ALBERT

Description: research

Description: ‘Transgovernance: Advancing Sustainability Governance’ analyses what implications recent and ongoing changes in the relations between politics, science and media – together characterized as the emergence of a knowledge democracy – may have for governance for sustainable development, on global and other levels of societal decision making, and vice versa: How can the discussion on sustainable development contribute to a knowledge democracy? How can concepts such as second modernity, reflexivity, configuration theory, (meta)governance theory and cultural theory contribute to a ‘transgovernance’ approach which goes beyond mainstream sustainability governance? This volume presents contributions from various angles: international relations, governance and metagovernance theory, (environmental) economics and innovation science. It offers challenging insights regarding institutions and transformation processes, and into the paradigms behind contemporary sustainability governance. This book gives the sustainability governance debate a new context. It transforms classical questions into new options for societal decision making and identifies starting points and strategies aimed at effective governance of transitions to sustainability.

Description: The concept of boundary work has been put forward as an analytical approach towards the study of interactions between science and policy. While the concept has been useful as a case-study approach, there are several weaknesses and constraints when using the concept in a more systemic analysis of the interactions between knowledge production and sustainable development decision-making at the international level, such as its inability to capture the diversity of institutions involved in such boundary work. Another inability involves a lack of conceptualisation of the impacts of the specific conditions of intergovernmental decision-making, such as rules for representation and the mode of negotiation. This chapter suggests complementing the concept of boundary work with a configuration approach based on a two-dimensional conceptualisation of the boundary space in international decision-making that allows the positioning of institutions with regard to their degree of politicisation and their position in terms of national and regional representation. Such an approach could be a useful guide in the further conceptualisation and application of the boundary concept.

Description: Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) is an aqueous-phase route to produce carbon materials using biomass or biomass-derived precursors. In this paper, a comprehensive physicochemical and textural characterization of HTC materials obtained using four different precursors, namely, xylose, glucose, sucrose, and starch, is presented. The development of porosity in the prepared HTC materials as a function of thermal treatment (under an inert atmosphere) was specifically monitored using N2 and CO2 sorption analysis. The events taking place during the thermal treatment process were studied by a combined thermogravimetric/infrared (TGA-IR) measurement. Interestingly, these inexpensive biomass-derived carbon materials show good selectivity for CO2 adsorption over N2 (CO2/N2 selectivity of 20 at 273 K, 1 bar and 1:1 gas composition). Furthermore, the elemental composition, morphologies, degree of structural order, surface charge, and functional groups are also investigated.

Description: The recognition of soils and their functions by the public and, in particular, the planning community isgenerally poor. However, conversion of soils to urban uses is occurring at an unprecedented rate dueto an increasing share of the population living in urban areas and changing lifestyles. Urban planners,developers and planning agencies allocate urban lands to varying uses but land use decisions aregenerally not based on soil information as urban growth is managed predominantly for economicdevelopment. However, urban areas must also deal with challenges such as demographic change,urban densification, climate change and infrastructure provision. Thus, managing urban sustainabilityhas to include ecological aside economic, cultural, and political dimensions. Urban developmentneeds to be managed to minimize negative impacts and maximize environmental quality. Policydecisions towards maximizing short-term economic benefits must be balanced by decisions towardssustainable use and management of urban soils as urban land use has long-term consequences. Therecognition of soils by the planning community can particularly be improved by highlighting the valueof urban soil functions for the well-being of urban dwellers. This approach was recommended at thedialogue session ’Urbanization: Challenges to Soil Management‘ during the first Global Soil Week2012 in Berlin, Germany. Further suggestions how to raise the awareness about urban soils and howto deal with challenges regarding their management will be presented.

Description: Temporal and spatial patterns in eastern North Atlantic sea-surface temperatures (SST) were reconstructed for marine isotope stage (MIS) 11c using a submeridional transect of five sediment cores. The SST reconstructions are based on planktic foraminiferal abundances and alkenone indices, and are supported by benthic and planktic stable isotope measurements, as well as by ice-rafted debris content in polar and middle latitudes. Additionally, the larger-scale dynamics of the precipitation regime over northern Africa and the western Mediterranean region was evaluated from iron concentrations in marine sediments off NW Africa and planktic δ 13C in combination with analysis of planktic foraminiferal abundances down to the species level in the Mediterranean Sea. Compared to the modern situation, it is revealed that during entire MIS 11c sensu stricto (ss), i.e., between 420 and 398ka according to our age models, a cold SST anomaly in the Nordic seas co-existed with a warm SST anomaly in the middle latitudes and the subtropics, resulting in steeper meridional SST gradients than during the Holocene. Such a SST pattern correlates well with a prevalence of a negative mode of the modern North Atlantic Oscillation. We suggest that our scenario might partly explain the longer duration of wet conditions in the northern Africa during MIS 11c compared to the Holocene.

Description: The dynamics of the 18O(3P) + 32O2 isotope exchange reaction were studied using crossed atomic and molecular beams at collision energies (Ecoll) of 5.7 and 7.3 kcal/mol, and experimental results were compared with quantum statistical (QS) and quasi-classical trajectory (QCT) calculations on the O3(X1A’) potential energy surface (PES) of Babikov et al. [D. Babikov, B. K. Kendrick, R. B. Walker, R. T. Pack, P. Fleurat-Lesard, and R. Schinke, J. Chem. Phys.118, 6298 (2003)]. In both QS and QCT calculations, agreement with experiment was markedly improved by performing calculations with the experimental distribution of collision energies instead of fixed at the average collision energy. At both collision energies, the scattering displayed a forward bias, with a smaller bias at the lower Ecoll. Comparisons with the QS calculations suggest that 34O2 is produced with a non-statistical rovibrational distribution that is hotter than predicted, and the discrepancy is larger at the lower Ecoll. If this underprediction of rovibrational excitation by the QS method is not due to PES errors and/or to non-adiabatic effects not included in the calculations, then this collision energy dependence is opposite to what might be expected based on collision complex lifetime arguments and opposite to that measured for the forward bias. While the QCT calculations captured the experimental product vibrational energy distribution better than the QS method, the QCT results underpredicted rotationally excited products, overpredicted forward-bias and predicted a trend in the strength of forward-bias with collision energy opposite to that measured, indicating that it does not completely capture the dynamic behavior measured in the experiment. Thus, these results further underscore the need for improvement in theoretical treatments of dynamics on the O3(X1A’) PES and perhaps of the PES itself in order to better understand and predict non-statistical effects in this reaction and in the formation of ozone (in which the intermediate O3 * complex is collisionally stabilized by a third body). The scattering data presented here at two different collision energies provide important benchmarks to guide these improvements.