Valuing the attributes of renewable energy investments in Scotland

This study was funded by a grant from the Scottish Economic Policy Network (SEPN) with funding assistance provided by the University of Glasgow, Department of Economics (Professor Nick Hanley) and the University of Sterling (Robert Wright). The goal of the project was to determine the value of differing types of renewable energy projects by how they would effect environmental and community quality of life factors. The key issues examined include; air quality, landscape, wildlife, and long term local employment. Stated preference methods were employed through the use of a discrete choice experiment survey approach. Willingness-to-pay for different types of renewable energy projects was estimated, i.e., moderate onshore windmill farms, large onshore windmill farms, offshore windmill farms, and biomass fueled power plants. The most significant findings were that rural areas likely to be most highly impacted by the new energy projects were willing to accept low or moderate environmental damage in exchange for commercial development gains. Urban respondents on the other hand were more likely to oppose any disturbance to the landscape or wildlife and had no value placed on the economics development gains for the rural areas; income level of households showed no significant difference in environmental values

An extension and application of the Leontief pollution model for waste generation and disposal in Scotland

Solid waste generation, treatment and disposal are important policy concerns for the Scottish Parliament. As a result of the Environment Act 1995, a National Waste Strategy for Scotland was introduced with the general aim of reducing the amount of waste produced and dealing with what is produced in more sustainable ways. This implies the need for an empirical framework to inform policymakers regarding the relationship between economic activity and waste generation, treatment and disposal and the likely impacts of any policy actions or other disturbances on all types of sustainability indicators. In this paper we report on a study to develop an extended input-output (IO) system of the type originally proposed in the seminal paper by Leontief (1970). This involves extending the standard IOaccounts to take account of pollution or waste generation as an additional output accompanying production and consumption activities in the economy and of the activity required to clean up (or prevent) these unwanted outputs. The extension of IO tables to take account of pollution/waste generation is relatively widespread in the literature. It is usually achieved through the introduction of physical pollution/waste-output coefficients, and has been previously applied to Scotland for the case ofair pollution (see McNicoll & Blackmore, 1993, McGregor et al, 2001). Such an approach allows us to examine the impact of the economy on the environment, in terms of the amount of pollution/waste emitted as a result of economic activity. However, it does not allow us to track the feedback from the environment to the economy in terms of the resources used in environmental cleaning. If we areinterested in this aspect, we need to identify the input structure of any pollution abatement or waste disposal activities and identify columns in the IO tables representing cleaning activities

We want to sort! Assessing households' preferences for sorting waste

Support of Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education as well as Foundation for Polish Science is gratefully acknowledged.There are two major ways in which solid waste can be sorted and recycled - at the household level, when households are required to sort waste into a given number of categories, or in specialised sorting facilities. Traditionally, it has been thought that sorting at the household level is an inconvenience, as it uses space and requires time and effort. Our study provides empirical evidence to the contrary, indicating that home sorting is a net source of utility for some people. Through a carefully designed choice experiment we collected stated choices from members of a Polish municipality with respect to the way their waste is sorted and how often it is collected. In the hypothetical scenario employed, respondents were informed that waste will be sorted anyway - if not at the household level then at a specialised sorting facility. Interestingly, analysis shows that a large group of people are willing to sort waste at the household level even if unsorted waste would be collected at no extra cost. For a minority, increased home sorting of waste would, however, impose a loss of utility. Overall, our results indicate that most respondents preferred to sort waste themselves if given the choice. We provide a few possible explanations of this perhaps surprising result, including the desire to promote a green external image, and a concern about the effectiveness of separation activities performed by others.PostprintPeer reviewe

The Man Who Mistook His Neuropsychologist For a Popstar: When Configural Processing Fails in Acquired Prosopagnosia

We report the case of an individual with acquired prosopagnosia who experiences extreme difficulties in recognizing familiar faces in everyday life despite excellent object recognition skills. Formal testing indicates that he is also severely impaired at remembering pre-experimentally unfamiliar faces and that he takes an extremely long time to identify famous faces and to match unfamiliar faces. Nevertheless, he performs as accurately and quickly as controls at identifying inverted familiar and unfamiliar faces and can recognize famous faces from their external features. He also performs as accurately as controls at recognizing famous faces when fracturing conceals the configural information in the face. He shows evidence of impaired global processing but normal local processing of Navon figures. This case appears to reflect the clearest example yet of an acquired prosopagnosic patient whose familiar face recognition deficit is caused by a severe configural processing deficit in the absence of any problems in featural processing. These preserved featural skills together with apparently intact visual imagery for faces allow him to identify a surprisingly large number of famous faces when unlimited time is available. The theoretical implications of this pattern of performance for understanding the nature of acquired prosopagnosia are discussed.DY, Avery Braun, Jacob Waite, and Nadine Wanke, Bruno Rossion, Thomas Busigny and the grant awarded by AJ by the Experimental Psychology Society (EPS

The impact of information provision on agglomeration bonus performance : an experimental study on local networks

This research was funded by the European Investment Bank (EIB) under the EIB-University Research Action ProgrammeThe agglomeration bonus is an incentive mechanism to induce adjacent landowners to spatially coordinate their land use for the delivery of ecosystem services from farmland. This paper uses laboratory experiments to explore the performance of the agglomeration bonus in achieving the socially optimal land management configuration in a local network environment where the information available to subjects varies and the strategic setting is unfavorable for efficient coordination. The experiments indicate that if subjects are informed about both their direct and indirect neighbors' actions, they are more likely to produce the socially optimal configuration. Thus effectiveness of the policy can be improved by implementing information dissemination exercises among landowners. However given the adverse strategic setting, increased game experience leads to coordination failure and optimal land choices only at the localized level independent of the information available to subjects. Thus success of the agglomeration bonus scheme on real landscapes will have to take account of the roles of both information and experience on participant behavior.PostprintPeer reviewe

Trust-based work-time and product improvements: Evidence from firm level data

We explore whether the introduction of trust based working hours is related to the subsequent innovation performance of firms. Employing a panel data set of over 5,000 German establishments, we implement a propensity score matching approach where we only consider firms that did not use trust based work contracts initially. Our results show that firms which adopt such contracts tend to be between 11 to 14 percent more likely to improve products. These results hold when we control for another form of flexible time work arrangements, namely working time accounts. Thus, the positive relationship between the adoption of trust based working hours and innovation seems to be driven by the degree of control and self-management over working days, rather than by merely allowing time flexibility

Developing measures for valuing changes in biodiversity

This document reports the findings from the DEFRA funded research project 'Developing measures for valuing changes in biodiversity'. The aim of the research was to develop an appropriate framework that will enable cost-effective and robust valuations of the total economic value of changes to biodiversity in the UK countryside. The research involved a review of ecological and economic literature on the valuation of biodiversity changes. The information gathered from this review, along with the findings from a series of public focus groups and an expert review of valuation methodologies, were used to develop a suite of valuation instruments that were used to measure the economic value of different aspects of biodiversity. Contingent valuation and choice experiment studies were administered to households in Cambridgeshire and Northumberland, while valuation workshops were conducted in Northumberland only. The data from these studies were also used to test for benefits transfer

Particle Impact Analysis of Bulk Powder During Pneumatic Conveyance

Fragmentation of powders during transportation is a common problem for manufacturers of food and pharmaceutical products. We illustrate that the primary cause of breakage is due to inter-particle collisions, rather than particle-wall impacts, and provide a statistical mechanics model giving the number of collisions resulting in fragmentation

Insulin clearance and the incidence of type 2 diabetes in Hispanics and African Americans: the IRAS Family Study.

ObjectiveWe aimed to identify factors that are independently associated with the metabolic clearance rate of insulin (MCRI) and to examine the association of MCRI with incident type 2 diabetes in nondiabetic Hispanics and African Americans.Research design and methodsWe investigated 1,116 participants in the Insulin Resistance Atherosclerosis Study (IRAS) Family Study with baseline examinations from 2000 to 2002 and follow-up examinations from 2005 to 2006. Insulin sensitivity (S(I)), acute insulin response (AIR), and MCRI were determined at baseline from frequently sampled intravenous glucose tolerance tests. MCRI was calculated as the ratio of the insulin dose over the incremental area under the curve of insulin. Incident diabetes was defined as fasting glucose ≥126 mg/dL or antidiabetic medication use by self-report.ResultsWe observed that S(I) and HDL cholesterol were independent positive correlates of MCRI, whereas fasting insulin, fasting glucose, subcutaneous adipose tissue, visceral adipose tissue, and AIR were independent negative correlates (all P < 0.05) at baseline. After 5 years of follow-up, 71 (6.4%) participants developed type 2 diabetes. Lower MCRI was associated with a higher risk of incident diabetes after adjusting for demographics, lifestyle factors, HDL cholesterol, indexes of obesity and adiposity, and insulin secretion (odds ratio 2.01 [95% CI 1.30-3.10], P = 0.0064, per one-SD decrease in loge-transformed MCRI).ConclusionsOur data showed that lower MCRI predicts the incidence of type 2 diabetes

Analysis of lower limb internal kinetics and electromyography in elite race walking.

The aim of this study was to analyse lower limb joint moments, powers and electromyography patterns in elite race walking. Twenty international male and female race walkers performed at their competitive pace in a laboratory setting. The collection of ground reaction forces (1000 Hz) was synchronised with two-dimensional high-speed videography (100 Hz) and electromyography of seven lower limb muscles (1000 Hz). As well as measuring key performance variables such as speed and stride length, normalised joint moments and powers were calculated. The rule in race walking which requires the knee to be extended from initial contact to midstance effectively made the knee redundant during stance with regard to energy generation. Instead, the leg functioned as a rigid lever which affected the role of the hip and ankle joints. The main contributors to energy generation were the hip extensors during late swing and early stance, and the ankle plantarflexors during late stance. The restricted functioning of the knee during stance meant that the importance of the swing leg in contributing to forward momentum was increased. The knee flexors underwent a phase of great energy absorption during the swing phase and this could increase the risk of injury to the hamstring muscles