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

The effect of drought on health outcomes and health expenditures in rural Vietnam

This paper studies the impact of droughts on health outcomes and health expenditures in rural Vietnam. Given the increasing frequency of extreme weather events in Vietnam and many developing countries, it is crucial for policy makers to be aware of the economic impact of such shocks at the micro level. Using local rainfall data, the analysis directly links the incidence of drought to health shocks and health-related expenditures from a multiple-wave panel of rural Vietnamese households. Overall, the results suggest that individuals affected by drought display a deterioration of health conditions and have significantly higher health expenditures. The effect is found to prevail among households with a high degree of agricultural dependency and limited access to coping mechanisms such as selling assets or tapping off-farm income sources. The preferred estimates using an IV strategy reveal that drought-related health shocks can cause non-negligible additional financial burden for many households vulnerable to poverty in rural Vietnam. This paper quantifies the immediate impact of drought on health conditions and contributes to the existing literature which has mostly focused on the long-term consequences

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

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 energy-efficient 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.In der 2009 in Kraft getretenen EG-Verordnung 244/2009 ist das schrittweise Handelsverbot von Glühbirnen in der Europäischen Union festgelegt. Ab dem 1. September 2012 dürfen ausschließlich energieeffiziente Leuchtkörper, wie etwa Halogenleuchten, Leuchtdioden (LED) oder Kompaktleuchtstofflampen, welche gemeinhin als 'Energiesparlampen' bezeichnet werden, in den Verkauf gelangen. Die häufig als Glühbirnenverbot betitelte Verordnung wird von der EU-Kommission vor allem mit Strom- und Kosteneinsparungen bei den Verbrauchern und der Verringerung des Ausstoßes an Treibhausgasen gerechtfertigt. Dieser Beitrag diskutiert mögliche Ursachen für die bislang mangelnde Marktdurchdringung der Energiesparlampe und zeigt, dass durch die Investition in eine Energiesparlampe nicht in jedem Falle signifikante Kosteneinsparungen erzielt werden können. So können die gegenüber der herkömmlichen Glühbirne höheren Investitionskosten bei sehr geringen Nutzungszeiten nur nach sehr langen Zeiträumen ausgeglichen werden. Anhand von Beispielen illustrieren wir, dass der Einsatz von Energiesparlampen in vielen Fällen ökonomisch wenig rational ist. Allein aus diesem Grund sollte das generelle Glühbirnenverbot der EU-Kommission wieder zurückgenommen werden. Den Verbrauchern könnte dadurch einiger Schaden erspart bleiben, schließlich ist die am häufigsten verwendete 60-Watt-Glühbirne erst ab 1. September 2011 vom EU-Verbot betroffen

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