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The purpose of this report is to outline the basic foundations of an IPOLIS social policy module, and to suggest of number of social policy indicators that fruitfully can be added to the IPOLIS database. Two types of indicators are suggested. Based on income distributions data we propose several indicators (GINI, AROP, and poverty gap) that show the shape of the income distribution at various stages of the distributive process. Also a mesure of redistribution (i.e. reductions in the GINI and AROP) are suggested. Based on model family analysis, we propose several indicators on the size of benefits, as stipulated in legal frameworks. Attached to this report is an excel file that includes all this data for a large number of European countries and years.

Humans learn from statistical regularities in the environment. We tested if prediction and prediction error may play a role in such learning in the brain. We used Error-Driven Learning (EDL) to simulate participants’ trial-by-trial learning during exposure to a bimodal distribution of non-native lexical tones. We simulated incremental trial-by-trial learning to get estimates of the degree of expectation of upcoming stimuli over the course of the experiment. The expectation estimates were combined with Temporal Response Function fitting to generate a prediction of the trial-by-trial ERP waveform. EDL simulations captured the data significantly better than chance and better than models based on either stimulus characteristics or statistical distributions. The results provide tentative evidence that trial-by-trial learning as measured in neural activity is error-driven.

In line with EU’s 2050 decarbonization agenda, the H2020 Energy Citizens for Inclusive Decarbon-ization (ENCLUDE) project aims to help the EU fulfil its promise of a just and inclusive decarboni-zation, adopting the principles of sharing and co-creating new knowledge and practices that are aimed at maximizing the number as well as the diversity of citizens and societal actors who are willing and able to contribute and take any form of action in the energy transition. Catalyzing chain reactions of decarbonization activities across the European Union will be achieved through the ENCLUDE Academy for Energy Citizen Leadership. We focus on a bottom-up approach of citizen engagement for decarbonization actions by identifying, networking and supporting local community leaders who have the intention to lead energy indicatives. A part of this support includes providing leaders with an overview of past collective actions across different contexts and time periods to help provide a historical context for current efforts towards societal transformation.To do this, we sort through the vast and diverse literature documenting and analyzing collective actions, cutting across historical, geographical, social, and epistemological boundaries. Connecting these diverse perspectives to create a holistic understanding of the catalyzing and hindering factors of effective collective action for change, we adapt Ostrom’s Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) frame-work to analyze two historical examples of collective actions from the United States – the civil rights movement and the fall of the tobacco industry. We show that this interdisciplinary framework can be used to analyze collective actions across different time periods and contexts, focusing on different resources and subsystems that span from individual’s and in-groups’ actions and norms, to the general macroenvironment represented with various political, economic and social traits. Analyzing collective actions will ultimately provide valuable insight for initiating and sustaining collective ac-tions within the energy transition.The analysis of the two distinctive collective actions shows the different leadership and organiza-tional style, as well as the importance of changing norms to reach social and societal change. We identify critical factors to understanding how societal transformation occurs outside of the environ-mental context and evaluate which of these factors are also relevant for decarbonization. The report ends with the practical application of this document to the upcoming ENCLUDE Academy, while the appendix contains further analysis of dozens of other collective actions.

In the quest for sustainable solutions to record global displacement, promoting displaced persons��� self-reliance and supporting them alongside host communities in regions of displacement have become buzzwords in global and European policy discussions. But despite such pledges, TRAFIG research in Bukavu, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) finds that internally displaced persons (IDPs) in urban settings are largely ignored and unassisted by the state and international humanitarian and development interventions���and are proactively seeking their own solutions. The lack of institutionalised assistance means that IDPs mostly depend on the solidarity of others to be or become self-reliant. In this context, networks are a particularly important source of support and include assistance with locating housing and finding a job in Bukavu and with maintaining and harvesting crops in communities of origin. However, even with the benefits that these connections can bring, IDPs face serious challenges related to their displacement and contend with multiple types of limbo, making it difficult for many to truly overcome situations of protracted displacement. Findings thus point to the need for policies and practices that support urban IDPs in the DRC by helping them nurture and leverage their networks to unlock opportunities. The Policy Brief comes up with four central findings and recommendations: While networks constitute a significant source of support, for too many IDPs, such assistance is only temporary or insufficient to really overcome displacement. Humanitarian and development initiatives should aim to bolster resilient connections, which include informal (e.g.host families) and formal (e.g. churches and labour associations) networks. Many urban IDPs leverage resources in their home communities to make a living in the city. Development actors should support IDPs��� efforts to maintain ties with their communitiesof origin and safeguard mobility between Bukavu and the surrounding rural regions. Not every IDP has a network���or, for fear of stigmatisation, wants to utilise their network. EU assistance should help urban IDPs strengthen and leverage their networks by reinforcing existing connections and building new ones. Current approaches to forced displacement and access to solutions need to be better equipped to support those strategies. The complex and long-standing nature of displacement in eastern DRC calls for increased attention and assistance from policymakers in Europe and beyond to help IDPs move from temporary to more permanent solutions. TRAFIG Policy Brief No. 2

New policy initiatives to handle migratory movements and refugee inflows have emerged in various forms. The initiatives came from the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), and the affected states. The most important of these are the UN’s Global Compact on Migration (GCM), Global Compact on Refugees (GPCS), the European Union’s (EU) latest reform attempt about its Common European Asylum Policy (CEAS), and the European Commission’s (EC) recent proposal on a New Pact on Migration and Asylum (the New Pact). The initiatives combine old and new policies. A noteworthy norm that is reinvigorated by both the UN and the EU is international solidarity. This is coupled with a governance mode based on the UN’s multi-stakeholder perspective. However, the UN remains strategically silent about how solidarity is to be governed on regional and national levels. Similarly, the EU’s “flexible and mandatory solidarity” is accompanied by a “human and humane” discourse and a supranationally coordinated governance mechanism. The EU too is silent about the governance modes needed at the member state level. Nevertheless, if successfully implemented, the new global and European policy initiatives may lead to significant changes in international protection. The intensions are good, but the consequences are not known. In addition to much support to these initiatives, there are also signs that states may attempt to instrumentalize the GCR to install their own approaches to international protection as a global norm. This includes not only progressive approaches, but also the perspective that international protection should not be the responsibility of the international community. Hence, the success of the GCR, the New Pact, and other policy initiatives does not only rely on states or stakeholders’ involvement in their implementation, but also on the norms, governance modes, and discourses they deploy when they participate in the implementation processes. Since the UN’s and the EU’s purpose is to introduce human rights-based approaches to international protection, this may involve abandoning their silence regarding their members’ ways of implementing the GCR. This paper endeavors to construct a comparative research framework to devise groundbreaking normative, governance, and discursive frames that can be used to advance a human rights-based international protection system. In this framework, the GCM is included as a contextual factor. The results can be used by the UN, the EU, and other regional inter-state unions for advising new policies to their member states and other stakeholders. They can also be used by states and other stakeholders to reform, enhance, or adapt their policies to new conditions, including crises.

27 Seiten (2022).

Dual-frequency comb spectroscopy permits broadband precision spectroscopic measurements with short acquisition time. A dramatic improvement of the maximal spectral bandwidth and the minimal measurement time can be expected when the lasers' pulse repetition rate is increased, owing to a quadratic dependence (Nyquist criterion). Here, we demonstrate a dual-comb system operating at a high repetition rate of 1 GHz based on mature, digitally-controlled, low-noise mode-locked lasers. Compared to conventional lower repetition rate ($\sim$100 MHz) oscillators, this represents a 100-fold improvement in terms of the Nyquist criterion, while still providing adequate spectral sampling even for trace gas absorption fingerprints. Two spectroscopy experiments are performed with acquisition parameters not attainable in a 100 MHz system: detection of water vapor absorption around 1375 nm, demonstrating the potential for fast and ambiguity-free broadband operation, and real-time acquisition of narrow gas absorption features across a spectral span of 0.6 THz (600 comb lines) in only 5 $\mu$s. Additionally, we show high mutual coherence of the lasers below the Hz-level, generating opportunities for broadband spectroscopy even with low-bandwidth detectors such as mid-infrared, imaging or photo-acoustic detectors.

The ‘suppressed in-ovo virus infection’ trait (SOV) was the first trait applied in honey bee breeding programs aimed to increase resilience to virus infections, a major threat for colony survival. By screening drone eggs for viruses, the SOV trait scores the antiviral resistance of queens and its implications for vertical transmission. In this study, queens from both naturally surviving and traditionally managed colonies from across Europe were screened using a two-fold improved SOV phenotyping protocol. First, a gel-based RT-PCR was replaced by a RT-qPCR. This not only allowed quantification of the infection load but also increased the test sensitivity. Second, a genotype specific primer set was replaced by a primer set that covered all known deformed wing virus (DWV) genotypes, which resulted in higher virus loads and fewer false negative results. It was demonstrated that incidences of vertical transmission of DWV were more frequent in naturally surviving populations than in traditionally managed colonies, although the virus load in the eggs remained the same. Dynamics in vertical transmission were further emphasized when comparing virus infections with queen age. Interestingly, older queens showed significantly lower infection loads of DWV in both traditionally managed and naturally surviving colonies, as well as reduced DWV infection frequencies in traditionally managed colonies when compared with younger queens. Seasonal variation in vertical transmission was found with lower infection frequencies in spring compared to summer for DWV and black queen cell virus. Together, these patterns in vertical transmission suggest an adaptive antiviral response of queens aimed at reducing vertical transmission over time.

TAILSIT is a company based in Graz, Austria, that produces custom-fit simulation software tools for computational electromagnetics and structural analysis. Its unique selling proposition is a numerical software library based on a coupled Finite/Boundary Element Method (FEM/BEM) for the efficient analysis of electromagnetic problems. A major building block of the software is represented by the BEM which, in its naive implementation, has a quadratic complexity: runtime and memory requirements scale with the second power of the system size. In order to overcome this limitation, TAILSIT uses the Fast Multipole Method (FMM) where the scaling of the computational costs reduce to almost linear complexity. But even with this acceleration technique, the use of the BEM is rather limited on an average desktop workstation. During this SHAPE project TAILSIT’s electromagnetic simulation software has been ported to HPC machines with the support of the Vienna Scientific Cluster (VSC, https://vsc.ac.at) at TU Wien and using their computing resources. Thorough performance analyses have led to significant runtime improvements and a good overall scaling for up to a few thousand CPUs. Whereas TAILSIT’s previous implementation of the FMM could handle about 106 degrees of freedom, within this project we achieved problem sizes of up to 50 · 10.