The European Commission‘s Light Bulb Decree: Another Costly Regulation?

Since September 2009, Regulation 244/2009 of the European Commission enforces the gradual phase-out of incandescent light bulbs. As of September 2012, only energyefficient lighting sources will be allowed for sale. Among these are halogen light bulbs, light-emitting diodes (LED), or compact fluorescent light bulbs? often referred to as energy-saving light bulbs. The Commission’s justification for the phase-out of conventional light bulbs maintains that a reduction in the electricity consumed will not only lead to lower energy cost for private households and industrial consumers, but at the same time lead to a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. This article discusses possible reasons for the slow market diffusion of energy-saving light bulbs and shows that the investment in energy-efficient light bulbs does not necessarily lead to significant cost reductions. Drawing on some illustrative examples, we demonstrate that the use of cheaper incandescent bulbs instead of energy-saving light bulbs can be economically rational in cases of rather low usage times, in which the higher initial purchasing price might only pay off after very long time spans. Furthermore, due to the coexistence with the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), this regulation attains no additional emission reductions beyond those achieved by the ETS alone. We thus conclude that the general ban of incandescent light bulbs is inappropriate and should be abolished by the Commission.Energy efficiency; rebound effect

A Contribution to the Empirics of Development and Globalization

There are arguably few topics in current global economic policy as intensely debated as the impact of different facets of globalization on human development. Given that the concept of globalization reflects a multitude of economic and societal transformations, the scope of these discussions needs to be equally nuanced. This dissertation sheds light on some of the channels through which less researched facets of globalization affect human lives. Specifically, the first essay scrutinizes the role of informational globalization, characterized by the exchange of information. It focuses on the spread of modern information and telecommunication technologies, such as the internet, and how this development has the potential to shape concerns about relative status and people’s perception of happiness. The second essay deals with the implications of environmental globalization - more precisely, with climate change as its most perceptible phenomenon and the consequential increased prevalence of extreme weather events in many parts of the world. Focusing on the impact of drought conditions on health outcomes in the agrarian economy of Vietnam, the results reveal one component of the costs of environmental globalization for a population vulnerable to poverty. Emanating from the long-debated question whether development aid is effective in increasing economic growth, the third essay is concerned with the role of the World Bank as one key player of political globalization in alleviating poverty and fostering development and the role of cross-border official capital flows in the form of development aid. It also has a methodological focus through bringing the aid-effectiveness literature to the subnational level. Being grounded on economic theory, a unifying feature of all essays in this dissertation is an evidence-based approach to economic problems. Their research method is the use of empirical data in order to draw quantitative conclusions on the effects of different aspects of globalization on human development

Demonstration of a customizable knowledge graph visualization framework

In the context of the Semantic Web, various visualization methods and tools exist. However, suitable visualizations are highly de-pendent on individual use cases and targeted user groups. Therefore, existing solutions require modifications and adjustments to meet the de-mands of other use cases and user groups. In this demo, we present an approach for a unified framework addressing customizable visual rep-resentations of knowledge graphs. Our approach refines the commonly used steps in the visualization generation process (i.e., data access, map-ping to visual primitives, and rendering) for Semantic Web contexts. Separation of concerns for individual steps and a modular and customiz-able architecture build the foundation for a pipeline-based visualization framework. The framework enables the creation and selection of the right components for the right tasks, realizing a variety of use cases and visual representations in Semantic Web contexts

Towards Interoperable Folksonomies – Linking and Opening Tagging Vocabularies

LOV Symposium: Linking and Opening Vocabularies = Simposium LOV: abriendo y enlazando vocabularios. Getafe (Madrid), 18th June 201

Demonstration of a customizable representation model for graph-based visualizations of ontologies – GIzMO

Visualizations can facilitate the development, exploration, communication, and sense-making of ontologies. Suitable visualizations, however, are highly dependent on individual use cases and targeted user groups. In this demo, we present a methodology that enables customizable definitions for ontology visualizations. We showcase its applicability by introducing GizMO, a representation model for graph-based visualizations in the form of node-link diagrams. Additionally, we present two applications that operate on the GizMO representation model and enable individual customizations for ontology visualizations

An OER Recommender System Supporting Accessibility Requirements

Open Educational Resources are becoming a significant source of learning that are widely used for various educational purposes and levels. Learners have diverse backgrounds and needs, especially when it comes to learners with accessibility requirements. Persons with disabilities have significantly lower employment rates partly due to the lack of access to education and vocational rehabilitation and training. It is not surprising therefore, that providing high quality OERs that facilitate the self-development towards specific jobs and skills on the labor market in the light of special preferences of learners with disabilities is difficult. In this paper, we introduce a personalized OER recommeder system that considers skills, occupations, and accessibility properties of learners to retrieve the most adequate and high-quality OERs. This is done by: 1) describing the profile of learners with disabilities, 2) collecting and analysing more than 1,500 OERs, 3) filtering OERs based on their accessibility features and predicted quality, and 4) providing personalised OER recommendations for learners according to their accessibility needs. As a result, the OERs retrieved by our method proved to satisfy more accessibility checks than other OERs. Moreover, we evaluated our results with five experts in educating people with visual and cognitive impairments. The evaluation showed that our recommendations are potentially helpful for learners with accessibility needs

Process analytical technology as key-enabler for digital twins in continuous biomanufacturing

Over the last few years rapid progress has been made in adopting well-known process modeling techniques from chemicals to biologics manufacturing. The main challenge has been analytical methods as engineers need quantitative data for their workflow. Industrialization 4.0, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and machine learning activities up to big data analysis have taken their share in solving fundamental problems like component- or at least group-specific evaluation of spectroscopic data. Besides, concerning inline analytics methods included in process analytical technology concepts the key technology has been the generation of decisive validated digital twins based on process models. This review aims to summarize the methodology to achieve a holistic understanding of process models, control and optimization by means of digital twins using the example of recent work published in this field

Magnitude, frequency and climate forcing of global volcanism during the last glacial period as seen in Greenland and Antarctic ice cores (60–9 ka)

Large volcanic eruptions occurring in the last glacial period can be detected by their accompanying sulfuric acid deposition in continuous ice cores. Here we employ continuous sulfate and sulfur records from three Greenland and three Antarctic ice cores to estimate the emission strength, the frequency and the climatic forcing of large volcanic eruptions that occurred during the second half of the last glacial period and the early Holocene, 60–9 kyr before 2000 CE (b2k). Over most of the investigated interval the ice cores are synchronized, making it possible to distinguish large eruptions with a global sulfate distribution from eruptions detectable in one hemisphere only. Due to limited data resolution and large variability in the sulfate background signal, particularly in the Greenland glacial climate, we only list Greenland sulfate depositions larger than 20 kg km−2 and Antarctic sulfate depositions larger than 10 kg km−2. With those restrictions, we identify 1113 volcanic eruptions in Greenland and 737 eruptions in Antarctica within the 51 kyr period – for which the sulfate deposition of 85 eruptions is found at both poles (bipolar eruptions). Based on the ratio of Greenland and Antarctic sulfate deposition, we estimate the latitudinal band of the bipolar eruptions and assess their approximate climatic forcing based on established methods. A total of 25 of the identified bipolar eruptions are larger than any volcanic eruption occurring in the last 2500 years, and 69 eruptions are estimated to have larger sulfur emission strengths than the Tambora, Indonesia, eruption (1815 CE). Throughout the investigated period, the frequency of volcanic eruptions is rather constant and comparable to that of recent times. During the deglacial period (16–9 ka b2k), however, there is a notable increase in the frequency of volcanic events recorded in Greenland and an obvious increase in the fraction of very large eruptions. For Antarctica, the deglacial period cannot be distinguished from other periods. This confirms the suggestion that the isostatic unloading of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) ice sheets may be related to the enhanced NH volcanic activity. Our ice-core-based volcanic sulfate records provide the atmospheric sulfate burden and estimates of climate forcing for further research on climate impact and understanding the mechanism of the Earth system