Enhancing Adaptation to Climate Change by Integrating Climate Risk into Long-Term Development Plans and Disaster Management

Extreme weather events affect vulnerable urban areas adversely, with substantial damage, disruption of normal economic and social activities and services and loss of human life and can also alter the medium or long-term development trajectory of the cities. Thus, disaster management is an important context for integrating adaptation into decision-making for the cities at risk. The APNfunded research project in Mumbai, Bangkok and Manila has been undertaken with the primary objective of identifying and measuring the short to medium-term impacts and responses to extreme weather events and their policy implications for long-term adaptation capacity and development planning for the cities. The project includes analysis of primary and secondary data to measure the physical, economic and social losses in the case study cities. We also examine the short to mediumterm responses from the local government and citizens and evaluate if they enhance the adaptation capacity of the cities to cope with future weather events and flood risks. This analysis has policy implications for disaster management, city resilience and adaptive capacity of the cities in the longterm. The project is particularly relevant to the selected cities belonging to the developing world where natural disasters have long-term implications for development and poverty alleviation

Poverty eradication in a carbon constrained world

Partial funding for Open Access provided by the UMD Libraries' Open Access Publishing Fund.The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change aims to keep warming below 2 °C while recognizing developing countries’ right to eradicate extreme poverty. Poverty eradication is also the first of the Sustainable Development Goals. This paper investigates potential consequences for climate targets of achieving poverty eradication. We find that eradicating extreme poverty, i.e., moving people to an income above $1.9 purchasing power parity (PPP) a day, does not jeopardize the climate target even in the absence of climate policies and with current technologies. On the other hand, bringing everybody to a still modest expenditure level of at least$2.97 PPP would have long-term consequences on achieving emission targets. Compared to the reference mitigation pathway, eradicating extreme poverty increases the effort by 2.8% whereas bringing everybody to at least $2.97 PPP would increase the required mitigation rate by 27%. Given that the top 10% global income earners are responsible for 36% of the current carbon footprint of households; the discourse should address income distribution and the carbon intensity of lifestyles

Impacts of extreme weather events and implications for adaptation planning for coastal cities

This paper describes research undertaken in three coastal cities of Asia: Mumbai, Bangkok, and Manila, to assess physical, economic and social impacts of massive floods and impacts of extreme weather events in these cities. The focus is on estimating uninsured losses – which normally are not accounted for. Survey information has been supplemented with secondary data to identify damage to property and infrastructure, damage to stocks such as physical capital and inventory, and indirect impacts on investment, employment and disruption of essential services. The findings have significant policy implications for integrating adaptation strategies for coastal cities

Guidance Document: Good Academic Research Practices

Public trust in research and its output is essential for a healthy modern society. Although the research enterprise is self- correcting, this self-regulation occasionally needs help. Over the years, research institutions, professional societies, and governments have established several protocols, codes of conduct, norms, and principles to enhance that trust in research institutions, funders, producers, publishers, and products

Conservation organizations need to consider adaptive capacity: why local input matters

Conservation organizations are increasingly applying adaptive capacity assessments in response to escalating climate change impacts. These assessments are essential to identify climate risks to ecosystems, prioritize management interventions, maximize the effectiveness of conservation actions, and ensure conservation resources are allocated appropriately. Despite an extensive literature on the topic, there is little agreement on the most relevant factors needed to support local scale initiatives, and additional guidance is needed to clarify how adaptive capacity should be assessed. This article discusses why adaptive capacity assessment represents a critical tool supporting conservation planning and management. It also evaluates key factors guiding conservation NGOs conducting these assessments in tropical island communities, and explores alternative priorities based on input from academic experts and key local stakeholders. Our results demonstrate that important differences exist between local stakeholders and nonlocal academic experts on key factors affecting adaptation and coping mechanisms. The exclusion of local community input affects the validity of adaptive capacity assessment findings, and has significant implications for the prioritization and effectiveness of conservation strategies and funding allocation

IPCC Workshop on Describing Scientific Uncertainties in Climate Change to Support Analysis of Risk and of Options

This report summarizes an IPCC workshop which was convened to discuss how to communicate areas of risk and uncertainty in the 4th IPCC Assessment Report

Rapid dissection and model-based optimization of inducible enhancers in human cells using a massively parallel reporter assay

Learning to read and write the transcriptional regulatory code is of central importance to progress in genetic analysis and engineering. Here we describe a massively parallel reporter assay (MPRA) that facilitates the systematic dissection of transcriptional regulatory elements. In MPRA, microarray-synthesized DNA regulatory elements and unique sequence tags are cloned into plasmids to generate a library of reporter constructs. These constructs are transfected into cells and tag expression is assayed by high-throughput sequencing. We apply MPRA to compare >27,000 variants of two inducible enhancers in human cells: a synthetic cAMP-regulated enhancer and the virus-inducible interferon-β enhancer. We first show that the resulting data define accurate maps of functional transcription factor binding sites in both enhancers at single-nucleotide resolution. We then use the data to train quantitative sequence-activity models (QSAMs) of the two enhancers. We show that QSAMs from two cellular states can be combined to design enhancer variants that optimize potentially conflicting objectives, such as maximizing induced activity while minimizing basal activity.National Human Genome Research Institute (U.S.) (grant R01HG004037)National Science Foundation (U.S.) ((NSF) grant PHY-0957573)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF grant PHY-1022140)Broad Institut

Topical capsaicin for pain management: therapeutic potential and mechanisms of action of the new high-concentration capsaicin 8% patch

Topical capsaicin formulations are used for pain management. Safety and modest efficacy of low-concentration capsaicin formulations, which require repeated daily self-administration, are supported by meta-analyses of numerous studies. A high-concentration capsaicin 8% patch (Qutenza™) was recently approved in the EU and USA. A single 60-min application in patients with neuropathic pain produced effective pain relief for up to 12 weeks. Advantages of the high-concentration capsaicin patch include longer duration of effect, patient compliance, and low risk for systemic effects or drug–drug interactions. The mechanism of action of topical capsaicin has been ascribed to depletion of substance P. However, experimental and clinical studies show that depletion of substance P from nociceptors is only a correlate of capsaicin treatment and has little, if any, causative role in pain relief. Rather, topical capsaicin acts in the skin to attenuate cutaneous hypersensitivity and reduce pain by a process best described as ‘defunctionalization’ of nociceptor fibres. Defunctionalization is due to a number of effects that include temporary loss of membrane potential, inability to transport neurotrophic factors leading to altered phenotype, and reversible retraction of epidermal and dermal nerve fibre terminals. Peripheral neuropathic hypersensitivity is mediated by diverse mechanisms, including altered expression of the capsaicin receptor TRPV1 or other key ion channels in affected or intact adjacent peripheral nociceptive nerve fibres, aberrant re-innervation, and collateral sprouting, all of which are defunctionalized by topical capsaicin. Evidence suggests that the utility of topical capsaicin may extend beyond painful peripheral neuropathies

Gene activation by metazoan enhancers: diverse mechanisms stimulate distinct steps of transcription

Enhancers can stimulate transcription by a number of different mechanisms which control different stages of the transcription cycle of their target genes, from recruitment of the transcription machinery to elongation by RNA polymerase. These mechanisms may not be mutually exclusive, as a single enhancer may act through different pathways by binding multiple transcription factors. Multiple enhancers may also work together to regulate transcription of a shared target gene. Most of the evidence supporting different enhancer mechanisms comes from the study of single genes, but new high-throughput experimental frameworks offer the opportunity to integrate and generalize disparate mechanisms identified at single genes. This effort is especially important if we are to fully understand how sequence variation within enhancers contributes to human disease