Pollution Standards, Costly Monitoring and Fines

We investigate the features of optimal regulatory policies composed of pollution standards and probabilities of inspection, where fines for non-compliance depend not only on the degree of violation but alson on nongravity factors.We show that optimal policies can induce either compliance or noncompliance with the standards, the latter being more plausible when monitoring costs are large and, surprisingly, when gravity-based fines are large.Also, both tghe convexity of the sanctions and the level of the non-gravity-based penalties play a key role as to whether optimal policies induce noncompliance

Optimal Environmental Standards under Asymmetric Information and Imperfect Enforcement

We study optimal policies composed of pollution standards, probabilities of inspection and fines dependant on the degree of noncompliance with the standards, in a context where regulated firms own private information.In contrast with previous literature, we show that optimal policies, being either pooling or separating, can imply violations to strictly positive standards.This results crucially depends on the monitoring costs, the types of firms and the regulator's degree of uncertainty.standard-setting;costly inspections;convex fines;asymmetric information;noncompliance

Pollution Standards, Costly Monitoring and Fines

We investigate the features of optimal regulatory policies composed of pollution standards and probabilities of inspection, where fines for non-compliance depend not only on the degree of violation but alson on nongravity factors.We show that optimal policies can induce either compliance or noncompliance with the standards, the latter being more plausible when monitoring costs are large and, surprisingly, when gravity-based fines are large.Also, both tghe convexity of the sanctions and the level of the non-gravity-based penalties play a key role as to whether optimal policies induce noncompliance.standards;monitoring;convex fines;gravity-based sanctions;non gravity-based sanctions;noncompliance

A hydrogen beam to characterize the ASACUSA antihydrogen hyperfine spectrometer

The antihydrogen programme of the ASACUSA collaboration at the antiproton decelerator of CERN focuses on Rabi-type measurements of the ground-state hyperfine splitting of antihydrogen for a test of the combined Charge-Parity-Time symmetry. The spectroscopy apparatus consists of a microwave cavity to drive hyperfine transitions and a superconducting sextupole magnet for quantum state analysis via Stern-Gerlach separation. However, the small production rates of antihydrogen forestall comprehensive performance studies on the spectroscopy apparatus. For this purpose a hydrogen source and detector have been developed which in conjunction with ASACUSA's hyperfine spectroscopy equipment form a complete Rabi experiment. We report on the formation of a cooled, polarized, and time modulated beam of atomic hydrogen and its detection using a quadrupole mass spectrometer and a lock-in amplification scheme. In addition key features of ASACUSA's hyperfine spectroscopy apparatus are discussed.

Pulmonary but not subcutaneous vaccination confers protection to TB susceptible mice by an IL17-dependent mechanism.

Some of the most promising novel tuberculosis vaccine strategies currently under development are based on respiratory vaccination, mimicking the natural route of infection. In this work, we have compared pulmonary and subcutaneous delivery of BCG vaccine in the tuberculosis-susceptible DBA/2 mouse strain, a model in which parenterally administered BCG vaccine does not protect against tuberculosis. Our data show that intranasally but not subcutaneously administered BCG confers robust protection against pulmonary tuberculosis challenge. In addition, our results indicate that pulmonary vaccination triggers a Mycobacterium tuberculosis–specific mucosal immune response orchestrated by interleukin 17A (IL-17A). Thus, IL-17A neutralization in vivo reduces protection and abrogates M. tuberculosis–specific immunoglobulin A (IgA) secretion to respiratory airways and lung expression of polymeric immunoglobulin receptor induced following intranasal vaccination. Together, our results demonstrate that pulmonary delivery of BCG can overcome the lack of protection observed when BCG is given parenterally, suggesting that respiratory tuberculosis vaccines could have an advantage in tuberculosis-endemic countries, where intradermally administered BCG has inefficient effectiveness against pulmonary tuberculosis