Laser spectroscopy for breath analysis : towards clinical implementation

Detection and analysis of volatile compounds in exhaled breath represents an attractive tool for monitoring the metabolic status of a patient and disease diagnosis, since it is non-invasive and fast. Numerous studies have already demonstrated the benefit of breath analysis in clinical settings/applications and encouraged multidisciplinary research to reveal new insights regarding the origins, pathways, and pathophysiological roles of breath components. Many breath analysis methods are currently available to help explore these directions, ranging from mass spectrometry to laser-based spectroscopy and sensor arrays. This review presents an update of the current status of optical methods, using near and mid-infrared sources, for clinical breath gas analysis over the last decade and describes recent technological developments and their applications. The review includes: tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy, cavity ring-down spectroscopy, integrated cavity output spectroscopy, cavity-enhanced absorption spectroscopy, photoacoustic spectroscopy, quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy, and optical frequency comb spectroscopy. A SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) is presented that describes the laser-based techniques within the clinical framework of breath research and their appealing features for clinical use.Peer reviewe

Policy as warrant : environment and development in the Himalayan region

For more about the East-West Center, see http://www.eastwestcenter.org/Much of the environmental policy process in the Himalayan-Hindu Kush (HKH) region occurs at interfaces between international agendas promoted by various actors and national governments. These interfaces are frontiers of negotiation, skirmishing, and compromise, becoming a confused space for different development fashions (e.g. economic approaches to the environment, community natural resource management, democratization of policy making, the livelihoods approach or a retrenched and militarized "fortress conservation"). These fashions engage with a range of national policies, politics, administrative capacities and local institutions. There are many analytical tools for understanding policymaking and here we introduce the notion of "warrant" which combines four elements - the claim (based on, for example, scientific knowledge or human rights), the positionality of the warrant maker, its audience (as represented by actors in the political network) and the warrant outcome. It is considered alongside some other approaches to understanding the policy process and its usefulness is evaluated as an overarching framework for not only understanding but also improving the negotiation process in policy making. This is explained with illustrations of policy making in the Himalayan region. Lastly, elements of a future research agenda are proposed

The politics of environmental policy with a Himalayan example

For more about the East-West Center, see http://www.eastwestcenter.org/How we arrive at knowledge and how we draw on knowledge to make policy have been the subject of vigorous debate and analysis. Simple models of expertise and action are gradually yielding to a more complex vision of how truth speaks to power and power talks back. The Himalayan region where scientists, statesmen, and citizens confront a unique set of environmental challenges and political legacies provides a powerful case study. For more than a century, it was believed that over-use by local farmers and pastoralists threatened fragile mountain and river environments. Beginning in the colonial era and continuing into the present, governments have strictly curtailed traditional land-use practices. In the 1980s, scholars began to question the science on which those restrictive laws were based. But new science has not, in most cases, led to new policy. This disconnect inspires questions about the nature of both science and policy, their influence on each other, and whether each could benefit from greater openness to the insights of people who fall outside the narrow roles of expert and politician

Implementing Multilateral Environmental Agreements: An Analysis of EU Directives

While a number of different theoretical models have been advanced to explain why states implement-or, indeed, do not implement-multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), very little empirical work has been undertaken to validate their predictions. With a view to narrowing this gap, the present article adopts a large-N, econometric approach to test the explanatory power of four distinct models of compliance-domestic adjustment, reputational, constructivist and managerial-in the context of European Union (EU) environmental policy. Using data on the number of ofıcial infringements received by 15 member states for non-implementation of environmental directives over the period 1979-2000, we ınd that all four models make a statistically signiıcant contribution to explaining spatio-temporal differences in legal implementation. Thus, our results suggest that the implementation of MEAs is shaped by a combination of rational calculations of domestic compliance costs and reputational damage, domestically institutionalized normative obligations, and legal and political constraints. We conclude by suggesting a greater need for multi-causal theoretical models of supranational legal compliance. (c) 2007 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.