The integration of renewable energy sources (RES) and the convergence of transport electrification, creates a significant challenge for distribution network management e.g. voltage and frequency violations, particularly in rural and remote areas. This paper investigates how smart charging of electric vehicles (EVs) can help reduce renewable energy curtailment and alleviate stress on local distribution networks. We implement a customised AC Optimal Power Flow (AC OPF) formulation which integrates into the optimisation an indicator reflecting the social impact of flexibility from EV users, based on the analysis of historical EV charging behaviours. The contribution of EV owners to reducing wind curtailment is optimised to enhance the acceptability of flexibility procurement, as the method targets EV users whose charging habits are most likely to align with flexibility requirements. Our method integrates social, technological, and economic perspectives with optimal flexibility coordination, and utilises clustering of EVs through a kmeans algorithm. To ensure scalability, we introduce a polar coordinate-based dimension reduction technique. The flexibility optimisation approach is demonstrated on the Orkney grid model, incorporating demand and wind farm generation data, as well as multi year charging data from 106 EVs. Results indicate that, by building upon the existing habits of EV users, curtailment can be reduced by 99.5% during a typical summer week the period when curtailment is most prevalent. This research demonstrates a foundational and transferable approach which is cognisant of socio techno economic factors towards accelerating decarbonisation and tackling the stochastic challenges of new demand and generation patterns on local distribution networks.
Sofía Palacios-Pacheco, Berta Martín-López, Mónica Expósito-Granados
et al.
Human-carnivore relations in Europe have varied throughout history. Because of recent conservation efforts and passive rewilding, carnivore populations are recovering, which translates into more interactions with humans. Thus, unraveling these interactions as well as the multiple contributions carnivores provide to people is crucial to their conservation. We examined the literature conducted in Europe since 2000 and used the nature’s contributions to people (NCP) framework to identify factors that have shaped human-carnivore relations. To do so, we examined the state of scientific knowledge and relationships among types of NCP from carnivores, countries, and carnivore species; and between NCP, actors, and management actions. Results indicated that research has been oriented toward large carnivore species and their detrimental contributions to people. Further, the effectiveness of carnivore management strategies has only been evaluated and monitored in a limited set of all the research. To balance any negative views on carnivores, we suggest that the recognition of the duality of carnivores, as providers of both beneficial and detrimental contributions, should be included in EU conservation policies.
Международната конференция по българистика, която беше организирана от Историческия факултет, Факултета по славянски филологии и Катедрата по езиково обучение на Софийския университет „Св. Климент Охридски“, имаше за цел да събере учени от България и чужбина за обмен на знания и изследвания в областта на българистиката, историята, антропологията, съвременната българска литература, езика и превода. Конференцията предостави платформа за нови изследвания и популяризиране на българистиката с над четиридесет презентации и участници от над седем държави.
The Mongolian peoples traditionally associated crucial events and processes with the name of Genghis Khan. Nonetheless, that name acquired a nominal significance in one sphere, specifically as a title or an auxiliary name to the first, where it became a special name. The Genghis Khan name itself held a holy and tabooed implication that guided its subsequent realization. The study aims to investigate the impact of religion on the utilisation of Genghis Khan’s title by the Mongolian leaders during the XVII- XVIII centuries. The study focuses on two leaders of Mongolian peoples, the Chakhar in the east and the Oirat-Hoshut in the west, to examine the uniformity and diversity of interpreting and implementing this name as a title. They were Ligdan and Lkhavzan, with Ligdan being a direct descendant of Genghis Khan and Lkhavzan was considered to be a descendant of Khabutu, the younger brother of Genghis Khan. The author came to the following conclusions: such use of Genghis Khan’s name became possible due to the influence of a number of factors that actualised Genghis Khan’s name: 1) the struggle against separatism under the influence of external force; 2) the desire to “start anew”, to lead a “new era of prosperity”; 3) the need to identify oneself as a true leader under the increasing role of religion. The scientific contribution is to determine the multidimensional meaning of Genghis Khan’s name; its use as a title had common grounds and characteristics, and in general had the expected (albeit in the short term) results.
Housing amounts to the physical structures that provide shelter, social services with a hygienic neighborhood, to fulfill the essential needs of the people. Housing factors have been shown to have an effect on an individual’s state of physical, mental, social and economic well-being. Indoor environmental factors such as crowding, environmental tobacco smoke, biofuels, dampness, house dust mites, temperature, age of building, pets, and indoor plants affect the wellbeing and productivity of the occupants. A literature review was performed on studies of housing conditions and health outcomes conducted in India and abroad from 1999 to 2020. The studies assessed housing quality by self-reported questionnaires administered through the postal system, face-to-face or via the internet. Visual signs and non-volumetric methods were used to assess indoor air quality and housing conditions, while the health of residents was assessed by self-reported questionnaire, or SF-36 questionnaire. Studies conducted in the United States of America, Europe, the United Kingdom, Middle East, Africa and Australasia have revealed that factors affecting health conditions were ventilation, dampness, presence of molds, overcrowding, house dust mite allergens, age and renovation of buildings and these factors showed an association with respiratory illnesses, colds, coughs, asthma, conjunctivitis, atopic dermatitis and ear infections. However, studies in India revealed that lack of proper ventilation, use of traditional fuels, crowding and poor hygienic conditions are the main factors associated with acute respiratory infections, asthma, tuberculosis, cardiovascular diseases and lung cancer. Thus, the review highlights that there is a need to improve housing conditions in India to enable the people to lead a healthy and productive life.
Lourdes Lobato-Bailón, Ane López-Morales, Rita Quintela
et al.
<i>Toxoplasma gondii</i> infection in healthy animals is often asymptomatic. However, some species with little history of contact with the parasite, such as marsupials and New World primates, present high mortality rates after infection. Despite its potential conservation concern, <i>T. gondii</i> infection in insectivorous bats has received little attention, and its impact on bat populations’ health is unknown. To assess the putative role of insectivorous bats in the cycle of <i>T. gondii</i>, samples of three species of bats (<i>Pipistrellus pipistrellus</i>, <i>P. pygmaeus</i> and <i>P. kuhlii</i>) collected between 2019 and 2021 in NE Spain were tested for the presence of the parasite using a qPCR. All tissues resulted negative (0.0% prevalence with 95% CI: [0.0–2.6]) for the presence of <i>T. gondii</i>. Unlike previous studies on insectivorous bats from Europe, Asia and America, the present study suggests that <i>Pipistrellus</i> spp. bats do not play a significant role in the epidemiology of <i>T. gondii</i> in NE Spain. Further studies are encouraged to elucidate both the epidemiology of <i>T. gondii</i> and its potential impact on the health of microchiropteran species in Europe.
In the theory of crossed modules, considering arbitrary self-actions instead of conjugation allows for the extension of the concept of crossed modules and thus the notion of generalized crossed module emerges. In this paper we give a precise definition for generalized cat$^1$-groups and obtain a functor from the category of generalized cat$^1$-groups to generalized crossed modules. Further, we introduce the notions of coverings and liftings for generalized crossed modules and investigate properties of these structures. Main objective of this study is to obtain an equivalence between the category of coverings and the category of liftings of a given generalized crossed module $(A,B,α)$.
We propose a general formulation of a univariate estimation-of-distribution algorithm (EDA). It naturally incorporates the three classic univariate EDAs \emph{compact genetic algorithm}, \emph{univariate marginal distribution algorithm} and \emph{population-based incremental learning} as well as the \emph{max-min ant system} with iteration-best update. Our unified description of the existing algorithms allows a unified analysis of these; we demonstrate this by providing an analysis of genetic drift that immediately gives the existing results proven separately for the four algorithms named above. Our general model also includes EDAs that are more efficient than the existing ones and these may not be difficult to find as we demonstrate for the OneMax and LeadingOnes benchmarks.
Let $G$ be a simple group over a global function field $K$, and let $π$ be a cuspidal automorphic representation of $G$. Suppose $K$ has two places $u$ and $v$ (satisfying a mild restriction on the residue field cardinality), at which the group $G$ is quasi-split, such that $π_u$ is tempered and $π_v$ is unramified and generic. We prove that $π$ is tempered at all unramified places $K_w$ at which $G$ is unramified quasi-split. The proof uses the Galois parametrization of cuspidal representations due to V. Lafforgue to relate the local Satake parameters of $π$ to Deligne's theory of Frobenius weights. The main observation is that, in view of the classification of generic unitary spherical representations, due to Barbasch and the first-named author, the theory of weights excludes generic complementary series as possible local components of $π$. This in turn determines the local Frobenius weights at all unramified places. In order to apply this observation in practice we need a result of the second-named author with Gan and Sawin on the weights of discrete series representations.
In our previous work with Grifo and Hà, we showed the stable Harbourne-Huneke containment and Chudnovsky's conjecture for the defining ideal of sufficiently many general points in $\mathbb{P}^N$. In this paper, we establish the conjectures for all remaining cases, and hence, give the affirmative answer to Harbourne-Huneke containment and Chudnovsky's conjecture for any number of general points in $\mathbb{P}^N$ for all $N$. Our new technique is to develop the Cremona reduction process that provides effective lower bounds for the Waldschmidt constant of the defining ideals of generic points in projective spaces.
Causal treatment effect estimation is a key problem that arises in a variety of real-world settings, from personalized medicine to governmental policy making. There has been a flurry of recent work in machine learning on estimating causal effects when one has access to an instrument. However, to achieve identifiability, they in general require one-size-fits-all assumptions such as an additive error model for the outcome. An alternative is partial identification, which provides bounds on the causal effect. Little exists in terms of bounding methods that can deal with the most general case, where the treatment itself can be continuous. Moreover, bounding methods generally do not allow for a continuum of assumptions on the shape of the causal effect that can smoothly trade off stronger background knowledge for more informative bounds. In this work, we provide a method for causal effect bounding in continuous distributions, leveraging recent advances in gradient-based methods for the optimization of computationally intractable objective functions. We demonstrate on a set of synthetic and real-world data that our bounds capture the causal effect when additive methods fail, providing a useful range of answers compatible with observation as opposed to relying on unwarranted structural assumptions.
Entrevista a Amelia Rivaud Morayta
Realizada por Mariela Canali
Bogotá, 5 de abril de 2019 en el marco del VIII Encuentro Internacional de Historia Oral y memorias.
Ethnology. Social and cultural anthropology, History (General) and history of Europe
In the last years it has been shown that Lotka-Volterra mappings constitute a valuable tool from both the theoretical and the applied points of view, with developments in very diverse fields such as Physics, Population Dynamics, Chemistry and Economy. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate that many of the most important ideas and algebraic methods that constitute the basis of the quasipolynomial formalism (originally conceived for the analysis of ordinary differential equations) can be extended into the mapping domain. The extension of the formalism into the discrete-time context is remarkable as far as the quasipolynomial methodology had never been shown to be applicable beyond the differential case. It will be demonstrated that Lotka-Volterra mappings play a central role in the quasipolynomial formalism for the discrete-time case. Moreover, the extension of the formalism into the discrete-time domain allows a significant generalization of Lotka-Volterra mappings as well as a whole transfer of algebraic methods into the discrete-time context. The result is a novel and more general conceptual framework for the understanding of Lotka-Volterra mappings, as well as a new range of possibilities that becomes open not only for the theoretical analysis of Lotka-Volterra mappings and their generalizations, but also for the development of new applications.
The teleconnection between European climate and Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV) remains difficult to isolate in observations because of internal variability and anthropogenically-forced signals. Using model sensitivity experiments proposed within the CMIP6/DCPP-C framework, the wintertime AMV/Europe teleconnection is investigated in large ensembles of pacemaker-type simulations in the CNRM-CM5 global circulation model. To evaluate the sensitivity of the model response to the AMV amplitude, experiments with AMV-forcing pattern multiplied by 2 and 3 (hereafter 2xAMV and 3xAMV, respectively) are performed in complement to the reference ensemble (1xAMV). Based on a flow analog method, the AMV-forced atmospheric circulation is found to cool down the European continent, whereas the residual signal, mostly including thermodynamical processes, contributes to warming. In 1xAMV, both terms cancel each other, explaining the overall weak AMV-forced atmospheric signal. In 2xAMV and 3xAMV, the thermodynamical contribution overcomes the dynamical cooling and is responsible for milder and wetter conditions. The thermodynamical term includes the advection of warmer and more humid oceanic air penetrating inland and the modification of surface radiative fluxes linked to (i) altered cloudiness and (ii) snow-cover reduction acting as a positive feedback with the AMV amplitude. The dynamical anomalous circulation combines (i) a remote response to enhanced diabatic heating acting as a Rossby-wave source in the western tropical Atlantic and (ii) a local response associated with warmer SST over the subpolar gyre favorizing an anomalous High. The weight between the tropical-extratropical processes and associated feedbacks is speculated to partly explain the nonlinear sensibility of the response to the AMV-forcing amplitude, challenging thus the use of the so-called pattern-scaling technique.
Alexandr V. Kostochka, Thomas Schweser, Michael Stiebitz
By a graph we mean a finite undirected graph having multiple edges but no loops. Given a graph property $\mathcal{P}$, a $\mathcal{P}$-coloring of a graph $G$ with color set $C$ is a mapping $\f:V(G)\to C$ such that for each color $c\in C$ the subgraph of $G$ induced by the color class $\varphi^{-1}(c)$ belongs to $\mathcal{P}$. The $\mathcal{P}$-chromatic number $χ(G:\mathcal{P})$ of $G$ is the least number $k$ for which $G$ admits an $\mathcal{P}$-coloring with a set of $k$-colors. This coloring concept dates back to the late 1960s and is commonly known as generalized coloring. In the 1980s the $\mathcal{P}$-choice number $χ_\ell(G:\mathcal{P})$ of $G$ was introduced and investigated by several authors. In 2018 Ďvorák and Postle introduced the DP-chromatic number as a natural extension of the choice number. They also remarked that this concept applies to any graph property. This motivated us to investigate the $\mathcal{P}$-DP-chromatic number $χ_{\rm DP}(G:\mathcal{P})$ of $G$. We have $χ(G:\mathcal{P})\leq χ_\ell(G:\mathcal{P})\leq χ_{\rm DP}(G:\mathcal{P})$. In this paper we show that various fundamental coloring results, in particular, the theorems of Brooks, of Gallai, and of Erdős, Rubin and Taylor, have counterparts for the $\mathcal{P}$-DP-chromatic number. Furthermore, we provide a generalization of a result from 2000 about partition of graphs into a fixed number of induced subgraphs with bounded variable degeneracy due to Borodin, Kostochka, and Toft.
As a result of the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive, European users encounter cookie banners on almost every website. Many of such banners are implemented by Consent Management Providers (CMPs), who respect the IAB Europe's Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF). Via cookie banners, CMPs collect and disseminate user consent to third parties. In this work, we systematically study IAB Europe's TCF and analyze consent stored behind the user interface of TCF cookie banners. We analyze the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive to identify legal violations in implementations of cookie banners based on the storage of consent and detect such violations by crawling 22 949 European websites. With two automatic and semi-automatic crawl campaigns, we detect violations, and we find that: 141 websites register positive consent even if the user has not made their choice; 236 websites nudge the users towards accepting consent by pre-selecting options; and 27 websites store a positive consent even if the user has explicitly opted out. Performing extensive tests on 560 websites, we find at least one violation in 54% of them. Finally, we provide a browser extension to facilitate manual detection of violations for regular users and Data Protection Authorities.
(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2016 1(3), 893-920 | Article | (Table of Contents) I. Introduction. - II. Protection of fundamental rights in the EU: opinion 2/13 of the CJEU. - III. Case-law of the CJEU and the European Court of Human Rights. - III.1. Civil and commercial cooperation. - III.2. Child abduction: The Hague Convention on Child Abduction and Regulation 2201/2003. - III.3. Common European Asylum System: the Dublin Regulation. - III.4. Criminal law: the European arrest warrant. - IV. Conclusions. - IV.1. Thresholds for rebuttal: different approaches by the European Courts? - VI.2. Effective judicial protection v. the use of the "better placed argument". | (Abstract) Several academics, this author included, have criticized the CJEU when dealing with the question of "rebuttal of trust" for the application of the principle of mutual trust between Member States in the Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice (AFSJ). Both the case-law dealing with the Dublin mechanism in asylum matters, as per the opinion 2/13 of the CJEU in 2014, seemed to result in a battle with the Strasbourg Court on the hegemony to interpret the scope of mutual trust, rather than offering clear guidelines for national courts. This contribution questions whether a comparison of judgments in different fields of the AFSJ and recent case-law of both European Courts justifies a new approach. Instead of focussing on the differences in decision-making of the European Courts, the goal of this contribution is to deduce common criteria from the European case-law to be applied by national courts when addressing claims of rebuttal of trust. Providing a general overview of the case-law of the CJEU and the Strasbourg Court in the field of civil and commercial law, criminal law, migration law and matrimonial affairs, this contribution questions which criteria may be applied by the national court of the enforcing or executing State when considering trust as rebutted.
Antonio Henrique Seixas de Oliveira, Diana de Souza Pinto
As bandas filarmônicas são das manifestações culturais mais significativas na vida social portuguesa, sobretudo, nas regiões centro e norte do país (Granjo, 2005). Observa-se que, no contexto do associativismo migrante, o elo de memória com a tradição e os costumes portugueses é estabelecido nas celebrações e instituições criadas pelos migrantes que constituem lugares de memória (Nora, 1993) nos quais as representações simbólicas e ritualizações portuguesas são materializadas, dentre elas, as bandas filarmônicas, objeto deste estudo de doutoramento com foco na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Investigamos a atividade filarmônica de migrantes portugueses inicialmente naquela cidade e, em numa perspectiva sincrônica, o fizemos em escala planetária nos séculos XX e XXI. Desenvolvemos extensa revisão de literatura sobre migração portuguesa, pesquisa em periódicos locais e na Internet e contatamos músicos e dirigentes associativos no Rio de Janeiro, Estados Unidos, Canadá e Venezuela. Neste artigo, discutimos a distribuição das bandas filarmônicas portuguesas em atividade na diáspora da migração portuguesa nas Américas articulando-a aos fluxos migratórios que lhes deram origem. Na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, por exemplo, existem atualmente duas bandas filarmônicas portuguesasem atividade – a Banda Portugal e a Banda Irmãos Pepino, fundadas, respectivamente, em 1921 e 1958. Todavia, a pesquisa realizada nos periódicos locais revelou que diversos grupos congêneres foram criados e encerraram suas atividades nesta cidade como a Banda do Centro Musical da Colônia Portuguesa (1920-1930), a Banda Lusitana (1923-1998) e a Banda União Portuguesa (1924-1929).
Palavras-chave: Bandas Filarmônicas. Portugal. Migração. Américas. Memória.