Taking the lead: post-2012 climate targets for the North: towards adequate and equitable future climate commitments for industrialised countries

Any definition of adequacy consistent with the objective of the Climate Convention will require increased mitigation efforts in industrialized countries far beyond those levels agreed in Kyoto. This paper, therefore, focuses on future reduction targets for industrialised (Annex I) countries. It starts with an assessment of mid- and long-term targets already adopted in industrialised countries against the backdrop of required emission cuts to keep climate change within tolerable limits. Taking into account their heterogeneous national circumstances, the main part of the paper presents a method for differentiating Annex I countries with a view to assigning future mitigation and financial transfer commitments. This differentiation exercise is based on an analytical approach that was developed in the project “South-North Dialogue – Equity in the Greenhouse". Slightly modifying the original approach the level of reduction targets is determined by the two criteria of “responsibility" and “potential" to mitigate. Obligations to provide financial and technological resources to developing countries, on the other hand, are to be assigned according to the “capability" criteria. --

Editing EML 1.1 Preliminary survey of existing tools

The Development Programme of OTEC, Open Universiteit Nederland has developed 'Educational Modelling Language' (EML). EML is a semantic notation for education (units of learning). It can be used to describe didactical models and related processes. The main implementation of EML is an XML (eXtensible Markup Language) application in the form of a XML DTD (Document Type Definition). The Open Universiteit Nederland has used EML 1.0 for some time now to create units of learning. Courses specified in EML 1.0 are delivered through the Edubox (version 2.0.6) environment. The authoring environment currently in use is based on an SGML editor, Framemaker+SGML 5.5.6, because there were no suitable XML editors available at the time

The effect of board chacteristics on short- term acquisition returns: a North- American perspective

This paper investigates the effect that experience and diversification board have on short-term acquisition returns for investors. Additionally, it assesses whether the crisis changed the effect that board characteristics have on the short-term acquisition returns. It is found that several board experience characteristic do result in higher short-term acquisition returns for investors when taking the crisis into account these returns mainly persist in the post-crisis era, but not anymore in the pre-crisis era. For board diversification on the other hand, not many effects are found. The main finding here is that more woman on a board improves the short-term acquisition returns

Editing IMS Learning Design Explorative survey of editors

Learning Design is a specification for a semantic notation for education (units of learning) developed by the IMS Working Group on Learning Design. It can be used to describe didactical models and related processes. The Open Universiteit plays a major role in this IMS Working Group, as they provided EML as basis for the new specification. There were several reasons to start looking at XML editors as tool for creating and editing IMS Learning Design

Modeling IoT-aware Business Processes - A State of the Art Report

This research report presents an analysis of the state of the art of modeling Internet of Things (IoT)-aware business processes. IOT links the physical world to the digital world. Traditionally, we would find information about events and processes in the physical world in the digital world entered by humans and humans using this information to control the physical world. In the IoT paradigm, the physical world is equipped with sensors and actuators to create a direct link with the digital world. Business processes are used to coordinate a complex environment including multiple actors for a common goal, typically in the context of administrative work. In the past few years, we have seen research efforts on the possibilities to model IoT- aware business processes, extending process coordination to real world entities directly. This set of research efforts is relatively small when compared to the overall research effort into the IoT and much of the work is still in the early research stage. To create a basis for a bridge between IoT and BPM, the goal of this report is to collect and analyze the state of the art of existing frameworks for modeling IoT-aware business processes.Comment: 42 page