Investing in Emerging and Frontier Economies: How Blended Finance can make the most of public funding

Combating climate change and achieving the SDGs require vast investment in sustainable projects in developing countries, but the world is falling short.A crucial reason is that a rich source of funds is not being fully tapped into: the private sector, which is eager to significantly increase its sustainable investments, but is constrained by avoidable obstacles.Private investors face an unattractive risk-return nexus; they lack easy access to crucial information: e.g. which projects the public sector is planning that they could take part in, and what they entail.Exposure to the risks of investing in less mature markets, with insufficient insurance available, deters them as well.In this report, the Investor Leadership Network (ILN), whose members manage over USD 9 trillion of investments, offers solutions.It calls for better collaboration between public and private sectors to make blended finance (public/private investment partnerships) a driving force in this area.Compiled with the support of The Rockefeller Foundation, the report calls for a sea change in how multilateral development banks (MDBs), governments, foundations, and other public institutions see private-sector involvement

The Future of Our Seas: Marine scientists and creative professionals collaborate for science communication

To increase awareness of the current challenges facing the marine environment, the Future of Our Seas (FOOS) project brought together the expertise of scientists, public engagement experts and creatives to train and support a group of marine scientists in effective science communication and innovative public engagement. This case study aims to inspire scientists and artists to use the FOOS approach in training, activity design and development support (hereafter called the ‘FOOS programme’) to collaboratively deliver novel and creative engagement activities. The authors reflect on the experiences of the marine scientists: (1) attending the FOOS communication and engagement training; (2) creating and delivering public engagement activities; (3) understanding our audience; and (4) collaborating with artists. The authors also share what the artists and audiences learned from participating in the FOOS public engagement activities. These different perspectives provide new insights for the field with respect to designing collaborative training which maximizes the impact of the training on participants, creative collaborators and the public. Long-term benefits of taking part in the FOOS programme, such as initiating future collaborative engagement activities and positively impacting the scientists’ research processes, are also highlighted

A framework for human microbiome research

A variety of microbial communities and their genes (the microbiome) exist throughout the human body, with fundamental roles in human health and disease. The National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Human Microbiome Project Consortium has established a population-scale framework to develop metagenomic protocols, resulting in a broad range of quality-controlled resources and data including standardized methods for creating, processing and interpreting distinct types of high-throughput metagenomic data available to the scientific community. Here we present resources from a population of 242 healthy adults sampled at 15 or 18 body sites up to three times, which have generated 5,177 microbial taxonomic profiles from 16S ribosomal RNA genes and over 3.5 terabases of metagenomic sequence so far. In parallel, approximately 800 reference strains isolated from the human body have been sequenced. Collectively, these data represent the largest resource describing the abundance and variety of the human microbiome, while providing a framework for current and future studies

Structure, function and diversity of the healthy human microbiome

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2012. This article is posted here by permission of Nature Publishing Group. The definitive version was published in Nature 486 (2012): 207-214, doi:10.1038/nature11234.Studies of the human microbiome have revealed that even healthy individuals differ remarkably in the microbes that occupy habitats such as the gut, skin and vagina. Much of this diversity remains unexplained, although diet, environment, host genetics and early microbial exposure have all been implicated. Accordingly, to characterize the ecology of human-associated microbial communities, the Human Microbiome Project has analysed the largest cohort and set of distinct, clinically relevant body habitats so far. We found the diversity and abundance of each habitat’s signature microbes to vary widely even among healthy subjects, with strong niche specialization both within and among individuals. The project encountered an estimated 81–99% of the genera, enzyme families and community configurations occupied by the healthy Western microbiome. Metagenomic carriage of metabolic pathways was stable among individuals despite variation in community structure, and ethnic/racial background proved to be one of the strongest associations of both pathways and microbes with clinical metadata. These results thus delineate the range of structural and functional configurations normal in the microbial communities of a healthy population, enabling future characterization of the epidemiology, ecology and translational applications of the human microbiome.This research was supported in part by National Institutes of Health grants U54HG004969 to B.W.B.; U54HG003273 to R.A.G.; U54HG004973 to R.A.G., S.K.H. and J.F.P.; U54HG003067 to E.S.Lander; U54AI084844 to K.E.N.; N01AI30071 to R.L.Strausberg; U54HG004968 to G.M.W.; U01HG004866 to O.R.W.; U54HG003079 to R.K.W.; R01HG005969 to C.H.; R01HG004872 to R.K.; R01HG004885 to M.P.; R01HG005975 to P.D.S.; R01HG004908 to Y.Y.; R01HG004900 to M.K.Cho and P. Sankar; R01HG005171 to D.E.H.; R01HG004853 to A.L.M.; R01HG004856 to R.R.; R01HG004877 to R.R.S. and R.F.; R01HG005172 to P. Spicer.; R01HG004857 to M.P.; R01HG004906 to T.M.S.; R21HG005811 to E.A.V.; M.J.B. was supported by UH2AR057506; G.A.B. was supported by UH2AI083263 and UH3AI083263 (G.A.B., C. N. Cornelissen, L. K. Eaves and J. F. Strauss); S.M.H. was supported by UH3DK083993 (V. B. Young, E. B. Chang, F. Meyer, T. M. S., M. L. Sogin, J. M. Tiedje); K.P.R. was supported by UH2DK083990 (J. V.); J.A.S. and H.H.K. were supported by UH2AR057504 and UH3AR057504 (J.A.S.); DP2OD001500 to K.M.A.; N01HG62088 to the Coriell Institute for Medical Research; U01DE016937 to F.E.D.; S.K.H. was supported by RC1DE0202098 and R01DE021574 (S.K.H. and H. Li); J.I. was supported by R21CA139193 (J.I. and D. S. Michaud); K.P.L. was supported by P30DE020751 (D. J. Smith); Army Research Office grant W911NF-11-1-0473 to C.H.; National Science Foundation grants NSF DBI-1053486 to C.H. and NSF IIS-0812111 to M.P.; The Office of Science of the US Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231 for P.S. C.; LANL Laboratory-Directed Research and Development grant 20100034DR and the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency grants B104153I and B084531I to P.S.C.; Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) grant to K.F. and J.Raes; R.K. is an HHMI Early Career Scientist; Gordon&BettyMoore Foundation funding and institutional funding fromthe J. David Gladstone Institutes to K.S.P.; A.M.S. was supported by fellowships provided by the Rackham Graduate School and the NIH Molecular Mechanisms in Microbial Pathogenesis Training Grant T32AI007528; a Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of Canada Grant in Aid of Research to E.A.V.; 2010 IBM Faculty Award to K.C.W.; analysis of the HMPdata was performed using National Energy Research Scientific Computing resources, the BluBioU Computational Resource at Rice University

Removal of Siloxanes from Biogas

Economic utilisation of biogas arising from sewage sludge is hampered by the need to remove siloxanes, which damage gas engines upon combustion. This thesis applies on-line Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy to measure siloxanes in biogas upstream and downstream of the activated carbon vessels designed to adsorb siloxanes. On-line analysis provides accurate measurement of siloxane concentrations with a detection limit below the siloxane limits set by engine manufacturers, high data intensity and timely identification of breakthrough. Cost savings of up to £0.007 kWh- 1 may be realised compared to existing grab sampling. Using on-line analysis, the performance of full-scale and bench-scale carbon vessels were measured. Full-scale carbon contactors are typically operated at Reynold’s numbers close to the boundary between the laminar and transitional regimes (Re = 40 - 55). This thesis demonstrates, at full- and bench-scale, that increasing the Reynold’s number to site the adsorption process in the transitional regime increases media capacity, by 36% in dry gas and by 400% at 80% humidity. It is postulated that the change in gas velocity profile which occurs as Reynold’s number increases reduces the resistance to siloxane transport caused by gas and water films around the carbon particles, and therefore increases the rate of the overall adsorption process. In the laminar regime (Re = 31) increasing humidity from zero to 80% led to the classical stepwise reduction in adsorption capacity observed by other researchers, caused by the increasing thickness of the water film, but in the transitional regime (Re = 73) increasing humidity had no effect as no significant water film develops. It is therefore recommended that siloxane adsorption vessels should be designed to operate at Reynold’s numbers above 55. By choosing a high aspect ratio (tall and thin) both Reynold’s number and contact time can be optimised