Increasing energy autonomy is one of the main reasons for municipalities to invest in renewable energy technologies. In this study, the potential of weather-robust autonomous energy systems is ...evaluated for 11 003 German municipalities in over one million parallelized techno-economic optimizations utilizing high-performance computing clusters. For this purpose, a holistic municipal-level energy system model (ETHOS.FineRegions) was developed that minimizes annualized system costs in 2045. The completely energy autonomous supply can be established in around 90% of German municipalities corresponding to 50% of the country‘s population. Especially highly populated municipalities often do not have the capacity to meet their own energy demands due to low wind and open-field PV potentials. Large rooftop PV capacities account for 40% of installed capacity in the autonomous municipalities. Seasonal storage needs are met by large underground thermal storage tanks and batteries provide intraday storage. Furthermore, huge capacity increases are often required for the final 20% of energy demand to be met in order to achieve a degree of autonomy of 100%. The large storage and rooftop PV capacities lead to high specific system costs in the autonomous municipalities with between 144 €/MWh and 174 €/MWh on average, depending on legislation and opposition towards onshore wind installations. By paying a premium of up to 50% compared to the grid-dependent system, 3945 municipalities with 17.2 million inhabitants could become completely autonomous by 2045. For regions that could achieve an autonomous energy supply at moderate costs, however, lost revenues through energy exports could be a decisive argument against autonomy efforts.
•Single energy system optimizations for 11003 German municipalities.•Assessment of various scenarios in more than one million techno-economic optimizations.•Utilization of high-performance computing clusters for parallelized optimizations.•Complete energy autonomy technically feasible in 90% of German municipalities.•Extended economic potential for autonomy in 36% of German municipalities.
A shift to electric vehicles (EV) is seen as one of the main methods to decarbonise the transportation sector. However, issues have also been raised regarding charging infrastructure, EV reliability ...and range, as well as the battery environmental and social credentials. Notwithstanding governments, intergovernmental organisations, and research entities have ploughed ahead to promote this transition, but the challenge is the uptake and public acceptance. Grants and financial subsidies have been developed to facilitate this shift. Our study investigates the characteristics of the private EV household charger population using a regression model and spatial analysis to determine the influences of income, car ownership and economic status on EV take up rates. Data on the installation of EV household chargers are used in this paper as a proxy for EV ownership, due to data limitations. The results indicate that 1) urban areas are more likely to see higher concentrations of EV ownership, 2) an income and equity gap exists between those that have adapted electric mobility. This finding is very important because it suggests that lower income categories may have a financial barrier to shifting to EVs.
•Demonstrates the correlations between equity and EV ownership.•Explores how regional income levels impact upon EV density.•Commuting characteristics are examined to ascertain their impacts on EV ownership.
•Reviewing flexibility and robustness in local, integrated energy system models.•Flexibility is introduced by storage and sector coupling, DSM is rare.•Transport integration and the flexibility ...potential of EVs receive little attention.•Reporting metrics beyond cost and emissions provides additional decision-support.•Uncertainty assessments are overwhelmingly deterministic, mainly using scenarios.
The electrification of heating, cooling, and transportation to reach decarbonization targets calls for a rapid expansion of renewable technologies. Due to their decentral and intermittent nature, these technologies require robust planning that considers non-technical constraints and flexibility options to be integrated effectively. Energy system models (ESMs) are frequently used to support decision-makers in this planning process. In this study, 116 case studies of local, integrated ESMs are systematically reviewed to identify best-practice approaches to model flexibility and address non-technical constraints. Within the sample, storage systems and sector coupling are the most common types of flexibility. Sector coupling with the transportation sector is rarely considered, specifically with electric vehicles even though they could be used for smart charging or vehicle-to-grid operation. Social aspects are generally either completely neglected or modeled exogenously. Lacking actor heterogeneity, which can lead to unstable results in optimization models, can be addressed through building-level information. A strong emphasis on cost is found and while emissions are also frequently reported, additional metrics such as imports or the share of renewable generation are nearly entirely absent. To guide future modeling, the paper concludes with a roadmap highlighting flexibility and robustness options that either represent low-hanging fruit or have a large impact on results.
Background & Objective: Every society tries to improve its educational systems to educate students to face their problems in daily life easily. Therefore, it is essential to provide optimal learning ...conditions and situations in the learning process to achieve the best results. The study aimed to investigate the mediating role of self-regulation learning strategies in the relationship of mindfulness and responsibility with interpersonal relationships and social acceptance in general practitioner students. Materials & Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted from January to August 2022. Based on structural equation modeling methodology, 384 medical students of Zanjan University of Medical Science participated in this study by simple random sampling. The questionnaires used included Baer's Mindfulness, Responsibility, Interpersonal Communication Skills, Crown's Social Acceptance, and Self-Regulated Learning Strategies questionnaire. The questionnaire was made electronically using the native Porsline system. Standard equation modeling was used by SPSS (version 24) and Lisrel (version 8.8) software packages to analyze the data with a 95% confidence interval. Results: The findings demonstrated that mindfulness directly affects interpersonal relationships (P=0.03, β=0.31). The direct effect of mindfulness on social acceptance revealed a positive and statistically significant effect of P=0.04, β =0.28. With a standard beta of 0.33, the results indicated a direct and significant impact of accountability on interpersonal relationships (P=0.03). The results also suggested that the direct effect of responsibility on social acceptance was positive and statistically significant (P=0.01, β=0.45). Conclusion: According to the findings of the model analysis, responsibility, and mindfulness directly affected interpersonal relationships and social acceptance while simultaneously fostering solidarity. Furthermore, the indirect path of responsibility on social acceptance was significant; that is, self-regulation was able to serve as a mediator between responsibility and social acceptance, and the final model could explain, on average, 50% of the distribution of "interpersonal relations and acceptance" in the student population. Therefore, it is suggested to pay attention to such factors as self-regulation and interpersonal skills in the education of students.
‘Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements’ are characterised as core features in the diagnosis of autism, yet many autistic adults (and the neurodiversity movement) have reclaimed them as ...‘stimming’. Supported by a growing body of scientific research, autistic adults argue that these behaviours may serve as useful coping mechanisms, yet little research has examined stimming from the perspective of autistic adults. Through interviews and focus groups, we asked 32 autistic adults to share their perceptions and experiences of stimming, including the reasons they stim, any value doing so may hold for them and their perceptions of others’ reactions to stimming. Using thematic analysis, we identified two themes: stimming as (1) a self-regulatory mechanism and (2) lacking in social acceptance, but can become accepted through understanding. Autistic adults highlighted the importance of stimming as an adaptive mechanism that helps them to soothe or communicate intense emotions or thoughts and thus objected to treatment that aims to eliminate the behaviour.
•We installed a social robot in elderly people’s homes for three 10-day visits.•Content analysis of interviews provided in-depth evaluations of user experiences.•Elderly people are willing to engage ...in social interactions with robots.•Familiarity with robots raise evaluations on usefulness, intelligence and sociability.•Hedonic factors seem to be most important for long-term acceptance of social robots.
Social robots will become ubiquitous in our everyday environments. These robots could potentially extend life expectancy, and improve the health and quality of life of an aging population. A long-term explorative study has been conducted by installing a social robot for health promotion in elderly people’s own homes. Content analysis of interviews provided an in-depth understanding of the factors that influence the acceptance of and relationship-building with social robots in domestic environments. The permanent presence of a robot in users’ own homes yields the vital challenges social robots encounter to be successfully accepted by their users. These vital acceptance challenges are unlikely to be revealed in one-day laboratory human-robot interaction studies or even in multiple observations of short interactions between humans and robots.
Contemporary political ills at the mass behavior level (e.g., outgroup aggression, conspiracy theories) are often attributed to increasing polarization and partisan tribalism. We theorize that many ...such problems are less the product of left-right orientations than an orthogonal "anti-establishment" dimension of opinion dominated by conspiracy, populist, and Manichean orientations. Using two national surveys from 2019 and 2020, we find that this dimension of opinion is correlated with several antisocial psychological traits, the acceptance of political violence, and time spent on extremist social media platforms. It is also related to support for populist candidates, such as Trump and Sanders, and beliefs in misinformation and conspiracy theories. While many inherently view politics as a conflict between left and right, others see it as a battle between "the people" and a corrupt establishment. Our findings demonstrate an urgent need to expand the traditional conceptualization of mass opinion beyond familiar left-right identities and affective orientations.
Social sciences' research on the social acceptance of renewable energy generation and associated technologies (RET), such as high voltage power lines, has been growing in the last decades. In fact, ...while RET are considered one of the main mitigation measures of climate change, opposition to their construction, and namely from the local communities living nearby, is often found. Important conceptual proposals have been made for a better understanding of opposition, however, this literature still presents some limitations. Here, I will discuss two of them: first, the main focus on the local and, with it, the lack of a relational and critical approach, which recognizes opposition and other types of responses to RET as public participation in RET-related issues; second, the focus on the individual and the consequent lack of examining people's material practices and engagements.
To investigate the dynamics of human-robot acceptance, we carried out an experimental study with 56 adult participants and the iCub robot. Trust in the robot has been considered as a main indicator ...of acceptance and measured by the participants' conformation to the iCub's answers to questions on functional and social tasks characterized by perceptual and socio cognitive uncertainty. In particular, we were interested in understanding whether (i) trust in functional savvy is a prerequisite for trust in social savvy, and (ii) to what extent factors such as participants' desire for control, attitude towards social influence of robots, and imagined collaborative vs. competitive scenario, may influence their trust in the iCub. We found that participants conformed more to the iCub's answers in the functional than in the social tasks. Moreover, the few participants conforming to the iCub's answers in the social task also conformed less in the functional issues. Trust in the robot's functional savvy does not thus seem to be a pre-requisite for trust in its social savvy. Finally, the examined factors did not influence the trust in iCub. Results are discussed with relation to methodology of human-robot interaction (HRI) research.
•We investigate the functional and social acceptance of the iCub robot.•Trust in the robot is considered as a main indicator of acceptance in decision-making tasks.•The participants trust more iCub for functional than for social issues.•Trust in the robot's functional savvy does not seem to be a pre-requisite for trust in its social savvy.•User-related, robot-related and context-related features are also evaluated: they do not seem to influence the trust in iCub.
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