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Roles of Stakeholders in Energy Living Lab

The living lab concept in energy transition research is still relatively new, but it has piqued the interest of policymakers, researchers, and practitioners. While Følstad claims that the living lab concept originated in the 2000′s with private firms conducting real-life testing and experimentation for information and communication technologies, Leminen et al. contend that the concept first appeared in 1749. The living lab concept is identified as having the potential to provide a platform to test technologies and support energy transition.

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17 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Kroogi [Russian: Круги, translation: circles, http://kroogi.com/] is a “content community” where musicians, painters, writers, videographers, photographers, and other users and organizations, that wish to share their projects with the world, showcase their work. Their supporters can follow their activity, download content, and make monetary contributions. Kroogi encourages its users to support artists and their projects through voluntary contributions, and by promoting artistic content. Users pay for downloading content based on a “Pay what you want” model, which allows fans and followers to set their own price for artists’ work. Artists also have the option of setting a minimum necessary contribution for downloads.

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16 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Quasi-Constitutionality

In Canada, the term quasi-constitutional is used for laws which remain paramount even when subsequent statutes, which contradict them, are enacted by the same legislature. This is the reverse of the normal practice, under which newer laws trump any contradictory provisions in any older statute.

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16 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Jury Nullification

Jury nullification is a concept where members of a trial jury find a defendant not guilty if they do not support a government's law, do not believe it is constitutional or humane, or do not support a possible punishment for breaking the law. This may happen in both civil and criminal trials. In a criminal trial, a jury nullifies by acquitting a defendant, even though the members of the jury may believe that the defendant did commit the alleged crime. This may occur when members of the jury disagree with the law the defendant has been charged with breaking, or believe that the law should not be applied in that particular case. A jury can similarly convict a defendant on the ground of disagreement with an existing law, even if no law is broken (although in jurisdictions with double jeopardy rules, a conviction can be overturned on appeal, but an acquittal cannot). A jury verdict that is contrary to the letter of the law pertains only to the particular case before it. If a pattern of acquittals develops, however, in response to repeated attempts to prosecute a statutory offence, this can have the de facto effect of invalidating the statute. A pattern of jury nullification may indicate public opposition to an unwanted legislative enactment. In the past, it was feared that a single judge or panel of government officials might be unduly influenced to follow established legal practice, even when that practice had drifted from its origins. In most modern Western legal systems, however, judges often instruct juries to act only as "finders of facts", whose role it is to determine the veracity of the evidence presented, the weight accorded to the evidence, to apply that evidence to the law as explained by the judge, and to reach a verdict; but not to question the law or decide what it says. Similarly, juries are routinely cautioned by courts and some attorneys not to allow sympathy for a party or other affected persons to compromise the fair and dispassionate evaluation of evidence. These instructions are criticized by advocates of jury nullification. Some commonly cited historical examples of jury nullification involve jurors refusing to convict persons accused of violating the Fugitive Slave Act by assisting runaway slaves or being fugitive slaves themselves, and refusal of American colonial juries to convict a defendant under English law. Juries have also refused to convict due to the perceived injustice of a law in general, or of the way the law is applied in particular cases. There have also been cases where the jury has refused to convict due to their own prejudices (for example, about the race of one of the parties in the case).

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16 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Educator Effectiveness

Educator effectiveness is a K-12 school system education policy initiative that measures the quality of an educator performance in terms of improving student learning. It describes a variety of methods, such as observations, student assessments, student work samples and examples of teacher work, that education leaders use to determine the effectiveness of a K-12 educator. The drive for educator effectiveness programs stem from Race to the top where states were awarded points for meeting educational policies based on the teacher's effectiveness. This policy was the basis of the emergence of statewide educator effectiveness programs. Educator effectiveness programs vary from state to state. Typically, an educator effectiveness program describes a cycle of observations and assessments that apply to different groups of teachers during an academic year. New teachers are evaluated more frequently, and veteran teachers are evaluated across multiple year cycles. Evaluated teachers have multiple scheduled classroom observations and conferences with the evaluator in addition to unannounced classroom observations. A controversial aspect of The purpose of evaluations is to help educators determine what is effective in their practices and provides them a medium to reflect upon and change their practice to help teachers become more effective.

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Topic Review

Apparitional Experience

In parapsychology, an apparitional experience is an anomalous experience characterized by the apparent perception of either a living being or an inanimate object without there being any material stimulus for such a perception. The person experiencing the apparition is awake, excluding dream visions from consideration. In academic discussion, the term "apparitional experience" is to be preferred to the term "ghost" in respect of the following points:

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16 Nov 2022

Topic Review

The right to exist is said to be an attribute of nations. According to an essay by the nineteenth-century French philosopher Ernest Renan, a state has the right to exist when individuals are willing to sacrifice their own interests for the community it represents. Unlike self-determination, the right to exist is an attribute of states rather than of peoples. It is not a right recognized in international law. The phrase has featured prominently in the Arab–Israeli conflict since the 1950s. The right to exist of a de facto state may be balanced against another state's right to territorial integrity. Proponents of the right to exist trace it back to the "right of existence", said to be a fundamental right of states recognized by writers on international law for hundreds of years.

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16 Nov 2022

Topic Review

A republic (Latin: res publica, meaning "public affair") is a form of government in which the country is considered a "public matter", not the private concern or property of the rulers. The primary positions of power within a republic are attained, through democracy, oligarchy, or a mix thereof, rather than being unalterably occupied. It has become the opposing form of government to a monarchy and has therefore no monarch as head of state. (As of 2017), 159 of the world's 206 sovereign states use the word "republic" as part of their official names – not all of these are republics in the sense of having elected governments, nor is the word "republic" used in the names of all nations with elected governments. The word republic comes from the Latin term res publica, which literally means "public thing", "public matter", or "public affair" and was used to refer to the state as a whole. The term developed its modern meaning in reference to the constitution of the ancient Roman Republic, lasting from the overthrow of the kings in 509 BC to the establishment of the Empire in 27 BC. This constitution was characterized by a Senate composed of wealthy aristocrats and wielding significant influence; several popular assemblies of all free citizens, possessing the power to elect magistrates and pass laws; and a series of magistracies with varying types of civil and political authority. Most often a republic is a single sovereign state, but there are also sub-sovereign state entities that are referred to as republics, or that have governments that are described as "republican" in nature. For instance, Article IV of the United States Constitution "guarantee[s] to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government". Another example is the Soviet Union which described itself as being a group of "Soviet Socialist Republics", in reference to the 15 individually federal, multinational, top-level subdivisions or republics. In the context of American constitutional law, the definition of republic refers specifically to a form of government in which elected individuals represent the citizen body and exercise power according to the rule of law under a constitution, including separation of powers with an elected head of state, referred to as a constitutional republic or representative democracy.

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16 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Eurabia is a political neologism, a portmanteau of Europe and Arabia, used to describe a far-right anti-Muslim conspiracy theory, involving globalist entities allegedly led by French and Arab powers, to Islamise and Arabise Europe, thereby weakening its existing culture and undermining a previous alignment with the United States and Israel. The term was first used in the 1970s as the title of a newsletter and the concept itself developed by Bat Ye'or (pen name of Gisèle Littman) in the early 2000s and is described in her 2005 book titled Eurabia: The Euro‐Arab Axis. Benjamin Lee of the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats at the University of Lancaster describes her work as arguing that Europe "has surrendered to Islam and is in a state of submission (described as dhimmitude) in which Europe is forced to deny its own culture, stand silently by in the face of Muslim atrocities, accept Muslim immigration, and pay tribute through various types of economic assistance." According to the theory, the blame rests with a range of groups including communists, fascists, the media, universities, mosques and Islamic cultural centres, European bureaucrats, and the Euro-Arab Dialogue. The term has gained some public interest and has been used and discussed across a wide range of the political spectrum, including right-wing activists, self-described "conservatives" and counter-jihad and other anti-Islamism activists. Bat Ye'or's "mother conspiracy theory" has been used for further subtheories. The narrative grew important in expressing anti-Islamist sentiments and was used by movements like Stop Islamisation of Europe. It gained renewed interest after the September 11 attacks and the use of the term by 2011 Norway attacker, Anders Behring Breivik. Ye'or's thesis has come under criticism by scholars, which intensified after Breivik's crime. The conspiracy has been described as having resemblance to the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Eurabia is also discussed in classical anti-Europeanism, a strong influence in the culture of the United States and in the notion of American exceptionalism, which sometimes sees Europe on the decline or as a rising rival power, or, as is the case here, both.

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16 Nov 2022

Topic Review

Nandigram Violence

Nandigram Violence was violence occurred in Nandigram, East Midnapore, West Bengal, India , in 2007 due to the land acquisition for a project by the Government of West Bengal led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to create special economic zone (SEZ). The policy led to an emergency in the region, and 14 people died in a police shooting. According to CID reports, the Nandigram violence saw a Maoist insurgency in the area[lower-alpha 1] during the protests. But West Bengal Home Secretary himself stated that the presence of Maoists could not be confirmed in Nandigram. The Central Bureau of Investigation later exonerated the Buddhadeb Bhattacharya government of responsibility for the shootings. But supporting the violence in Nandigram by his own party workers, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya had said earlier "They (the oppositions) have been paid back in the same coin."

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16 Nov 2022

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