Comparing their outcomes

Regulating children’s and adolescents’ access to video games appeared on the agenda of media lawmakers from the 1990s on. Approaches in western democracies have largely followed the approach of industry self-regulation, resulting in a diverse set of different types of self-regulation systems. This study applies a comparative perspective on the actual rating practices, asking how far regulation systems differ systematically and how far these differences might lead to different rating decisions. The study analyzes both the set-up of three major western regulation systems (the German USK, the pan-European PEGI and the US ESRB) and the actual rating decisions in each of the three systems relying on secondary data at the aggregate level, individual rating decisions for 182 top-selling titles and a list of favorite video games of 744 adolescents in the US and Germany. Findings illustrate that each system has a distinct focus, according to which it regulates different video game use more strongly than the other systems

The Influence of the Vertical Distribution of Emissions on Tropospheric Chemistry

The atmospheric chemistry general circulation model EMAC (ECHAM5/MESSy atmospheric chemistry) is used to investigate the effect of height dependent emissions on tropospheric chemistry. In a sensitivity simulation, anthropogenic and biomass burning emissions are released in the lowest model layer. The resulting tracer distributions are compared to those of a former simulation applying height dependent emissions. Although the differences between the two simulations in the free troposphere are small (less than 5%), large differences are present in polluted regions at the surface, in particular for NOx (more than 100%), CO (up to 30%) and non-methane hydrocarbons (up to 30%), whereas for OH the differences at the same locations are somewhat lower (15%). Global ozone formation is virtually unaffected by the choice of the vertical distribution of emissions. Nevertheless, local ozone changes can be up to 30%. Model results of both simulations are further compared to observations from field campaigns and to data from measurement stations.JRC.H.2 - Climate chang

A crosscultural analysis of elderly people’s morality in interactive media

This study examines elderly people’s innate moral foundations in influencing decisions, and their subsequent enjoyment in an interactive media environment. The Moral Foundation Questionnaire was used to distinguish between the moral intuitions of elderly US and German respondents, who were believed to have divergent yet stable moral codes that would be salient in a novel virtual world. In an experimental design, participants (N=116) were confronted with a computer simulation in which they could decide to violate or uphold each of five moral intuitions. Germans and Americans differed in their moral foundations, yet for both groups higher moral salience led to a decrease in decisions to commit moral violations in a virtual world. Results for enjoyment were mixed

What Can 14CO Measurements Tell Us about OH?

The possible use of 14CO measurements to constrain hydroxyl radical (OH) concentrations in the atmosphere is investigated. 14CO is mainly produced in the upper atmosphere from cosmic radiation. Measurements of 14CO at the surface show lower concentrations compared to the upper atmospheric source region, which is the result of oxidation by OH. In this paper, the sensitivity of 14CO mixing ratio surface measurements to the 3-D OH distribution is assessed with the TM5 model. Simulated 14CO mixing ratios agree within a few molecules 14COcm-3 (STP) with existing measurements at five locations worldwide. The simulated cosmogenic 14CO distribution appears mainly sensitive to the assumed upper atmospheric 14C source function, and to a lesser extend to model resolution. As a next step, the sensitivity of 14CO measurements to OH is calculated with the adjoint TM5 model. The results indicate that 14CO measurements taken in the tropics are sensitive to OH in a spatially confined region that varies strongly over time due to meteorological variability. Given measurements with an accuracy of 0.5 molecules 14COcm-3 STP, a good characterization of the cosmogenic 14CO fraction, and assuming perfect transport modeling, a single 14CO measurement may constrain OH to 0.2¿0.3×106 moleculesOHcm-3 on time scales of 6 months and spatial scales of 70×70 degrees (latitude×longitude) between the surface and 500 hPa. The sensitivity of 14CO measurements to high latitude OH is about a factor of five higher. This is in contrast with methyl chloroform (MCF) measurements, which show the highest sensitivity to tropical OH, mainly due to the temperature dependent rate constant of the MCF¿OH reaction. A logical next step will be the analysis of existing 14CO measurements in an inverse modeling framework. This paper presents the required mathematical framework for such an analysis.JRC.H.2-Climate chang