This thesis researches the variation in levels of liberalisation within the European services market, focusing in detail on four selected service sectors (i.e. postal services, electricity services, healthcare services and the services covered by the Services Directive) from 2001 until 2011. In this thesis, I propose a model of European integration capable of explaining the exact levels of liberalisation in each service sector. I argue that the level of liberalisation can be explained by looking at the drivers of integration (i.e. expected economic benefits from further integration and the level of supranational activity), which determine the societal demand for further integration and the shape legislators’ preferences and constraints, and the intervening influence of adhoc politicisation (i.e. the influence of public opinion through mass mobilisation). To illustrate this, this thesis applies a two-tiered approach of analysis. First, it explains the context in which the legislation is made to understand the economic implications of the proposed legislation, the level of supranational activity preceding the tabling of the legislation and the preferences of all actors involved. Second, taking preferences as exogenously given, this thesis applies a method of process tracing to study in detail the negotiations between legislators – the amending stage of the legislation. The case studies show that the drivers are crucial to explain the general demand for integration and at the same time show how politicisation, taking various guises, influences the level of liberalisation – primarily by altering legislators’ relative power. Particularly interesting is that politicisation can affect the negotiations even in absence of politicisation actually materialising causing some legislation to be made in the ‘shadow of politicisation’. These findings confirm existing explanations of European integration and add new insights as to how we can understand the process of European integration more generally.

There is widespread concern in many Western countries over the declining levels of uptake of science at the upper levels of high school. In contrast, Taiwanese senior high school students have a greater tendency to choose science rather than social studies and achieve highly in international comparative tests. The well-developed technology industries in Taiwan also suggest that science education in Taiwan has been a success. However, the attitude toward school science, unlike the promotion of scientific attitudes, has received little attention in Taiwanese schools. This paper firstly investigates 729 students’ attitudes toward both school and real-world science. The results show that the high level of uptake of science is not strongly associated with positive attitudes towards science as a subject. Few differences were found in the affective responses to school science between the Natural Sciences programme (NSP) and Social Studies Programme (SSP) students, with only a minority expressing a positive attitude to science in both cases. The research findings challenge the simplistic linking of attitudes and uptake in this context. This research then seeks to understand this unusual phenomenon by exploring the nature of and influences on students’ subject choice decision-making. Through focus group discussions with students and interviews, this research explores the sources of students’ perceptions of science and social studies, identifying influences derived from the teaching of school science itself but also those arising from ‘external’ contexts of wider society, including cultural and economic influences. The results show highly complex relationships between students and the surrounding actors, i.e. parents, teachers and the media. The findings also demonstrate possible explanations why students are doing well in school science and in industry but have not produced prominent discoveries or achievements in the world’s academic research. Drawing on Taiwan’s distinctive socio-cultural context, this research provides a different perspective from that in western science education research literature on the factors that shape science uptake.

Sustainability assessment and decision-making is a complex task for companies and considering the new requirements of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, there will be an increased demand on companies to make sure that their impact on the environment and people is assessed. In alignment with these new requirements, this study aims to combine three methods; LCA, S-LCA, and LCC, also known as LCSA, to investigate the environmental-, social- and cost impact of a safety barrier called SVEA. This has been done in collaboration with Ramudden and Worxsafe who are the developers of SVEA. By combining these three methods the goal is to identify hotspots throughout the lifecycle to see where mitigations can be made to make SVEA even more adapted for a ‘green’ future. The environmental hotspots that have been identified are global warming potential and abiotic depletion. These were further interpreted in the discussion which shows that several improvements are possible in the life cycle of SVEA. These improvements are related to the concrete and steel that SVEA consists of. For the S-LCA, several social improvements for health and safety and the gap between employed men/women were further discussed and interpreted. Additionally, a “partial LCC” was applied in order to create an understanding of the possible trade-offs between environmental and social benefits and the cost of different improvement possibilities. The results showed that the suggested improvements can also provide economic advantages. Lastly, one big takeaway from this thesis is that the combination of LCA, S-LCA, and LCC is a promising method to reach a more holistic assessment of the three pillars of sustainable development, which can also help deal with the complexity of the new corporate sustainability reporting directive. However, as noticed when conducting this thesis, more harmonization and standardization of these three methods is still required to create a more effective and valuable implementation for companies and create a bigger foundation for LCSA.

Rapid environmental changes linked to human-induced increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations have been observed on a global scale over recent decades. Given the relative certainty of continued change across many earth systems, the information output from climate models is an essential resource for adaptation planning. But in the face of many known modeling deficiencies, how confident can we be in model projections of future climate? It stands to reason that a realistic simulation of the present climate is at least a necessary (but likely not sufficient) requirement for a model’s ability to realistically simulate the climate of the future. Here, I present the results of three studies that evaluate the 20th century performance of global climate models from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). The first study examines precipitation, geopotential height, and wind fields from 21 CMIP5 models to determine how well the North American monsoon system (NAMS) is simulated. Models that best capture large-scale circulation patterns at low levels usually have realistic representations of the NAMS, but even the best models poorly represent monsoon retreat. Difficulty in reproducing monsoon retreat results from an inaccurate representation of gradients in low-level geopotential height across the larger region, which causes an unrealistic flux of low-level moisture from the tropics into the NAMS region that extends well into the post-monsoon season. The second study examines the presence and severity of spurious Gibbs-type numerical oscillations across the CMIP5 suite of climate models. The oscillations can appear as unrealistic spatial waves near discontinuities or sharp gradients in global model fields (e.g., orography) and have been a known problem for decades. Multiple methods of oscillation reduction exist; consequently, the oscillations are presumed small in modern climate models and hence are rarely addressed in recent literature. Here we quantify the oscillations in 13 variables from 48 global climate models along a Pacific ocean transect near the Andes. Results show that 48% of nonspectral models and 95% of spectral models have at least one variable with oscillation amplitude as large as, or greater than, atmospheric interannual variability. The third study is an in-depth assessment model simulations of 20th century monthly minimum and maximum surface air temperature over eight US regions, using mean state, trend, and variability bias metrics. Transparent model performance information is provided in the form of model rankings for each bias type. A wide range in model skill is at the regional scale, but no strong relationships are seen between any of the three bias types or between 20th century bias and 21st century projected change. Using our model rankings, two smaller ensembles of models with better performance over the southwestern U.S. are selected, but they result in negligible differences from the all-model ensemble in the average 21st century projected temperature change and model spread. In other words, models of varied quality (and complexity) are projecting very similar changes in temperature, implying that the models are simulating warming for different physical reasons. Despite this result, we suggest that models with smaller 20th century biases have a greater likelihood of being more physically realistic and therefore, more confidence can be placed in their 21st century projections as compared to projections from models that have demonstrably poor skill over the observational period. This type of analysis is essential for responsibly informing climate resilience efforts.

Teachers are an essential link between the curriculum and student achievement. Teachers make instructional decisions that (1) determine the success or failure of a curricular intervention and (2) can result in either alignment or disconnect between the written and enacted curricula. Despite overwhelming evidence linking the success or the failure of a curricular intervention to the classroom teacher, little is known about the instructional decisions teachers make when using a standards-based curriculum. The use of standards-based curriculum is becoming common, therefore, it is essential to know how teachers are using it. This study focused on three questions. First, can the factors that influence instructional decisions be consolidated into manageable, representative, and useful categories? Second, what instructional decisions did six science teachers in a rural central Texas school district make when using the standards-based curriculum, CSCOPE? Finally, what steps did one district take to select and adopt the SBC, CSCOPE? This study found that the factors that influence instructional decisions could be clustered into four categories: (1) working conditions, (2) pedagogical content knowledge, (3) prior experiences, and (4) beliefs. Further, that teachers made instructional decisions both to use CSCOPE as intended and to modify CSCOPE lessons. Modifications to CSCOPE were made despite (1) an administrative mandate not to modify CSCOPE, (2) good administrative support, and (3) the stated intention of these teachers to adhere to CSCOPE. Teachers omitted, replaced and/or supplemented lessons and/or parts of lessons in order to (1) accommodate the needs of their students and (2) prepare students for the state assessment. Finally, several steps taken by Bluecat ISD administrators assisted teachers in using CSCOPE as intended. This study makes three contributions to the educational literature. First, no useful categorization exists of the factors that influence teachers‟ instructional decisions. Chapter II provides an initial categorization of these factors that is manageable, representative, and useful. Second, administrators need to be able to anticipate how teachers may use a standards-based curriculum. Chapter III identifies the instructional decisions made by these six science teachers. Chapter IV identifies the measures put in place to support teachers as they adjusted to CSCOPE.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:16:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 3008.pdf: 1357654 bytes, checksum: 1eeb7c10aa286842a845b4df69e5c89f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-02-25 / Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais / From a diagnosis according to which there is a gap between common people and the research and development institutions, some studies in the public communication of science aim to gather solutions for reducing it a process in which journalism may be a key tool. This paper aims to analyze science reportages published in three magazines Ciência Hoje, Pesquisa Fapesp and piauí that have narrative aspects. Since the press uses many strategies to bring its public closer to science, we assume that the immersion reportage, using literary techniques, may be a way to achieve it. This research explores the narrative and discourse construction in science journalism and how the pieces handle polyphonic discourses, in order to identify literary journalism characteristics, diversity of themes and approaches to science, as well as to select some procedures which science reporters may use in newscovering. Our corpus was analyzed in a qualitative approache according to Bakhtin s discourse theories and the propositions of Science, Technology and Society and public communication of science studies, in order to promote a better interaction between science and other forms of knowledge, and also to bring a constructive view of science. / A partir do diagnóstico de um afastamento entre o público geral e o universo das instituições de ensino e pesquisa, os estudos em comunicação e percepção pública da ciência buscam soluções para que isso se reverta processo em que o jornalismo possui papel fundamental. Este trabalho se propõe a analisar reportagens de ciência publicadas nas revistas Ciência Hoje, Pesquisa Fapesp e piauí que apresentem características narrativas. Uma vez que a imprensa escrita por vezes utiliza variadas estratégias para aproximar seu público da atividade científica, partimos do pressuposto de que a reportagem em profundidade, com o uso de técnicas narrativas, pode suprir essa demanda. A pesquisa investiga a construção narrativa e discursiva no jornalismo científico e como as reportagens lidam com os diversos discursos presentes, com o objetivo de identificar nelas elementos do jornalismo literário, diversidade temática e as formas de abordagem da atividade científica, bem como distinguir procedimentos reprodutíveis para repórteres de ciência. O corpus foi analisado segundo as teorias discursivas de Bakhtin e as perspectivas dos estudos em Ciência, Tecnologia e Sociedade e comunicação pública da ciência, de modo a promover uma interação entre ciência e outros campos do conhecimento e de trazer uma compreensão da construção social da ciência.