scholarly journals The social acceptance of artificial photosynthesis: towards a conceptual framework

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 20140089 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin K. Sovacool ◽  
Allan Gross
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Artificial Photosynthesis ◽  
Social Acceptance ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Future Market ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks

Advancements in artificial photosynthesis have the potential to radically transform how societies convert and use energy. Their successful development, however, hinges not only on technical breakthroughs, but also acceptance and adoption by energy users. This article introduces a conceptual framework enabling analysts, planners and even investors to determine environments where artificial photosynthesis may thrive, and those where it may struggle. Drawn from work looking at the barriers and acceptance of solar photovoltaic and wind energy systems, the article proposes that social acceptance has multiple dimensions—socio-political, community and market—that must be met holistically in order for investors and users to embrace new technologies. The article argues that any future market acceptance for artificial photosynthesis will depend upon the prevalence of nine factors, which create conducive environments; the lack of the conditions engenders environments where they will likely be rejected. The conditions are (i) strong institutional capacity; (ii) political commitment; (iii) favourable legal and regulatory frameworks; (iv) competitive installation and/or production costs; (v) mechanisms for information and feedback; (vi) access to financing; (vii) prolific community and/or individual ownership and use; (viii) participatory project siting; and (ix) recognition of externalities or positive public image.

scholarly journals The AI Liability Puzzle and A Fund-Based Work-Around

2021 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 1309-1334
Author(s):  
Olivia J. Erdelyi ◽  
Gabor Erdelyi
Keyword(s):  
Social Acceptance ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Legal Liability ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Funding Mechanism ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
The Social ◽  
High Level

Confidence in the regulatory environment is crucial to enable responsible AI innovation and foster the social acceptance of these powerful new technologies. One notable source of uncertainty is, however, that the existing legal liability system is unable to assign responsibility where a potentially harmful conduct and/or the harm itself are unforeseeable, yet some instantiations of AI and/or the harms they may trigger are not foreseeable in the legal sense. The unpredictability of how courts would handle such cases makes the risks involved in the investment and use of AI difficult to calculate with confidence, creating an environment that is not conducive to innovation and may deprive society of some benefits AI could provide. To tackle this problem, we propose to draw insights from financial regulatory best practices and establish a system of AI guarantee schemes. We envisage the system to form part of the broader market-structuring regulatory frameworks, with the primary function to provide a readily available, clear, and transparent funding mechanism to compensate claims that are either extremely hard or impossible to realize via conventional litigation. We propose it to be at least partially industry-funded. Funding arrangements should depend on whether it would pursue other potential policy goals aimed more broadly at controlling the trajectory of AI innovation to increase economic and social welfare worldwide. Because of the global relevance of the issue, rather than focusing on any particular legal system, we trace relevant developments across multiple jurisdictions and engage in a high-level, comparative conceptual debate around the suitability of the foreseeability concept to limit legal liability. The paper also refrains from confronting the intricacies of the case law of specific jurisdictions for now and—recognizing the importance of this task—leaves this to further research in support of the legal system’s incremental adaptation to the novel challenges of present and future AI technologies. This article appears in the special track on AI and Society.

The Unbearable Lightness of the Image

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 109-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella Della Ratta
Keyword(s):  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Real Time ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
Life Activity ◽  
Bearing Witness ◽  
Ethical Discourse ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Web

In this essay, I reflect on the aesthetic, political and material implications of filming as a continuous life activity since the beginning of the 2011 uprising in Syria. I argue that the blurry, shaky and pixelated aesthetics of Syrian user-generated videos serve to construct an ethical discourse (Ranciére 2009a; 2013) to address the genesis and the goal of the images produced, and to shape a political commitment to the evidence-image (Didi-Huberman 2008). However, while the unstable visuals of the handheld camera powerfully reconnect, both at a symbolic and aesthetic level, to the truthfulness of the moment of crisis in which they are generated, they fail to produce a clearer understanding of the situation and a counter-hegemonic narrative. In this article, I explore how new technologies have impacted this process of bearing witness and documenting events in real time, and how they have shaped a new understanding of the image as a networked, multiple object connected with the living archive of history, in a permanent dialogue with the seemingly endless flow of data nurtured by the web 2.0.

scholarly journals Planting Systems for Modern Olive Growing: Strengths and Weaknesses

Agriculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 494
Author(s):  
Riccardo Lo Bianco ◽  
Primo Proietti ◽  
Luca Regni ◽  
Tiziano Caruso
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Biotic And Abiotic Stress ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Mediterranean Countries ◽  
Social Concerns ◽  
The World ◽  
Fruit Growing ◽  
Cultivar Diversity

The objective of fully mechanizing olive harvesting has been pursued since the 1970s to cope with labor shortages and increasing production costs. Only in the last twenty years, after adopting super-intensive planting systems and developing appropriate straddle machines, a solution seems to have been found. The spread of super-intensive plantings, however, raises serious environmental and social concerns, mainly because of the small number of cultivars that are currently used (basically 2), compared to over 100 cultivars today cultivated on a large scale across the world. Olive growing, indeed, insists on over 11 million hectares. Despite its being located mostly in the Mediterranean countries, the numerous olive growing districts are characterized by deep differences in climate and soil and in the frequency and nature of environmental stress. To date, the olive has coped with biotic and abiotic stress thanks to the great cultivar diversity. Pending that new technologies supporting plant breeding will provide a wider number of cultivars suitable for super-intensive systems, in the short term, new growing models must be developed. New olive orchards will need to exploit cultivars currently present in various olive-growing areas and favor increasing productions that are environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable. As in fruit growing, we should focus on “pedestrian olive orchards”, based on trees with small canopies and whose top can be easily reached by people from the ground and by machines (from the side of the top) that can carry out, in a targeted way, pesticide treatments, pruning and harvesting.

Product Selling vs. Pay-Per-Use Service: A Strategic Analysis of Competing Business Models

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Ladas ◽  
Stylianos Kavadias ◽  
Christoph Loch
Keyword(s):  
Operations Management ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
Business Models ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Information Goods ◽  
High Demand ◽  
Additional Advantage ◽  
Delivery Costs ◽  
Relative Profitability

We present a model that suggests possible explanations for the observed proliferation of “pay-per-use” (PPU) business models over the last two decades. Delivering “fractions” of a product as a service offers a cost advantage to customers with lower usage but requires extra delivery costs. Previous research focused on information goods (with negligible production costs) and predicted that PPU, when arising as a differentiation to selling in equilibrium, would fundamentally achieve lower profits than selling. We extend the theory by covering goods with any production cost in duopolistic competition. We show that PPU business models can be more profitable than selling (especially at midrange production costs), as long as their delivery costs are not too high, a requirement that is more easily fulfilled as new technologies reduce these costs. Moreover, if firms are imperfectly informed about their customers’ usage profiles, PPU’s effective pricing of customers’ varying usage offers an additional advantage over selling. This requires companies to employ accounting methods that do not inappropriately allocate production costs over stochastic usage levels. If PPU service provision suffers from queueing inefficiencies, this does not fundamentally change the relative profitability of the PPU and selling models, provided that PPU providers can attract sufficiently high demand to benefit from pooling economies. This paper was accepted by Charles Corbett, operations management.

Investigation of Hybrid Fuel Cell (HFC) Technology Applications on the Future Passenger Railroad Transportation

Joint Rail ◽  
2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Moghbelli ◽  
Y. Gao ◽  
R. Langari ◽  
M. Ehsani
Keyword(s):  
Fuel Consumption ◽  
Fuel Economy ◽  
High Speed ◽  
High Efficiency ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Weak Link ◽  
Transportation System ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Passenger Railroad

Due to the consideration of fragile security, and longer check-in times and inconveniences due to increased air travel security examination since September 11th 2001, more and more people have turn to ground transportation. Unfortunately, the inefficient, environment-unfriendly and unsafe passenger cars and buses are the only choices available for middle distance trips. Development of high efficiency, clean and high speed railroad passenger transportation system has become more necessary to overcome this weak link. In this paper, the applicability of hybrid drive train technologies for middle-distance passenger train locomotives will be investigated. A systematic design of the diesel based hybrid locomotive helps to increase efficiency, improve fuel economy, reduce emissions and also reduce mass production costs. Furthermore, professional management and maintenance of railroad train locomotives make such new technologies more practical than for road vehicles. The success of such transportation system will have a great positive impact on our social activities, quality of life, energy supply, environment and economy. A diesel based hybrid electric locomotive (HEL) with batteries or an ultracapacitor is an option to reduce fuel consumption and emissions and provide better performance and fuel economy. The reduced fuel consumption helps reduce the amount of pollutants released. Engineering estimation indicate that emissions will be reduced by 70% and fuel efficiency will be increased by at least 30% in hybrid locomotives.

scholarly journals Cognitive Factories: Modeling Situated Entropy in Physical Work Carried Out by Humans and Robots

Entropy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (9) ◽  
pp. 659 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Fox ◽  
Adrian Kotelba ◽  
Ilkka Niskanen
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Information Gain ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Physical Work ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Assembly Work ◽  
Factory Production ◽  
Physical Components

Entropy in factories is situated. For example, there can be numerous different ways of picking, orientating, and placing physical components during assembly work. Physical components can be redesigned to increase the Information Gain they provide and so reduce situated entropy in assembly work. Also, situated entropy is affected by the extent of knowledge of those doing the work. For example, work can be done by knowledgeable experts or by beginners who lack knowledge about physical components, etc. The number of different ways that work can be done and the knowledge of the worker combine to affect cognitive load. Thus, situated entropy in factories relates to situated cognition within which knowledge is bound to physical contexts and knowing is inseparable from doing. In this paper, six contributions are provided for modelling situated entropy in factories. First, theoretical frameworks are brought together to provide a conceptual framework for modelling. Second, the conceptual framework is related to physical production using practical examples. Third, Information Theory mathematics is applied to the examples and a preliminary methodology in presented for modelling in practice. Fourth, physical artefacts in factory production are reframed as carriers of Information Gain and situated entropy, which may or may not combine as Net Information Gain. Fifth, situated entropy is related to different types of cognitive factories that involve different levels of uncertainty in production operations. Sixth, the need to measure Net Information Gain in the introduction of new technologies for embodied and extended cognition is discussed in relation to a taxonomy for distributed cognition situated in factory production. Overall, modelling of situated entropy is introduced as an opportunity for improving the planning and control of factories that deploy human cognition and cognitive technologies including assembly robotics.

scholarly journals A conceptual framework for understanding the social acceptance of energy infrastructure: Insights from energy storage

Energy Policy ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 107 ◽  
pp. 27-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Devine-Wright ◽  
Susana Batel ◽  
Oystein Aas ◽  
Benjamin Sovacool ◽  
Michael Carnegie Labelle ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Energy Storage ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Social Acceptance ◽  
Energy Infrastructure ◽  
The Social

scholarly journals New Skills in Education for Biodiversity Conservation in Romania

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 336-344
Author(s):  
Maria-Mihaela Antofie ◽  
Camelia Sand Sava
Keyword(s):  
Experiential Learning ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Biodiversity Conservation ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Native Species ◽  
International Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
Living Organisms ◽  
Biology Curriculum

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to analyse political and regulatory frameworks for connecting education and environment authorities in order to reveal opportunities for introducing new activities based on living organisms into the biology curriculum. The article is also proposing a conceptual framework for capacity building based on the analysis of relevant results at the international level, regarding the experiential learning process. Based on the results of this analysis Romania has the capacity to implement new activities under the public curricula for biology in order to support the development of new skills for ensuring biodiversity conservation as a whole. Moreover, at least three native species, domesticated or wild, may become subjects for next activities development under the existing curricula.

scholarly journals Plants as alternative platforms for monoclonal antibodies productions.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Glumińska ◽  
Magdalena Krzesłowska
Keyword(s):  
Monoclonal Antibodies ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Protein Modification ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Current Data ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Future Market ◽  
Market Demand ◽  
Mammalian Expression ◽  
Animal Pathogens

Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are widely used in medical therapy and diagnostics, veterinary therapy, and research. The demand for mAbs reaches several dozen tons per year and is constantly growing, approaching the limits of current production possibilities. Mammalian expression systems, which currently dominate the bioproduction industry, have limited production capacity and require high capital investment and production costs. Plants are becoming promising expression platforms due to their scalability, speed, low cost of production, low risk of contamination from animal pathogens and eukaryotic mechanisms of post-translational protein modification. The transgenic plants used for the production of mAbs can be obtained by stable transformation of plant cells as well as transient expression of foreign proteins. In this review, we extract a broad overview of articles, many of them from recent years, concerning modern approaches to producing monoclonal antibodies in plants, methods for modifying the carbohydrate profile of mAbs, and purifying the resulting product. We also present current data on the practical use of mAbs in medical therapies and potential methods of producing antibodies on a very large scale, able to meet the future market demand.

scholarly journals Efektywność produkcji FAME na podstawie wymagań normy ISO 14045:2012

Nafta-Gaz ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 208-214
Author(s):  
Michał Pajda ◽  
◽  
Wojciech Mazela ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Environment ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Methyl Esters ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Energy Materials ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Selection Of

The aim of the work was to present the issue of eco-efficiency, based on the PN-EN ISO 14045:2012 standard in relation to the production of fatty acid methyl esters (FAME). The ecoefficiency analysis takes into account economic and environmental aspects in the improvement of products and processes / technologies. Eco-efficiency considers the product and technology throughout the life cycle, from the construction phase, through use to decommissioning. The impact on the natural environment is assessed on the basis of: consumption of energy, materials, dust and gas emissions, waste and sewage. Total costs include: production costs, raw material costs, costs during the use phase including maintenance, repair and operating costs, product disposal or recycling. The eco-efficiency analysis is helpful in making decisions regarding the selection of a new product or designing a new technology, and enables the selection of the variant that is the most economical and has the least possible impact on the natural environment. These issues are particularly important in the case of biofuels. The rapid growth of their production and the European Union’s policy, which aims to increase the share of energy from renewable sources, cause concerns of many experts regarding the threats related to the production of biofuels, both for the environment and food security. In particular, efforts are made to minimize the amount of waste and residues by implementing the idea of a circular economy. This approach promotes the development of new technologies that are more environmentally friendly. Due to the regulations set out in the RED and RED II Directives, there is a chance that the biofuels will have a less negative impact on the environment. This results from the obligation to certify compliance with the sustainability criteria, which is carried out by voluntary systems recognized by the European Commission, such as the KZR INiG System.

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