Neo-humanism and COVID-19: Opportunities for a socially and environmentally sustainable world

A series of crises, culminating with COVID-19, shows that going "Beyond GDP" is urgently necessary. Social and environmental degradation are consequences of emphasizing GDP as a measure of progress. This degradation created the conditions for the COVID-19 pandemic and limited the efficacy of counter-measures. Additionally, rich countries did not fare much better during the pandemic than poor ones. COVID-19 thrived on inequalities and lack of cooperation. In this article, we leverage on defensive growth theory to explain the relationships between these factors, and we put forward the idea of neo-humanism, a cultural movement grounded on evidence from quality-of-life studies. The movement proposes a new culture leading towards a socially and environmentally sustainable future. Specifically, neo-humanism suggests that prioritizing well-being by, for instance promoting social relations, would benefit the environment, and enable collective action to address public issues. This, in turn, would positively affect productivity and health - among other behavioral outcomes - and thereby instill a virtuous cycle. Such a society would have been better endowed to cope with COVID-19, and possibly even prevented the pandemic. Neo-humanism proposes a world in which the well-being of people comes before the well-being of markets, in which promoting cooperation and social relations represents the starting point for better lives, and a peaceful and respectful coexistence with other species on Earth

Economic growth and well-being beyond the Easterlin paradox

Recent studies suggest that economic growth and well-being can grow together in the long run in presence of generous social safety nets, increasing social capital and declining income inequality. We put these conditions to a test in an attempt to explain the absence of a relation between economic growth and well-being in Luxembourg. To this aim we apply an error correction model to a panel of 15 Western European countries, and we use the results to predict life satisfaction in Luxembourg between 1991 and 2015. We find that the flat trend of life satisfaction in Luxembourg is likely the result of four forces acting in opposite directions. This suggests that the available list of moderating conditions -- although not exhaustive -- is a promising starting point to design new policies to durably improve well-being

Economic growth and well-being beyond the Easterlin paradox

Recent studies suggest that economic growth and well-being can grow together in the long run in presence of generous social safety nets, increasing social capital and declining income inequality. We put these conditions to a test in an attempt to explain the absence of a relation between economic growth and well-being in Luxembourg. To this aim we apply an error correction model to a panel of 15 Western European countries, and we use the results to predict life satisfaction in Luxembourg between 1991 and 2015. We find that the flat trend of life satisfaction in Luxembourg is likely the result of four forces acting in opposite directions. This suggests that the available list of moderating conditions -- although not exhaustive -- is a promising starting point to design new policies to durably improve well-being

Making economic growth and well-being compatible: evidence from Japan

Whether economic growth improves the human lot is a matter of conditions. We focus on Japan, a country where reforms in the mid-1990s shifted the country from a pattern of rampant economic growth and stagnant well-being, to one of modest growth and increasing well-being. We discuss the policy reforms and analyze the changes that explain the increase in well-being. In particular, we assess whether the factors that explain the increase are consistent with those expected from the reforms. We apply Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition to World Values Survey data. Results show that well-being increased due to improved conditions for elderly people, people with children, and women, in other words, the primary groups targeted by the reforms. We conclude that adopting a system of social safety nets contributes to make economic growth compatible with increasing well-being over time

Making economic growth and well-being compatible: evidence from Japan

Whether economic growth improves the human lot is a matter of conditions. We focus on Japan, a country where reforms in the mid-1990s shifted the country from a pattern of rampant economic growth and stagnant well-being, to one of modest growth and increasing well-being. We discuss the policy reforms and analyze the changes that explain the increase in well-being. In particular, we assess whether the factors that explain the increase are consistent with those expected from the reforms. We apply Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition to World Values Survey data. Results show that well-being increased due to improved conditions for elderly people, people with children, and women, in other words, the primary groups targeted by the reforms. We conclude that adopting a system of social safety nets contributes to make economic growth compatible with increasing well-being over time

Hard Two-Photon Contribution to Elastic Lepton-Proton Scattering: Determined by the OLYMPUS Experiment

The OLYMPUS collaboration reports on a precision measurement of the positron-proton to electron-proton elastic cross section ratio, $R_{2\gamma}$, a direct measure of the contribution of hard two-photon exchange to the elastic cross section. In the OLYMPUS measurement, 2.01~GeV electron and positron beams were directed through a hydrogen gas target internal to the DORIS storage ring at DESY. A toroidal magnetic spectrometer instrumented with drift chambers and time-of-flight scintillators detected elastically scattered leptons in coincidence with recoiling protons over a scattering angle range of $\approx 20\degree$ to $80\degree$. The relative luminosity between the two beam species was monitored using tracking telescopes of interleaved GEM and MWPC detectors at $12\degree$, as well as symmetric M{\o}ller/Bhabha calorimeters at $1.29\degree$. A total integrated luminosity of 4.5~fb$^{-1}$ was collected. In the extraction of $R_{2\gamma}$, radiative effects were taken into account using a Monte Carlo generator to simulate the convolutions of internal bremsstrahlung with experiment-specific conditions such as detector acceptance and reconstruction efficiency. The resulting values of $R_{2\gamma}$, presented here for a wide range of virtual photon polarization $0.456<\epsilon<0.978$, are smaller than some hadronic two-photon exchange calculations predict, but are in reasonable agreement with a subtracted dispersion model and a phenomenological fit to the form factor data.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 2 table

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente

Search for chargino-neutralino production with mass splittings near the electroweak scale in three-lepton final states in √s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for supersymmetry through the pair production of electroweakinos with mass splittings near the electroweak scale and decaying via on-shell W and Z bosons is presented for a three-lepton final state. The analyzed proton-proton collision data taken at a center-of-mass energy of √s=13  TeV were collected between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139  fb−1. A search, emulating the recursive jigsaw reconstruction technique with easily reproducible laboratory-frame variables, is performed. The two excesses observed in the 2015–2016 data recursive jigsaw analysis in the low-mass three-lepton phase space are reproduced. Results with the full data set are in agreement with the Standard Model expectations. They are interpreted to set exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level on simplified models of chargino-neutralino pair production for masses up to 345 GeV

Epidemiology of Escherichia coli bacteraemia in England: results of an enhanced sentinel surveillance programme

Background: Escherichia coli causes over one third of the bacteraemia cases in England each year, and the incidence of these infections is increasing. Aim: To determine the underlying risk factors associated with E. coli bacteraemia. Methods: A three month enhanced sentinel surveillance study involving 35 National Health Service hospitals was undertaken in the winter of 2012/13 to collect risk factor information and further details on the underlying source of infection to augment data already collected by the English national surveillance programme. Antimicrobial susceptibility results for E. coli isolated from blood and urine were also collected. Findings: A total of 1,731 cases of E. coli bacteraemia were included. The urogenital tract was the most commonly reported source of infection (51.2% of cases) with prior treatment for a urinary tract infection being the largest independent effect associated with this infection source. Half of all patients had prior healthcare exposure in the month prior to the bacteraemia with antimicrobial therapy and urinary catheterisation being reported in one third and one fifth of these patients. Prior healthcare exposure was associated with a higher proportion of antibiotic non-susceptibility in the blood culture isolates (P=0.001). Conclusion: Analysis of risk factors suggests potential community and hospital-related interventions particularly better use of urinary catheters and improved antibiotic management of urinary tract infections. As part of the latter strategy, antibiotic resistance profiles need to be closely monitored to ensure treatment guidelines are up to date to limit inappropriate empiric therapy