelineks Theatertext Die Schutzbefohlenen (2013), die Dokumentartheaterarbeit von Hans-Werner Kroesinger FRONTex security (2013) sowie das Stück Po.W.E.R. (2014) von Olaf Arndt von BBM (Beobachter der Bediener von Maschinen). Der Artikel untersucht, wie die drei Arbeiten, welche sich durch eine reichhaltige Recherche und hohe Intertextualität auszeichnen, auf recht unterschiedliche Weise die europäische Grenz- und Migrationspolitik auf die Probe stellen und wie sie die Widersprüche zwischen europäischer Utopie und Realpolitik hinterfragen. Dabei werden neben den Texten von Arndt, Kroesinger und Jelinek auch die zugehörigen Inszenierungen von Kroesinger, BBM und Nicolas Stemann in die Überlegungen mit einbezogen

Does the UK win or lose in the Council of Ministers?

One of the key issues in the context of the UK’s debate over EU membership is the level of influence the country has within the EU’s institutions. In the second in a series of articles examining whether the UK is marginalised in EU decision-making, Simon Hix and Sara Hagemann present data on how the UK fares in decisions made in the EU’s Council of Ministers. They write that Council voting records suggest there has been a significant shift in the position of the UK government between 2004-09 and 2009-15, with the UK voting against the majority far more often in the latter period and being on the losing side more than any other state. Nevertheless, there remains a high level of agreement in the Council, with the UK still part of the winning majority in almost 87 per cent of cases

How well do large-scale models reproduce regional hydrological extremes in Europe?

This paper presents a new methodology for assessing the ability of gridded hydrological models to reproduce large-scale hydrological high and low flow events (as a proxy for hydrological extremes) as described by catalogues of historical droughts [using the regional deficiency index (RDI)] and high flows [regional flood index (RFI)] previously derived from river flow measurements across Europe. Using the same methods, total runoff simulated by three global hydrological models from the Water Model Intercomparison Project (WaterMIP) [Joint U.K. Land Environment Simulator (JULES), Water Global Assessment and Prognosis (WaterGAP), and Max Planck Institute Hydrological Model (MPI-HM)] run with the same meteorological input (watch forcing data) at the same spatial 0.58 grid was used to calculate simulated RDI and RFI for the period 1963-2001 in the same European regions, directly comparable with the observed catalogues. Observed and simulated RDI and RFI time series were compared using three performance measures: the relative mean error, the ratio between the standard deviation of simulated over observed series, and the Spearman correlation coefficient. Results show that all models can broadly reproduce the spatiotemporal evolution of hydrological extremes in Europe to varying degrees. JULES tends to produce prolonged, highly spatially coherent events for both high and low flows, with events developing more slowly and reaching and sustaining greater spatial coherence than observed-this could be due to runoff being dominated by slow-responding subsurface flow. In contrast, MPI-HM shows very high variability in the simulated RDI and RFI time series and a more rapid onset of extreme events than observed, in particular for regions with significant water storage capacity-this could be due to possible underrepresentation of infiltration and groundwater storage, with soil saturation reached too quickly. WaterGAP shares some of the issues of variability with MPIHM- also attributed to insufficient soil storage capacity and surplus effective precipitation being generated as surface runoff-and some strong spatial coherence of simulated events with JULES, but neither of these are dominant. Of the three global models considered here, WaterGAP is arguably best suited to reproduce most regional characteristics of large-scale high and low flow events in Europe. Some systematic weaknesses emerge in all models, in particular for high flows, which could be a product of poor spatial resolution of the input climate data (e.g., where extreme precipitation is driven by local convective storms) or topography. Overall, this study has demonstrated that RDI and RFI are powerful tools that can be used to assess how well large-scale hydrological models reproduce large-scale hydrological extremes-an exercise rarely undertaken in model intercomparisons. © 2011 American Meteorological Society

Coalition building and consensus in the Council of the European Union

peer-reviewedAlthough qualified-majority voting is possible, member states in the Council of the European Union (EU) still adopt most policies by consensus. The agent-based model of coalition building in multilateral negotiations presented here addresses this puzzle. The model demonstrates that consensual decisions may emerge as an unintended by-product of government representatives' desire to form blocking coalitions. A qualitative case study demonstrates the plausibility of the model's assumptions and resulting coalition-building dynamics. Moreover, a quantitative test shows that the model's predictions correspond closely to the observed consensus rates. Finally, computational experiments predict a positive effect of the voting threshold but no effect of increases in membership on winning coalition size, which has important practical implications for institutional design and enlargement policy.ACCEPTEDpeer-reviewe

Analysing user physiological responses for affective video summarisation

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Displays. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2009 Elsevier B.V.Video summarisation techniques aim to abstract the most significant content from a video stream. This is typically achieved by processing low-level image, audio and text features which are still quite disparate from the high-level semantics that end users identify with (the ‘semantic gap’). Physiological responses are potentially rich indicators of memorable or emotionally engaging video content for a given user. Consequently, we investigate whether they may serve as a suitable basis for a video summarisation technique by analysing a range of user physiological response measures, specifically electro-dermal response (EDR), respiration amplitude (RA), respiration rate (RR), blood volume pulse (BVP) and heart rate (HR), in response to a range of video content in a variety of genres including horror, comedy, drama, sci-fi and action. We present an analysis framework for processing the user responses to specific sub-segments within a video stream based on percent rank value normalisation. The application of the analysis framework reveals that users respond significantly to the most entertaining video sub-segments in a range of content domains. Specifically, horror content seems to elicit significant EDR, RA, RR and BVP responses, and comedy content elicits comparatively lower levels of EDR, but does seem to elicit significant RA, RR, BVP and HR responses. Drama content seems to elicit less significant physiological responses in general, and both sci-fi and action content seem to elicit significant EDR responses. We discuss the implications this may have for future affective video summarisation approaches

Arctic Seafloor Integrity Cruise No. MSM95 – (GPF 19-2_05)

The main aim of the MSM95 research expedition was to investigate and map physical impacts on the arctic seafloor in two distinct and contrasting Arctic areas (The Svalbard shelf edge and the HAUSGARTEN time series stations in the FRAM strait) with a range of research equipment. A ‘nested’ data approach was conducted in each research area, with broad seafloor mapping conducted initially with the R/V MARIA S. MERIAN onboard acoustic systems (The EM122 and EM712 bathymetric systems), followed by focused subsequent mapping conducted by PAUL 3000 automated underwater vehicle (AUV) sidescan and camera deployments, Ocean Floor Observation and Bathymetry System (OFOBS) towed sidescan and camera trawls and finally with very high resolution investigations conducted with a new mini-ROV launched directly from the OFOBS for close seafloor visual analysis. These data will be used to produce spatial distribution maps of iceberg and fishery impacts on the seafloor at three locations to the north, south and west of the Svalbard Archipelago, as well as maps of drop stone and topography variations across several of the HAUSGARTEN stations