The European Union aims to achieve climate-neutrality by 2050, with interim 2030 targets including 55% greenhouse gas emissions reduction compared to 1990 levels, 10 Mt p.a. of a domestic green H2 production, and 50 Mt p.a. of domestic CO2 injection capacity. To support these targets, Projects of Common and Mutual Interest (PCI-PMI) - large infrastructure projects for electricity, hydrogen and CO2 transport, and storage - have been identified by the European Commission. This study focuses on PCI-PMI projects related to hydrogen and carbon value chains, assessing their long-term system value and the impact of pipeline delays and shifting policy targets using the sector-coupled energy system model PyPSA-Eur. Our study shows that PCI-PMI projects enable a more cost-effective transition to a net-zero energy system compared to scenarios without any pipeline expansion. Hydrogen pipelines help distribute affordable green hydrogen from renewable-rich regions in the north and southwest to high-demand areas in central Europe, while CO2 pipelines link major industrial emitters with offshore storage sites. Although these projects are not essential in 2030, they begin to significantly reduce annual system costs by more than EUR 26 billion from 2040 onward. Delaying implementation beyond 2040 could increase system costs by up to EUR 24.2 billion per year, depending on the extent of additional infrastructure development. Moreover, our results show that PCI-PMI projects reduce the need for excess wind and solar capacity and lower reliance on individual CO2 removal technologies, such as Direct Air Capture, by 13 to 136 Mt annually, depending on the build-out scenario.
Giorgio Baiamonte, Carmelo Agnese, Carmelo Cammalleri
et al.
The modelling of the occurrence of rainfall dry and wet spells (ds and ws, respectively) can be jointly conveyed using the inter-arrival times (it). While the modelling of it has the advantage of requiring a single fitting for the description of all rainfall time characteristics (including wet and dry chains, an extension of the concept of spells), the assumption on the independence and identical distribution of the renewal times it implicitly imposes a memoryless property on the derived ws, which may not be true in some cases. In this study, two different methods for the modelling of rainfall time characteristics at station scale have been applied: i) a direct method (DM) that fits the discrete Lerch distribution to it records, and then derives ws and ds (as well as the corresponding chains) from the it distribution; and ii) an indirect method (IM) that fits the Lerch distribution to the ws and ds records separately, relaxing the assumptions of the renewal process. The results of this application over six stations in Europe, characterized by a wide range of rainfall regimes, highlight how the geometric distribution does not always reasonably reproduce the ws frequencies, even when it are modelled by the Lerch distribution well. Improved performances are obtained with the IM, thanks to the relaxation of the assumption on the independence and identical distribution of the renewal times. A further improvement on the fittings is obtained when the datasets are separated into two periods, suggesting that the inferences may benefit for accounting for the local seasonality.
We study user history modeling via Transformer encoders in deep learning recommendation models (DLRM). Such architectures can significantly improve recommendation quality, but usually incur high latency cost necessitating infrastructure upgrades or very small Transformer models. An important part of user history modeling is early fusion of the candidate item and various methods have been studied. We revisit early fusion and compare concatenation of the candidate to each history item against appending it to the end of the list as a separate item. Using the latter method, allows us to reformulate the recently proposed amortized history inference algorithm M-FALCON \cite{zhai2024actions} for the case of DLRM models. We show via experimental results that appending with cross-attention performs on par with concatenation and that amortization significantly reduces inference costs. We conclude with results from deploying this model on the LinkedIn Feed and Ads surfaces, where amortization reduces latency by 30\% compared to non-amortized inference.
Sammendrag I denne artikkelen settes det omfattende norske rettsoppgjøret slik det ble gjennomført i Telemark, inn i en større, internasjonal ramme. I mai 1945 var det autoritære NS-regimet falt, og en overgang tilbake til demokrati hadde funnet sted. I slike situasjoner må nye makthavere ta stilling til hvordan overgrep begått av deres forgjengere skal håndteres. En del land har avstått fra å straffeforfølge borgere som støttet det gamle regimet. Andre har, som Norge etter frigjøringen, stilt et større eller mindre antall personer for domstolene. Et alminnelig trekk ved overgangsjustis, som finner sted i en unntakspreget og ofte følelsesladet situasjon, er at fremgangsmåtene som velges, til dels er andre enn dem som gjelder under normale rettstilstander. Vanlige, rettsstatlige prinsipper kan derfor bli strukket langt, noen ganger også brutt. Artikkelen drøfter hvordan karakteristiske trekk ved overgangsoppgjør kom til uttrykk lokalt i Telemark. Tross enkelte særtrekk, blant annet fraværet av dødsdommer, fremstår avviklingen av oppgjøret som representativ for landet som helhet. En rekke sider ved straffeprosessen i Telemark kan kritiseres om den vurderes ut fra normale krav til rettssikkerhet. Mange av de dømte fikk også der, tross et preg av overgangsjustis, imidlertid en fortjent straff etter grundig rettsbehandling.
In many online sequential decision-making scenarios, a learner's choices affect not just their current costs but also the future ones. In this work, we look at one particular case of such a situation where the costs depend on the time average of past decisions over a history horizon. We first recast this problem with history dependent costs as a problem of decision making under stage-wise constraints. To tackle this, we then propose the novel Follow-The-Adaptively-Regularized-Leader (FTARL) algorithm. Our innovative algorithm incorporates adaptive regularizers that depend explicitly on past decisions, allowing us to enforce stage-wise constraints while simultaneously enabling us to establish tight regret bounds. We also discuss the implications of the length of history horizon on design of no-regret algorithms for our problem and present impossibility results when it is the full learning horizon.
While the Nordic countries are frequently renowned as some of the most peaceful societies in the world, such a conception of peace cannot fully encapsulate the experiences of the Sámi. Likewise, the global movement toward settler-Indigenous reconciliation since the 1960s has set the Nordic response apart from the rest of the world. Building upon existing understandings of internal colonialism and structural violence, this paper analyzes how pragmatic attempts by Finland, Norway, and Sweden to reconcile with the Sápmi have constituted a unified Nordic model of continued settler colonialism, as well as how differences between the National Sámi parliaments contribute to that model. Finally, this paper examines the impact that the Nordic model of settler colonialism has had on pan-Sámi politics, particularly concerning problems of Sámi reunification since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Bien que les pays nordiques aient la réputation de faire partie des sociétés les plus paisibles du monde, cette vision de paix n’intègre pas totalement les expériences des Samis. De la même façon, la tendance internationale vers la réconciliation entre colons et peuples autochtones depuis les années 1960 a mis la réponse nordique à part du reste du monde. En se basant sur la compréhension actuelle du colonialisme interne et de la violence structurelle, cet article analyse comment les tentatives pragmatiques de la Finlande, la Norvège et la Suède pour se réconcilier avec le Sámi ont établi un modèle nordique uniforme continuant le colonialisme de peuplement, et commentla disparité des parlements nationaux Sami contribuent à ce modèle. Enfin, cet article examine l’impact que le modèle colonial nordique a eu sur les politiques pan-samies, particulièrement en ce qui concerne les problèmes de la réunification samie depuis la chute de l’URSS.
History of Northern Europe. Scandinavia, Language and Literature
Det har blitt produsert tjære i minst 2000 år her i landet. Gjennom historien har det vært ulike måter å produsere tjære på og arkeologiske undersøkelser har sammen med historiske kilder gitt oss et innblikk i de metoder og teknikker som er benyttet. Én måte å produsere tjære på skiller seg avgjort ut, nemlig myrmilene som synes helt og holdent å være forbeholdt Midt-Norge. Å produsere tjære i vannfylte groper i myr avviker klart teknisk og metodisk sett fra de andre fremstillingsmåtene selv om hensikten og produktet var det samme. Bruken av myrmiler foregikk parallelt med de øvrige fremstillingsformene, og vi vet at de var i bruk langt opp i nyere tid. C14-dateringer viser at myrmiletradisjonen kan ha røtter tilbake til vikingtid/tidlig middelalder, men det trengs flere dateringer før vi kan si at vi står på sikker grunn i det spørsmålet. Skriftlige kilder gir oss et innblikk i betydningen av midt-norsk tjæreproduksjon – en betydning som rakk utover det lokale og regionale da tjære var en viktig eksportartikkel. Fremstilling og eksport av tjære synes å gå hånd i hånd med avvirkning og eksport av tømmer fra 1500-tallet og fremover. Kunnskapsstatusen på tjæremiler i myr presenteres i artikkelen og avslutningsvis pekes det på noen viktige retninger for videre forskning på temaet.
The essay studies Ulla-Lena Lundberg’s novel Ice , the story of which depicts the changing seasons and the formation of sea ice in the Åland archipelago. In the narrative, ice takes both mental and physical dimensions, and the analysis focuses on the workings of fictional minds in their specific natural and social environments. It is argued that nature both inspires and informs human experience and meaning making, even as it resists and challenges, human aims and hopes. In the novel, the characters have differing views on the natural environment and conflicting interpretations of what nature and its phenomena, including ice, could mean.
Der Aufsatz befasst sich mit Ulla-Lena Lundbergs Roman Eis , der den Wechsel der Jahreszeiten und die Entstehung des Meereises auf den Åland-Inseln behandelt. In der Erzählung nimmt das Eis sowohl mentale als auch physische Dimensionen an, und die Analyse konzentriert sich auf die Funktionsweise der fiktiven Denkfiguren in ihren spezifischen natürlichen und sozialen Umgebungen. Es wird argumentiert, dass die Natur die menschliche Erfahrung und Bedeutungssuche sowohl inspiriert als auch informiert, auch wenn sie sich den menschlichen Zielen und Hoffnungen widersetzt und diese herausfordert. In dem Roman haben die Figuren abweichende Ansichten über die natürliche Umwelt und widersprechen sich hinsichtlich ihrer Interpretationen von der Bedeutung der Natur und ihrer Phänomene, einschließlich des Eises.
Ethnology. Social and cultural anthropology, History of Northern Europe. Scandinavia
Since over a century, the narrative of Brno literature has been one based on the principle of genius loci – Brno, the "Manchester of Moravia", a city of industry and proletarians "produces" industrial and proletarian literature. The – rarely questioned – problem with this unity of place and art has been that at the same time, the Czech version of this narrative excluded the literature of Brno written in German from it, and vice versa. The present paper suggests to take advantage of the theory of literary field (Bourdieu) as a tool for analyzing the literary field of the city to challenge the monolingual and monocultural approach to the history of Brno literature. Using the synchronic "cuts" of the 1860s when a new literature emerged following the easing of restrictions of Austrian magazine and book production as well as of activities of readers' and writers' associations in 1860/1861, and of the 1920s as a period of differentiated literary field(s) with popular fiction, bourgeois literature and various modernist and avantgarde groups, the paper attempts to show how the literary field(s) of Brno evolved. In the 1860s, in spite of already existing nationalist ideologies, there still was a largely unified field of Brno literature, based mainly on the fact that publishing houses operated in both languages and published parallel periodicals in German and Czech, whereas in the 1920s, this field was split in two structured monolingual segments which, however, still display numerous intersections and parallelisms.
Germanic languages. Scandinavian languages, History of Northern Europe. Scandinavia
Machine learning and NLP require the construction of datasets to train and fine-tune models. In this context, previous work has demonstrated the sensitivity of these data sets. For instance, potential societal biases in this data are likely to be encoded and to be amplified in the models we deploy. In this work, we draw from developments in the field of history and take a novel perspective on these problems: considering datasets and models through the lens of historical fiction surfaces their political nature, and affords re-configuring how we view the past, such that marginalized discourses are surfaced. Building on such insights, we argue that contemporary methods for machine learning are prejudiced towards dominant and hegemonic histories. Employing the example of neopronouns, we show that by surfacing marginalized histories within contemporary conditions, we can create models that better represent the lived realities of traditionally marginalized and excluded communities.
I 1919 bygde Tromsø kommune en demning i Slettaelva på den fjellrike Kvaløya vest for byen som de neste par årene ble koblet via et undersjøisk rør til byens vannforsyningssystem for å øke vannmengden og bedre kvaliteten på byens drikkevann. Nyttårsaften 1921 ble kvaløyvannet trykksatt i Tromsø sentrum. For å undersøke hvilken effekt dette hadde på barnedødeligheten, ble medisinalberetningene og et datasett med begravelser 1915–30 analysert med hensyn til aldersgrupper og dødsårsaker. Dødeligheten hadde tiltatt under første verdenskrig og fram til 1920, men fra 1921 sank antallet døde, mens antallet alvorlige tilfeller av diare fluktuerte. Spedbarns- og barnedødsfallene i aldersgruppen ett til fem år gikk avgjort ned, dog med en mindre økning i 1924. En sammenligning av perioden 1915 til 1921 med den lengre perioden 1922 til 1930 viste reduksjon i barns dødsfall pga. mage/tarmsykdommer.
Sammendrag
Denne artikkelen ser nærmere på trolldomsprosessen som fant sted i Rendalen i årene 1670–1674, med fokus på rettslig praksis. Målet med artikkelen er å gi et detaljert bilde av hvordan en trolldomssak kunne utspille seg på laveste og høyeste rettslige nivå, i en periode da det norske rettssystemet gikk igjennom store endringer og trolldomsprosesser var på vei ut av rettssystemet. Saken illustrerer at det i denne perioden fantes dommere som hadde svært ulike syn på bevisvurdering, og at enkelte øvrighetspersoner derfor ofte kunne spille helt avgjørende roller for hvordan en rettssak utspilte seg. Denne artikkelen tar også kort for seg forestillingene om heksesabbaten på Blåkulla, som var et sentralt tema i Rendalen-saken, men som også i høyeste grad var karakteristisk for de svenske trolldomsprosessene i samme periode. Kan en mulig påvirkning ha funnet sted over landegrensa?
In this contribution, problems of assessing legal translations and its objectivity will be discussed. Objective assessment proves to be a difficult issue in particular when assessing rare language combinations, such as Slovak – Dutch or Dutch – Czech, since not so much competent translators and assessors are available in these combinations. In this context, we propose a method based on the PIE method and Segers' and Kockaert's benchmark method, which, by means of a consensus ratio, can significantly increase the objectivity of text assessments.
Germanic languages. Scandinavian languages, History of Northern Europe. Scandinavia
We study the problem of prediction of binary sequences with expert advice in the online setting, which is a classic example of online machine learning. We interpret the binary sequence as the price history of a stock, and view the predictor as an investor, which converts the problem into a stock prediction problem. In this framework, an investor, who predicts the daily movements of a stock, and an adversarial market, who controls the stock, play against each other over $N$ turns. The investor combines the predictions of $n\geq 2$ experts in order to make a decision about how much to invest at each turn, and aims to minimize their regret with respect to the best-performing expert at the end of the game. We consider the problem with history-dependent experts, in which each expert uses the previous $d$ days of history of the market in making their predictions. We prove that the value function for this game, rescaled appropriately, converges as $N\to \infty$ at a rate of $O(N^{-1/6})$ to the viscosity solution of a nonlinear degenerate elliptic PDE, which can be understood as the Hamilton-Jacobi-Issacs equation for the two-person game. As a result, we are able to deduce asymptotically optimal strategies for the investor. Our results extend those established by the first author and R.V.Kohn [13] for $n=2$ experts and $d\leq 4$ days of history. To appear in Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics.
Todd R. Lewis, Paul B. C. Grant, Robert W. Henderson
et al.
The Annulated Treeboa (Corallus annulatus) is one of nine currently recognized species in the boid genus Corallus. Its disjunct range extends from eastern Guatemala into northern Honduras, southeastern Nicaragua, northeastern Costa Rica, and southwestern Panama to northern Colombia west of the Andes. It is the only species of Corallus found on the Caribbean versant of Costa Rica, where it occurs at elevations to at least 650m and perhaps as high as 1,000m. Corallus annulatus occurs mostly in primary and secondary lowland tropical wet and moist rainforest and it appears to be genuinely rare. Besides C. cropanii and C. blombergi (the latter closely related to C. annulatus), it is the rarest member of the genus. Aside from information on habitat and activity, little is known regarding its natural history.
This paper assesses the perception of the Austrian writer Heimito von Doderer (1896–1966) in the Czech Republic. Rather than focusing on the two Czech translations of his novels per se, it considers spin-offs such as academic theses and articles in the print media, as well as in the audio-visual media with a recording of Die Merowinger oder Die totale Familie.
Germanic languages. Scandinavian languages, History of Northern Europe. Scandinavia