Ecosystem Services – Theories and Applications: Opportunities for Humanity to Regain Paradise

Ecosystem services, the benefits humans derive from nature, represents a radical departure in our perception of linked environmental and social problems and the actions we need to undertake to address those urgent challenges. Due to its increasingly widespread policy prominence, understanding and appraising its conceptual and practical benefits whilst at the same time acknowledging its potential pitfalls represents an important endeavour. Comprising seven parts and sixteen chapters, the first five parts of the thesis outline the main environmental and social challenges we face, presenting the core foundations, contemporary debates and developments in ecosystem services scholarship, whilst also underlining its increasing coalescence with sustainability discourse. In Part 6 we focus on a key application of ecosystem services with respect to its translation into incentive-based environmental management schemes, namely: payment for ecosystem service programmes and agri-environment schemes. We present a systematic global analysis of payment for ecosystem services programmes, highlighting the successes and challenges they face, whilst also providing an approach to improve their design and evaluation as a route to maximise their effectiveness. Turning our attention to a globally significant ecosystem, the thesis assesses the prospects for jointly developing seagrass Blue Carbon initiatives and payment for ecosystem service schemes, arguing that complementing these activities would produce significant climate, conservation and livelihood benefits. Switching contexts, from focusing on incentive schemes primarily in operation in developing countries to those designed to balance productivity and conservation matters in the agricultural sector of developed countries – the thesis explores the stakeholder and institutional factors affecting agri-environment scheme operation and implementation through the eyes of key operatives. Finally, in Part 7, I argue that a landscape framing and approach to ecosystem services provides an effective route to improve environmental management decision-making and policy as well as comprehensively addressing the linkages between ecosystem services and human-wellbeing

Spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in the linked cluster expansion

We investigate dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in the Coulomb gauge Hamiltonian QCD. Within the framework of the linked cluster expansion we extend the BCS ansatz for the vacuum and include correlation beyond the quark-antiquark paring. In particular we study the effects of the three-body correlations involving quark-antiquark and transverse gluons. The high momentum behavior of the resulting gap equation is discussed and numerical computation of the chiral symmetry breaking is presented.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure

Nonperturbative Renormalization and the QCD Vacuum

We present a self consistent approach to Coulomb gauge Hamiltonian QCD which allows one to relate single gluon spectral properties to the long range behavior of the confining interaction. Nonperturbative renormalization is discussed. The numerical results are in good agreement with phenomenological and lattice forms of the static potential.Comment: 23 pages in RevTex, 4 postscript figure

Special relativity constraints on the effective constituent theory of hybrids

We consider a simplified constituent model for relativistic strong-interaction decays of hybrid mesons. The model is constructed using rules of renormalization group procedure for effective particles in light-front quantum field theory, which enables us to introduce low-energy phenomenological parameters. Boost covariance is kinematical and special relativity constraints are reduced to the requirements of rotational symmetry. For a hybrid meson decaying into two mesons through dissociation of a constituent gluon into a quark-anti-quark pair, the simplified constituent model leads to a rotationally symmetric decay amplitude if the hybrid meson state is made of a constituent gluon and a quark-anti-quark pair of size several times smaller than the distance between the gluon and the pair, as if the pair originated from one gluon in a gluonium state in the same effective theory.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure

Remarks on the Causality, Unitarity and Supersymmetric Extension of the Lorentz and CPT-Violating Maxwell-Chern-Simons Model

The gauge-invariant Chern-Simons-type Lorentz- and CPT-breaking term is here re-assessed and issues like causality, unitarity, spontaneous gauge-symmetry breaking are investigated. Moreover, we obtain a minimal extension of such a system to a supersymmetric environment. We comment on resulting peculiar self-couplings for the gauge sector, as well as on background contribution for gaugino masses.Comment: 5 pages, NPB style, talk presented at "Renormalization Group and Anomalies in Gravity and Cosmology", Ouro Preto, Brazil, March 200

Coulomb Gauge QCD, Confinement, and the Constituent Representation

Quark confinement and the genesis of the constituent quark model are examined in nonperturbative QCD in Coulomb gauge. We employ a self-consistent method to construct a quasiparticle basis and to determine the quasiparticle interaction. The results agree remarkably well with lattice computations. They also illustrate the mechanism by which confinement and constituent quarks emerge, provide support for the Gribov-Zwanziger confinement scenario, clarify several perplexing issues in the constituent quark model, and permit the construction of an improved model of low energy QCD.Comment: 43 pages, 14 figures, revtex, uses psfig.st

Dual embedding of the Lorentz-violating electrodinamics and Batalin-Vilkovisky quantization

Modifications of the electromagnetic Maxwell Lagrangian in four dimensions have been considered by some authors. One may include an explicit massive term (Proca) and a topological but not Lorentz-invariant term within certain observational limits. We find the dual-corresponding gauge invariant version of this theory by using the recently suggested gauge embedding method. We enforce this dualisation procedure by showing that, in many cases, this is actually a constructive method to find a sort of parent action, which manifestly establishes duality. We also use the gauge invariant version of this theory to formulate a Batalin-Vilkovisky quantization and present a detailed discussion on the excitation spectrum.Comment: 8 page

Classical Solutions in a Lorentz-violating Maxwell-Chern-Simons Electrodynamics

We take as starting point the planar model arising from the dimensional reduction of the Maxwell Electrodynamics with the (Lorentz-violating) Carroll-Field-Jackiw term. We then write and study the extended Maxwell equations and the corresponding wave equations for the potentials. The solution to these equations show some interesting deviations from the usual MCS Electrodynamics, with background-dependent correction terms. In the case of a time-like background, the correction terms dominate over the MCS sector in the region far from the origin, and establish the behaviour of a massless Electrodynamics (in the electric sector). In the space-like case, the solutions indicate the clear manifestation of spatial anisotropy, which is consistent with the existence of a privileged direction is space.Comment: latex, 8 page

Hybrid Decays

The heavy quark expansion of Quantum Chromodynamics and the strong coupling flux tube picture of nonperturbative glue are employed to develop the phenomenology of hybrid meson decays. The decay mechanism explicitly couples gluonic degrees of freedom to the pair produced quarks and hence does not obey the well known, but model-dependent, selection rule which states that hybrids do not decay to pairs of L=0 mesons. However, the nonperturbative nature of gluonic excitations in the flux tube picture leads to a new selection rule: light hybrids do not decay to pairs of identical mesons. New features of the model are highlighted and partial widths are presented for several low lying hybrid states.Comment: 13 pages, 1 table, revte

A noninvasive multi-analyte diagnostic assay: Combining protein and DNA markers to stratify bladder cancer patients

Purpose: The authors recently reported the development of a noninvasive diagnostic assay using urinary matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) as monitors of disease-free status and bladder cancer in high-risk populations. Using an approach called clinical intervention determining diagnostic (CIDD), they identified with high confidence those patients who could be excluded from additional intervention. To maximize performance, MMPs were combined with DNAbased markers and CIDD was applied to a population of patients undergoing monitoring for recurrence. Patients and methods: Urine samples were obtained from 323 patients, 48 of whom had a recurrence and 275 of whom did not have cancer upon cytoscopic evaluation. Twist1 and Nid2 methylation status was determined using methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction, FGFR3 mutational status by quantitative PCR, and MMP levels by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results: Using a combination of these DNA and protein markers, the authors identified with high confidence (97% negative predicted value) those patients who do not have cancer. Cutoffs were adjusted such that at 92% sensitivity, 51% of disease-free patients might be triaged from receiving further tests. Conclusion: The multi-analyte diagnostic readout assay described here is the first to combine protein and DNA biomarkers into one assay for optimal clinical performance. Using this approach, the detection of FGFR3 mutations and Twist1 and Nid2 methylation in the urine of patients undergoing bladder cancer recurrence screening increase the sensitivity and negative predictive value at an established MMP protein cutoff. This noninvasive urinary diagnostic assay could lead to the more efficient triage of patients undergoing recurrence monitoring