In 2007, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador proposed the Yasuní ITT Initiative at the United Nations General Assembly in an effort to contribute to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions and the local preservation of biodiversity. The initiative proposed enacting an indefinite ban on oil exploration and extraction within the Ecuadorian Yasuní National Park so long as the developed world was willing to contribute to half the forgone costs of drilling. However, despite initial support, the Yasuní Initiative was unsuccessful, and due to a lack of financial support, Correa terminated the proposal in August 2013. With the increasing threat of climate change, the recent Paris Agreement highlights the need for bold actions such as those proposed by the Yasuní Initiative—which represents a solution that the global community needs. This paper looks at the history of the Yasuní Initiative from its inception to ultimate termination, as a developing country’s efforts to take part in the broader discussion of global warming and climate change. The Yasuní Initiative is examined within the context of Ecuador’s relation to oil, the country’s position as a steward of primary forest habitat that acts as a major carbon sink with rich biological and cultural diversity, in addition to the effect that the oil industry has had on the country with close attention to the Amazon region.

The potential of L-systems is explored byprocedurally generating patterns for use as video game content.By procedurally generating content for video games, thedevelopment costs of game development can be significantlyreduced. An artifact in the form of a tower defense game isdeveloped and tested to evaluate the generation algorithm. Thealgorithm was successful in generating a wide range of pattern anduser feedback indicates a high level of perceived variation. Thealgorithm is highly customizable and could have applications invarious game content such as particle systems or weapons

This diploma thesis is a comprehensive and up-to-date review of public private partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects at the municipal level in Germany. Public private partnerships use the know-how and the skills of the private sector for the construction and operation of infrastructure and for the long-term provision of public services. The overall goal of this thesis is to discuss the municipal government's approach to PPP infrastructure projects. The theoretical part of this thesis includes informations and fundamental characteristics of public private partnership project types and the most widely used financial instruments in Germany, as well as the obstacles, challenges and prospects of success for the PPP Programme. The thesis further deals with the legislation and the institutional framework of this cooperation, including the establishment of the Partnerschaften Deutschland und other PPP units in central and local government to promote and manage projects. In particular we focus on the possibility of the involvement of private partners in public private partnerships to clear the backlog of investment and to satisfy local authority investment needs. The empirical part of this work describes the efficient, beneficial and cost-effective delivery of what is currently one of Germany's biggest PPP projects in the field of public- sector building construction: refurbishing, financing and operating the 90 schools in the district of Offenbach in the south of Hesse.

Metabolomics is the study of metabolites and metabolic processes. Due to the diversity of structures and polarities of metabolites, no single analytical technique is able to measure the entire metabolome - instead a varied set of experimental designs and instrumental technologies are used to measure specific portions. This has led to the development of many distinct data analysis and processing methods and software. There is hope that metabolomics can be utilized for clinical applications, in toxicology and to measure the exposome. However, for these applications to be realised data must be high quality, sufficiently standardised and annotated, and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reproducible). For this purpose, it is also important that standardised, FAIR software workflows are available. There has also recently been much concern over the reproducibility of scientific research, which FAIR and open data, and workflows can help to address. To this end, this thesis aims to assess current practices and standards of sharing data within the field of metabolomics, using metascientific approaches. The types of functions of software for processing and analysing metabolomics data is also assessed. Reporting standards are designed to ensure that the minimum information required to un- derstand and interpret the results of analysis are reported. However, poor reporting standards are ignored and not complied with. Compliance to the biological context Metabolomics Standards Initiative (MSI) guidelines was examined, in order to investigate their timeliness. The state of open data within the metabolomics community was examined by investigating how much publicly available metabolomics data there is and where has it been deposited. To explore whether journal data sharing policies are driving open metabolomics data, which journals publish articles that have their underlying data made open was also examined. However, open data alone is not inherently useful: if data is incomplete, lacking in quality or missing crucial metadata, it is not valuable. Conversely, if data are reused, this can demonstrate the worth of public data archiving. Levels of reuse of public metabolomics data were therefore examined. With greater than 250 software tools specific for metabolomics, practitioners are faced with a daunting task to select the best tools for data collection and analysis. To help educate researchers about what software is available, a taxonomy of metabolomics software tools and a GitHub pages wiki, which provides extensive details about all included software, have been developed.

Even with the advance of autonomous robotics and automation, many automated tasks still require human intervention or guidance to mediate uncertainties in the environment or to execute the complexities of a task that autonomous robots are not yet equipped to handle. As such, robot controllers are needed that utilize the strengths of both autonomous agents, adept at handling lower level control tasks, and humans, superior at handling higher-level cognitive tasks. To address this need, we develop a control theoretic framework that seeks to incorporate user commands such that user intention is preserved while an automated task is carried out by the controller. This is a novel approach in that system theoretic tools allow for analytic guarantees of feasibility and convergence to goal states which naturally lead to varying levels of autonomy. We develop a model predictive controller that takes human input, infers human intent, then applies a control that minimizes deviations from the intended human control while ensuring that the lower-level automated task is being completed. This control framework is then evaluated in a human operator study involving a shared control task with human guidance of a mobile robot for navigation. These theoretical and experimental results lay the foundation for applying this control method for human-robot cooperative control to actual human-robot tasks. Specifically, the control is applied to a Urban Search and Rescue robot task where the shared control of a quadruped rescue robot is needed to ensure static stability during human-guided leg placements in uneven terrain. This control framework is also extended to a multiple user and multiple agent system where the human operators control multiple agents such that the agents maintain a formation while allowing the human operators to manipulate the shape of the formation. User studies are also conducted to evaluate the control in multiple operator scenarios.

Bakgrund Allmänhetens intresse för hållbarhet har ökat drastiskt de senaste åren vilket även har medfört ett större fokus än tidigare på livsmedelsproducenter och dess påverkan på hållbar utveckling. Företagen har ett stort ansvar gällande deras påverkan på jordens resurser där de genom sin verksamhet förväntas bidra till en hållbar utveckling utifrån de tre aspekterna: social, ekonomisk och miljömässig hållbarhet. Detta väljer många mindre företag att redovisa genom att upprätta en hållbarhetsredovisning, men det är även många mindre företag som avstår från att hållbarhetsredovisa. Syfte Syftet med arbetet är att undersöka hur mindre företag inom livsmedelsbranschen arbetar med hållbarhet utifrån sociala, ekonomiska och miljömässiga aspekter samt om det föreligger någon skillnad mellan de företag som väljer att hållbarhetsredovisa och de som inte gör det. Studien syftar även till att belysa anledningar till att mindre företag inom livsmedelsbranschen väljer att inte upprätta en hållbarhetsredovisning. Metod Metoden som har använts i studien är en kvalitativ forskningsmetod. Datainsamlingen har bestått av semistrukturerade intervjuer med fem olika företag inom livsmedelsbranschen samt en dokumentstudie. Det insamlade empirin har tillsammans med den teoretiska referensramen, där bland annat intressentteorin och legitimitetsteorin ingår, hjälpt till att analysera ifall det föreligger några skillnader mellan de företag som hållbarhetsredovisar och de som inte gör det olika gällande deras hållbarhetsarbete. Slutsats Studiens resultat visar att det föreligger en skillnad i hållbarhetsarbetet mellan mindre företag inom livsmedelsbranschen som hållbarhetsredovisar och mindre företag som inte hållbarhetsredovisar. Dessa skillnader förekommer främst i arbetet med det ekonomiska hållbarhetsarbetet, men kan även urskiljas i det sociala och miljömässiga hållbarhetsarbetet där företag som hållbarhetsredovisar tenderar att arbeta mer systematiskt och utförligt vad gäller hållbarhet. De främsta anledningarna till att mindre företag inom livsmedelsbranschen väljer att inte upprätta en hållbarhetsredovisning är brist på resurser samt att de anser att fokus snarare borde ligga på att man faktiskt arbetar med hållbarhet i stället för att redovisa det. / Background The public's interest in sustainability has increased drastically in recent years, which must also have led to a greater focus than before on food producers and its impact on sustainable development. Companies have a great responsibility regarding their impact on the earth's resources, where through their operations they are expected to contribute to sustainable development based on the three aspects: social, economic and environmental sustainability. Many smaller companies have to report this by preparing a sustainability report, but there arealso many smaller companies that refrain from preparing a sustainability report. Purpose The purpose of the work is to investigate how smaller companies in the food industry work with sustainability based on social, economic and environmental aspects and whether there is any difference between the companies that choose to report sustainability and those that don’t. The study also aims to shed light on reasons why smaller companies in the food industry choose not to prepare a sustainability report. Method The method used in the study is a qualitative research method. The data collection consisted of semi-structured interviews with five different companies in the food industry and a document study. The collected empirical data, together with the theoretical frame of reference, which includes stakeholder theory and legitimacy theory, have helped to analyze whether there are any differences between the companies that report sustainability and those that don’t do differently regarding their sustainability work. Conclusion The results of the study show that there is a difference in sustainability work between smaller companies in the food industry that report sustainability and smaller companies that do not report sustainability. These differences occur mainly in the work with economic sustainability work but can also be distinguished in the social and environmental sustainability work where companies that prepare a sustainability report tend to work more systematically and extensively in terms of sustainability. The main reasons why smaller companies in the food industry choose not to draw up a sustainability report are a lack of resources and that they believe that the focus should rather be on actually working with sustainability instead of reporting it.