Suchergebnisse

Understanding/visualizing the established interactions between gases and adsorbents is mandatory to implement better performance materials in adsorption/separation processes. Here we report the unique behavior of a rare example of a hemilabile chiral three-dimensional metal–organic framework (MOF) with an unprecedented qtz-e-type topology, with formula CuII2(S,S)-hismox·5H2O (1) (hismox = bis[(S)-histidine]oxalyl diamide). 1 exhibits a continuous and reversible breathing behavior, based on the hemilability of carboxylate groups from l-histidine. In situ powder (PXRD) and single crystal X-ray diffraction (SCXRD) using synchrotron radiation allowed us to unveil the crystal structures of four different host–guest adsorbates (Ar@1, N2@1, CO2@1, and C3H6@1), rationalize the breathing motion, and unravel the mechanisms governing the adsorption of these gases. Then this information was transferred to implement efficient separations of mixtures of industrial and environmental relevance, CO2/N2, CO2/CH4, and C3H8/C3H6, using 1 in packed columns as the stationary phase and dispersed in a mixed matrix membrane. ; This work was supported by the MINECO (Spain) (projects CTQ2016-75671-P, MAT2017-86992-R, and MAT-80285-P and Excellence Unit "Maria de Maeztu" MDM-2015-0538) and the Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca (Italy). M.M. and E.T. thank the MINECO, and R.B. thanks the MIUR (project PON R&I FSE-FESR 2014-2020) for predoctoral grants. Thanks are also extended to the "Programa post-Ramón y Cajal de la Universidad de Valencia (E.P.)", the "Fondo per il finanziamento delle attivita base di ricerca" (D.A.), and the "Atracció de talent-contractes postdoctorals de la Universitat de Valencia" and "Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación-2017" programs (J.F.-S.). E.P. acknowledges the financial support of the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme/ERC grant agreement no. 814804, MOF-reactors.

Transport is characterised by market failures that are of particular importance in urban settings. This paper reviews market failures and policy failures in The Netherlands for various transport markets, including road transport, public transport and biking. Special attention is paid to parking problems, and possibilities to cope with these by pricing measures. It is demonstrated that in some cases parking externalities lead to non-convexities that make pricing policies less attractive. In that case parking restrictions are called for. A general shift is observed from national to municipality policy initiatives. In terms of both effectiveness and social and political acceptability, the municipal policies definitely score better.

The aim of this PhD dissertation is to study and reveal the impact of public transports' improvements on the configuration of the crime on a big city like Bogota. First, this research focuses on a calculation of the number of reachable jobs of bogotanians. The effective size of labor market is computed in order to establish if inhabitants have the same degree of accessibility to jobs with respect to their socio-economic situation and with respect to the presence of enhancements of public transports in zones where they live. The presence of improvements of public transports is defined by the presence of Transmilenio system in each zone of the city. Following the same intuition, this research also study, in a second time, the possible endogeneity of the presence of Transmilenio (TM) on the concentration of jobs and on the income of inhabitants of each zone. More precisely, the aim of this analysis is to determine if improvements of public transports may have a causal relation on the localization of jobs and the concentration of highest incomes in the city. The objective of this investigation is to establish that high incomes, jobs centers may be localized, in a big proportion, because of the presence of TM. Following the hypothesis suggested on several studies regarding the fact that criminals prefer to commit their crimes in zones with high density of jobs and in zones with highest incomes (regardless housing zones or job centers), this dissertation follow, in a thirdly, with an ex-ante and ex-post study of the evolution of cNme with respect to the opening of Transmilenio in each zone. The goal ofthis analysis is to establish a causal relation of enhancements of public transports on the evolution of five different types of crimes in each zone. Because of the weakness of available data, results are unfortunately not conclusive but give us an appropriate approximation of the impact that Transmilenio system may have on crime configuration. These results lead to make, on a final instance, a causal analysis for the year on which we have whole data. Results are conclusive: a causal relationship of Transmilenio on three of five types of crime object of this study is confirmed. ln addition, a spatial dependence on the concentration of crimes is also confirmed. It appears that, regardless the positive impacts that it could have, the presence of Transmilenio and hence, the enhancements of public transports in different zones of Bogota make raise sorne kinds of crimes. Even if this research presents sorne limitations that should be solved on future studies, the way how the issue is analyzed provides new perspectives for the comprehension of sorne negative consequences that can thwart positive objectives of urban transport policies. We believe that this PhD dissertation contributes to complement the studies about the effect of urban transports. ; Cette thèse cherche à d'étudier et à déterminer l'impact des améliorations des transports publics sur la configuration de la criminalité dans une grande ville comme Bogota. Dans une première étape, cette recherche cherche à préciser le nombre d'emplois joignables par les habitants de la ville dans trois différents intervalles de temps. La taille effective du marché du travail est donc définir dans le but de déterminer si les habitants des différentes zones qui composent la ville ont le même,èegré d'accessibilité aux emplois. Une fois définie l'accessibilité, cette étude fait une étude comparative par rapport aux caractéristiques socio-économiques des habitants par zone ainsi que par rapport à la présence ou le manque d'améliorations du système de transport dans chaque zone qui composent la ville de Bogota. La présence des améliorations du système de transport est définie par le passage du système de transport appelé Transmilenio (TM) dans chaque zone. Dans le but d'approfondir sur le lien qui existe entre les caractéristiques socio-économiques des habitants et la présence de TM dans chaque zone de la ville, nous nous concentrons, dans une deuxième étape, sur l'existence d'une possible relation endogène de la présence de TM dans la concentration des emplois et des hauts revenus à Bogota. L'objectif de cette analyse est de déterminer si les améliorations des transports publics ont une relation causale dans la localisation des emplois et des hauts revenus dans chaque zone de la ville. Nous adoptons ensuite l'hypothèse que les criminels préfèrent commettre leurs crimes dans les bassins d'emplois et dans les zones à forte concentration des hauts revenus (indépendamment de la localisation des zones résidentielles). Dans le même ordre d'idée et afin d'établir une relation causal sur l'évolution de cinq différents types de crime dans chaque zone de la ville, cette étude réalise une analyse ex-ante et ex-post la mise en place de Transmilenio. En raison de la faiblesse de la base de donné pour les différentes périodes, les résultats de cette étape ne sont pas homogènes et ce qui les rend peu convaincants. Cependant, ils nous donnent une approximation pertinente de l'impact que Transmilenio peut avoir dans la configuration de la criminalité dans la ville. Ces résultats nous mènent à faire, dans une dernière étape, une analyse de causalité pour la période pour laquelle les données disponibles sont complets pour toutes les zones de la ville et ne montrent pas des problèmes de fiabilité. Après cette étape d'analyse, les résultats sont convaincants. Ils suggèrent qu'il existe bien une relation causale de la présence de Transmilenio sur l'évolution de trois des cinq types de crimes sujets de notre étude. Les résultats permettent également d'identifier une claire dépendance spatiale de la concentration des crimes dans la ville. Il semble donc que, malgré les multiples effets positifs que l'amélioration des transports publics peut avoir pour les habitants d'une ville, ceci peut aussi stimuler une hausse de certains types de crimes dans les zones desservies par Transmilenio. Malgré les limites de cette étude qui devront être résolues dans des futures recherches, les résultats obtenus, ainsi que la façon dont le sujet est abordé, représentent une perspective d'analyse innovatrice pour une meilleure compréhension des éventuelles conséquences négatives qui peuvent contrecarrer les objectifs des politiques des transports urbains dans les grandes villes. Nous pensons que cette thèse contribue à la complémentarité des études sur les effets des transports urbains.

In this paper we wish to tackle stochastic programs affected by ambiguity about the probability law that governs their uncertain parameters. Using optimal transport theory, we construct an ambiguity set that exploits the knowledge about the distribution of the uncertain parameters, which is provided by: (1) sample data and (2) a-priori information on the order among the probabilities that the true data-generating distribution assigns to some regions of its support set. This type of order is enforced by means of order cone constraints and can encode a wide range of information on the shape of the probability distribution of the uncertain parameters such as information related to monotonicity or multi-modality. We seek decisions that are distributionally robust. In a number of practical cases, the resulting distributionally robust optimization (DRO) problem can be reformulated as a finite convex problem where the a-priori information translates into linear constraints. In addition, our method inherits the finite-sample performance guarantees of the Wasserstein-metric-based DRO approach proposed by Mohajerin Esfahani and Kuhn (Math Program 171(1–2):115–166. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10107-017-1172-1, 2018), while generalizing this and other popular DRO approaches. Finally, we have designed numerical experiments to analyze the performance of our approach with the newsvendor problem and the problem of a strategic firm competing à la Cournot in a market. ; This research has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 755705). This work was also supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through Project ENE2017-83775-P.

Antea Group and KULeuven were awarded a project in Flanders to identify the regions exporting high sediment loads to unnavigable watercourses and the sedimentation zones within them. Two types of models are applied: hydrological sediment export models (SEM) and hydraulic sediment transport models (STM). The influence of erosion control measures on sediment export as well as river engineering measures needs to be taken into account. A concept will be developed to connect the SEM and STM, enabling the sediment to be routed from upstream to the sedimentation zones. Results of the study will be used by the Flemish government to plan erosion control measures, estimate future sedimentation volumes, steer sedimentation and optimize river engineering and dredging works. Finally, model results could also be used to obtain better insights to the re-suspension risks of contaminated sediment in watercourses.

Halide mixing is one of the most powerful techniques to tune the optical bandgap of metal-halide perovskites. However, halide mixing has commonly been observed to result in phase segregation, which reduces excited-state transport and limits device performance. While the current emphasis lies on the development of strategies to prevent phase segregation, it remains unclear how halide mixing may affect excited-state transport even if phase purity is maintained. Here, we study exciton transport in phase pure mixed-halide 2D perovskites of (PEA)2Pb(I1-xBrx)4. Using transient photoluminescence microscopy, we show that, despite phase purity, halide mixing inhibits exciton transport. We find a significant reduction even for relatively low alloying concentrations. By performing Brownian dynamics simulations, we are able to reproduce our experimental results and attribute the decrease in diffusivity to the energetically disordered potential landscape that arises due to the intrinsic random distribution of alloying sites ; This work has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the "Mari ́ a de Maeztu" Program for Units of Excellence in R&D (MDM-2014-0377). M.S. acknowledges the financial support through a Doc.Mobility Fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) with grant number 187676. In addition, M.S. acknowledges the financial support of a fellowship from "la Caixa" Foundation (ID 100010434). The fellowship code is LCF/BQ/IN17/11620040. Further, M.S. has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 713673. F.P. acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry for Science, Innovation, and Universities through the state program (PGC2018-097236-A-I00) and through the Ramón y Cajal program (RYC-2017-23253), as well as the Comunidad de Madrid Talent Program for Experienced Researchers (2016-T1/IND-1209). M.M., N.C., and R.D.B. acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of ...

Transport is an important source of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. While the applications of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for transport, also known as Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), are seen as having great potential to help reduce emissions from road transport, their exact impact on CO2 emissions are uncertain for decision makers from government to industry. This uncertainty hinders the deployment of such applications. Therefore, there is a need for a common evaluation approach to assess the CO2 impact of ICT measures in a systemic and realistic way. In this paper, a methodology framework to evaluate the impact of ICT measures on CO2 emissions is explained. The methodology was developed within the EU FP7 project Amitran. In particular, the paper focuses on the outline and the framework architecture of the methodology as well as the required interfaces between the required models. The use of the methodology is demonstrated by applying it to a use case of Dynamic Traffic Light systems. Finally, the efforts made to validate the methodology and make it accessible to users are explained.

394Sovereign immunity — Foreign States and State-owned corporations and their property — Italian State Railways — Action for breach of loan agreement — Whether Italian State Railways entitled to jurisdictional immunity — Whether Italian State Railways endowed with independent legal personality — Acts iure imperii and iure gestionis — Requirement of close connection between case and forum — Attachment of shares — Immunity from attachment — Shares in Eurofima purchased by Italian State Railways — Legal states of Eurofima — Whether such shares immune from attachment as assets allocated for the performance of a State function — Relevance of distinction between patrimonial and administrative State assets — Whether purpose for which assets are allocated is decisive — The law of Switzerland

This paper seeks to explore the religious valuation of entrepreneurship during a long period of Western cultural history that covers transformations of religious thinking from the early Church Fathers to the Reformation. The paper focuses on theological contributions to conceptualizations of labour, property and wealth, that serves as a basis for assessing entrepreneurial motives and enterprise activities. In doing so, this approach highlights the interactions between work motivation and entrepreneurship in distinct cultural and historical contexts. Particular attention is devoted to understanding the religious sanctification of labour. The emergence and formation of secular enterprise values are discussed and interpreted as integral parts of these religious worldviews in which they were deeply embedded.