20,058 research outputs found
From car to bike. Marketing and dialogue as a driver of change
The Paris Climate Agreement has sent a key message to the international community regarding the need to increase efforts to move towards a low-carbon economy and help slow climate change, while underpinning global long-term economic growth and sustainable development. COP 21 recognizes the social, economic and environmental value of voluntary mitigation actions and their co-benefits for adaptation, health and sustainable development. In this framework, the PTP Cycle project, running from 2013 to 2016 and funded by the European Commission through the Intelligent Energy Europe program, introduces a non-market approach through voluntary participation in the adoption of sustainable transport modes such as cycling, based on marketing to potential customers through Personalized Travel Plans. The medium-sized city of Burgos (Spain) and the cities of Ljubljana, Riga, Antwerp and London
(boroughs of Haringey and Greenwich) developed a new policy instrument (Personalized Travel Plans) in order to increase bike patronage. Beyond potential savings of CO2, the results show that PTP as a form of Active Mobility Consultancy is a suitable instrument to influence modal shift to public transport, walking and cycling, and to address the challenges of climate change, while fostering sustainable transportation by changing mobility behaviour. These results, matching with the state-of-the-art of studies and pilot applications in other countries, allows deriving differentiated results for medium-size and large urban areas
Minimal mechanisms for vegetation patterns in semiarid regions
The minimal ecological requirements for formation of regular vegetation
patterns in semiarid systems have been recently questioned. Against the general
belief that a combination of facilitative and competitive interactions is
necessary, recent theoretical studies suggest that, under broad conditions,
nonlocal competition among plants alone may induce patterns. In this paper, we
review results along this line, presenting a series of models that yield
spatial patterns when finite-range competition is the only driving force. A
preliminary derivation of this type of model from a more detailed one that
considers water-biomass dynamics is also presented. Keywords: Vegetation
patterns, nonlocal interactionsComment: 8 pages, 4 figure
Unitarity of the Leptonic Mixing Matrix
We determine the elements of the leptonic mixing matrix, without assuming
unitarity, combining data from neutrino oscillation experiments and weak
decays. To that end, we first develop a formalism for studying neutrino
oscillations in vacuum and matter when the leptonic mixing matrix is not
unitary. To be conservative, only three light neutrino species are considered,
whose propagation is generically affected by non-unitary effects. Precision
improvements within future facilities are discussed as well.Comment: Standard Model radiative corrections to the invisible Z width
included. Some numerical results modified at the percent level. Updated with
latest bounds on the rare tau decay. Physical conculsions unchange
E-GOVERNMENT ON LOCAL PUBLIC POLICY. THE SINALOA CASE
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have signiicantlyimpacted the organization and function of democratic governmentsin the past two decades. In this article we discuss the magnitude ofchanges in the public administration of Sinaloa, Mexico for effects ofthe adoption of e-government in the 2011-2015 period; also we showthe uneven and arbitrary manner that has been put into operation dueto the inexperienced and improvisation that has become a feature oflocal governments in the country
Time as a limited resource: Communication Strategy in Mobile Phone Networks
We used a large database of 9 billion calls from 20 million mobile users to
examine the relationships between aggregated time spent on the phone, personal
network size, tie strength and the way in which users distributed their limited
time across their network (disparity). Compared to those with smaller networks,
those with large networks did not devote proportionally more time to
communication and had on average weaker ties (as measured by time spent
communicating). Further, there were not substantially different levels of
disparity between individuals, in that mobile users tend to distribute their
time very unevenly across their network, with a large proportion of calls going
to a small number of individuals. Together, these results suggest that there
are time constraints which limit tie strength in large personal networks, and
that even high levels of mobile communication do not fundamentally alter the
disparity of time allocation across networks.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in Social Network
MoCheQoS: Automated Analysis of Quality of Service Properties of Communicating Systems
We present MoCheQoS, a tool to analyse quality of service (QoS) properties of
message-passing systems. Building on the logic and the choreographic model we
defined in recently published work, MoCheQoS implements a bounded model
checking algorithm. We discuss strengths and weaknesses of MoCheQoS through
some case studies.Comment: 29 page
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