90 research outputs found
Replication data -- Varone and Helfer (2021) in West European Politics
No full textReplication data and syntax for the publication: Varone, Frédéric and Luzia Helfer (2021). Understanding MPs' perceptions of party voters' opinion in Western democracies. West European Politics, accepted for publication May 21st, 202
Replication data -- Helfer Varone and Wäspi (2021) in Swiss Political Science Review
No full textData and syntax for all analyses published in:
Helfer, Varone and Wäspi (2021). Does Direct Democracy Enhance Politicians’ Perceptions of Constituents’ Opinions? Evidence from Switzerland. Swiss Political Science Review
Towards a Pan-European property index : methodological opportunities
No full textThesis (S.M. in Real Estate Development)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, Center for Real Estate, 2004 [first author]; and, (S.M. in Real Estate Development)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, Center for Real Estate, 2004 [second author].This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-87).This study examines the methodological opportunities of index construction for the Pan-European property index, whose release is planned by the company Investment Property Databank (IPD). To address the question of temporal aggregation in appraisal indices, three index construction methods, namely "Stale Appraisal", "Linear Interpolation", and "Repeated Measures Regression", are tested for their accuracy in dealing with infrequent appraisals. Our model is based on a simulation approach, calculating appraised indices from a simulated "true index" of randomly generated returns, and directly comparing the statistical characteristics of these index returns to the true return. As broader context, this paper also gives an overview of the current theories in respect to general valuation issues on a disaggregate, aggregate and international level. We also investigate the European real estate market regarding currently applied market size measuring, structure and country performance. In particular, we explore crucial valuation issues that are relevant for the planned Pan-European property index to obtain the respect of the international investment community.by Friederike Helfer and Markus Witta.S.M.in Real Estate Developmen
A Translation of Monika Helfer\u27s \u3ci\u3eDie Bagage\u3c/i\u3e with Afterword
No full textThis thesis is a literary translation of Austrian author Monika Helfer’s 2020 novel Die Bagage. The work tells the story of the Moosbrugger family during the First World War in a small village in Austria. A mix of memoir and imagined account come together in this work by Helfer as she narrates the story of her grandmother, Maria, who is the beauty of the village with seven children. When Josef, Maria’s husband, goes off to the battlefield, Maria and the children stay behind with the mayor watching over them. The village constantly concerns itself with what is happening with the Moosbruggers, also known as the riff-raff. When Georg from Hanover appears in Maria\u27s life and then suddenly leaves, Maria becomes pregnant with Helfer’s mother, Grete, and almost no one believes she is the daughter of Josef, even Josef himself. What would come of the riff-raff? From a female perspective, Helfer recalls the past with her vivid imagination and descriptive language, drawing from anecdotes from her aunt Kathe and her personal experiences growing up with the baggage of being one of the riff-raff.
A critical translator’s afterword follows the translation. In this section, there are descriptions of the original work’s author and the novel’s literary context, an overview of the various techniques used in translating the novel, and the different challenges the translation posed. The challenges include the title, pacing, and tone as well as various technical grammar elements such as the special subjunctive. For each challenge posed, strategies used to overcome these difficulties are discussed. For the scholarly element, current literature from translation studies (namely Antonova, Castro, Guerra, Hariyanto, Hermans, Slavova and Phoenix, von Flotow, and Walinski) is referenced, examined, and alluded to throughout the writing of the afterword. Lastly, I will compare the newest 2023 British-published translation of the novel from Gillian Davidson to my American English translation, analyzing how a professional in the field dealt with the challenges I experienced.
Advisor: Ted Dawso
Understanding MPs' perceptions of party voters' opinion in Western democracies
No full textThe ability of Members of Parliament (MPs) to know the policy preferences of their party voters is a precondition for substantive representation. This study investigates whether MPs' perceptions of their party voters' opinions are more accurate with policy statements on which they are competent—namely, those that are owned by their party and in which the MPs have specialised. It combines unique data from citizen surveys and face-to-face meetings with 367 MPs in Belgium, Canada, Germany and Switzerland. Both citizens and MPs evaluated the same statements, and MPs also estimated the support for each statement among their party voters. The comparison of party voters' preferences and MPs' estimations shows that MPs are more accurate on statements owned by their party, but not on issues they themselves specialise in through committee membership. Party issue ownership plays an important role in determining MPs' perceptual accuracy and, hence, democratic representation
Why politicians react to media coverage : a comparative experiment of political agenda-setting
No full textAbstract: Why do politicians react to some stories in the news and ignore others? We attempt to answer this question by integrating the micro-level politician perspective with a macro-level country approach. Using a unique experimental approach, we test when politicians in the Netherlands and Switzerland (N\u202f=\u202f80) take political action based on a (fictional) news report. We find that all politicians react more to negative coverage, but not if the information is merely presented as investigative reporting. Results also reveal a systematic variation that we ascribe to two key differences in the electoral systems. In The Netherlands, with its large single voting district, politicians react to news reports covering issues they are specialized in. In Switzerland, where between-party competition is more important, politicians are more likely to capitalize on the party\u2019s profile. Overall, this study shows when and how politicians react to news coverage also depends on the institutional context
The interplay between wind and clouds in the trades
No full textCumulus clouds ('fair-weather clouds') form as a result of atmospheric convection and have vertical extents between a few hundred metres (humilis species) and several kilometres (congestus species). They are a major source of uncertainty in the estimation of climate sensitivity by climate models. In order to reach more agreement in cloud changes due to global warming as predicted by different climate models, a better understanding of the physics of these clouds is needed. Shallow cumulus clouds are particularly common over the oceans of Earth's trade-wind regions, which are situated roughly between the 10° and 30° parallels on both hemispheres and are characterised by steady easterly surface winds. These winds are part of the Hadley cell, a large-scale circulation system in which air flows away from the equator at high altitudes and towards the equator near the surface. As a consequence, vertical shear (i.e. vertical differences in wind speed and direction) is common in this region. While recent studies have shown that (surface) wind speed is an important predictor of cloudiness in this region, little work has been done to elucidate how shear affects clouds. Vice versa, clouds also affect the wind by vertically transporting it. While this convective momentum transport (CMT) undoubtedly plays an important role in the force balance that sets the trade winds, only little is known about the details of how CMT sets the vertical structure of the wind and of the spatial scales of the momentum-transporting eddies. In this thesis, more light is shed on the bidirectional interaction between shallow cumulus convection and the wind. Particular focus is put on the effect of wind shear on convection and on the different spatial scales (convective and turbulent) at which convection affects the wind at different heights. To this end, results from numerical large-eddy-simulation (LES) experiments are utilised in this thesis. Due to their fine horizontal resolution (of hundreds of metres and less), LES is able to numerically resolve clouds and the largest turbulent eddies explicitly. This leads to a high degree of realism in the simulation. Together with the possibility to artificially simplify the experimental set-up as well as the completeness of the output (in terms of time, space and quantities), this makes LES the ideal tool to understand physical mechanisms in the atmosphere. To identify and understand the effect of wind shear on cumulus convection, LES experiments were carried out in which typical conditions of the trades were simulated, while the amount of wind shear was systematically varied. In these idealised LES, vertical wind shear effectively limits the deepening of trade-wind convection. Several mechanisms are responsible for this, which depend on the direction of the shear vector (vertically decreasing or increasing wind speed) as well as the altitude at which shear is present. A situation with easterly surface winds that weaken with height and eventually turn westerly is referred to as backward shear, and the opposite situation with easterlies that strengthen with height is called forward shear. Different directions of wind shear cause different surface winds due to CMT, which in turn affect the surface evaporation: Faster surface winds occur in the presence of forward shear and lead to stronger evaporation of sea water, resulting in deeper convection. Forward shear in the subcloud layer also leads to a spatial separation of precipitative downdrafts and emerging updrafts, as clouds move faster than their subcloud-layer roots; this is favourable for convective development. Conversely, under backward shear, the surface evaporation is weakened and precipitative downdrafts interfere with updrafts, hindering convective deepening. However, once clouds grow to sufficient depths, they may produce precipitation so strong that the associated downdrafts spread out laterally near the surface, forming a distinct circular region of cold air, a cold pool. The spreading of this cold pool can cause uplift at its edges, triggering new convection. Backward shear limits the triggering of such secondary convection at cold-pool fronts, while forward shear facilitates it. Finally, shear of any direction in the cloud layer weakens cloud updrafts through an enhanced downward-oriented pressure perturbation force. The limiting effect of wind shear on cloud depth also affects the thermodynamic properties of the cloud layer: The relative humidity is larger and its decrease near the trade-wind inversion is more distinct if clouds are shallower. Large-domain LES hindcasts of specific days during the NARVAL measurement campaigns (which took place in December 2013 and August 2016 in the North Atlantic trades) give a uniquely realistic and complete view on the momentum balance of the trade winds. The combined effect of advection resolved by the model — which here is interpreted as CMT — and unresolved small-scale turbulence is to decelerate the wind in a layer that extends from the surface up to a height of about 2 km in winter and 1 km in summer. However, the role of each term in the balance depends on the altitude. CMT itself acts to accelerate near-surface winds, and only due to strong small-scale turbulence, there is still an overall frictious force at this height. Halfway into the subcloud layer, CMT starts to act as a frictious force. This friction is strengthened by small-scale turbulence from cloud base upwards and quickly diminishes with height. Thus, the cumulus clouds themselves do not introduce significant friction at the altitude where the zonal trade-wind jet resides, which coincides with cloud base. In fact, combined with momentum transport against the wind gradient (counter-gradient momentum transport), they may help to sustain this jet. Overall, wind shear appears to be an important player in setting the typical structure of the trade-wind atmosphere by modulating the depth of convection and may thus even affect cloud-radiative effects. Conversely, convection and turbulence give rise to an overall frictious force on the trade winds. CMT alone acts to accelerate the winds near the surface, which may weaken the Hadley circulation, while in the cloud layer, CMT hardly affects the wind
stitch!: Lehrpersonenkommentar zum digitalen Lernmedium für Textiles Gestalten und Technisches Gestalten 1. bis 9. Klasse
No full textstitch! ist ein digitales Lehr- und Lernmedium für den zukunftsgerichteten TTG Unterricht. Es ist einzeln oder als Mehrfachlizenz für Klassen ab fünf Personen erhältlich. Mit einer Lehrpersonen-Ansicht und einer separaten Ansicht für Schülerinnen und Schüler, unterstützt stitch! alle individuell. stitch! bietet einen umfangreichen Katalog an stufenübergreifenden Erfindungen, welche die Schülerinnen und Schüler eigenständig mit Hilfe von Skills, klar definierten Verfahren und einem umfassenden Glossar erarbeiten können. Die Lehrperson fungiert als Administrator, Helfer und Initiator der verschiedenen Erfindungen. Mit stitch! können Lehrende Klassen verwalten, Erfindungen bewerten und sogar benoten. Umfangreiche Differenzierungsmöglichkeiten und Lehrpersonenkommentare bieten zusätzliche Unterstützung, um auf die individuellen Bedürfnisse der Schülerinnen und Schüler einzugehen. stitch! ist damit genau so einsetzbar, wie es die Lehrperson möchte. Ob Lerninsel, lineare Durchführung oder Projektarbeit, stitch! passt sich flexibel an
What Makes a Man?:Sexuality and Representation in Europe-Middle East Encounters
No full textQuestions about sexuality, gender, and religion in the East and West have dominated debates in Germany and other European countries since the beginning of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in the summer of 2015. Despite all claims as to the unprecedented nature of the displacement and its root causes, German media attention is becoming increasingly transfixed by an all-too-familiar construction of ‘oriental’ masculinity. Back in 2003, the Berlin-based ‘West-East Divan’, a project of the Working Group ‘Modernity and Islam’ (today EUME), initiated an author exchange between Rashid al-Daif from Beirut and Joachim Helfer from Berlin. Two books resulted from the encounter: al-Daif’s Awdat al-almani ila rushdih (The German’s Return to His Senses, 2005) and Helfer’s response Die Verschwulung der Welt (The Queering of the World, 2006). Both texts caused a heated debate at the time of their publication: al-Daif’s apparent homophobia seemed to have found a match in Helfer’s orientalism. Their exchange certainly complicated the assumption that an encounter between two intellectuals, two literary writers from different cultures would ultimately have to be able to dispel all intervening prejudices. A decade later, their remarkably candid debate crossed the Atlantic: in 2015, the English translation of the exchange was published with additional critical essays under the title What Makes A Man? Sex Talk between Beirut and Berlin. The workshop reassembles the original partners of the encounter – Helfer and al-Daif – and a larger group of critics from both sides of the Atlantic to explore the issues at stake. It will test the assumption that al-Daif and Helfer’s publications can help us carve out the cultural, literary, and media conditions in which narratives of gender and sexuality across cultural and religious differences and their critiques are developed
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