A dynamic CGE modelling approach for analyzing trade-offs in climate change policy options: the case of Green Climate Fund

38 p.We investigate the trade-offs between economic growth and low carbon targets for developing and developed countries in the period up to 2035. Policy options are evaluated with an original version of the dynamic CGE model GDynE. Abatement costs appear to be strongly detrimental to economic growth for developing countries. We investigate options for reducing these costs that are consistent with a green growth strategy. We show that Green Climate Fund financed through a levy on carbon taxation can benefit all parties, and larger benefits are associated with investment of the Green Climate Fund to foster energy efficiency in developing countries

Neutralizing antibodies to Omicron after the fourth SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine dose in immunocompromised patients highlight the need of additional boosters

IntroductionImmunocompromised patients have been shown to have an impaired immune response to COVID-19 vaccines.MethodsHere we compared the B-cell, T-cell and neutralizing antibody response to WT and Omicron BA.2 SARS-CoV-2 virus after the fourth dose of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in patients with hematological malignancies (HM, n=71), solid tumors (ST, n=39) and immune-rheumatological (IR, n=25) diseases. The humoral and T-cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination were analyzed by quantifying the anti-RBD antibodies, their neutralization activity and the IFN-γ released after spike specific stimulation.ResultsWe show that the T-cell response is similarly boosted by the fourth dose across the different subgroups, while the antibody response is improved only in patients not receiving B-cell targeted therapies, independent on the pathology. However, 9% of patients with anti-RBD antibodies did not have neutralizing antibodies to either virus variants, while an additional 5.7% did not have neutralizing antibodies to Omicron BA.2, making these patients particularly vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection. The increment of neutralizing antibodies was very similar towards Omicron BA.2 and WT virus after the third or fourth dose of vaccine, suggesting that there is no preferential skewing towards either virus variant with the booster dose. The only limited step is the amount of antibodies that are elicited after vaccination, thus increasing the probability of developing neutralizing antibodies to both variants of virus.DiscussionThese data support the recommendation of additional booster doses in frail patients to enhance the development of a B-cell response directed against Omicron and/or to enhance the T-cell response in patients treated with anti-CD20

A novel wake-up receiver with addressing capability for wireless sensor nodes

Emerging low-power radio triggering techniques for wireless motes are a promising approach to prolong the lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). By allowing nodes to activate their main transceiver only when data need to be transmitted or received, wake-up-enabled solutions virtually eliminate the need for idle listening, thus drastically reducing the energy toll of communication. In this paper we describe the design of a novel wake-up receiver architecture based on an innovative pass-band filter bank with high selectivity capability. The proposed concept, demonstrated by a prototype implementation, combines both frequency-domain and time-domain addressing space to allow selective addressing of nodes. To take advantage of the functionalities of the proposed receiver, as well as of energy-harvesting capabilities modern sensor nodes are equipped with, we present a novel wake-up-enabled harvesting-aware communication stack that supports both interest dissemination and converge casting primitives. This stack builds on the ability of the proposed WuR to support dynamic address assignment, which is exploited to optimize system performance. Comparison against traditional WSN protocols shows that the proposed concept allows to optimize performance tradeoffs with respect to existing low-power communication stacks. © 2014 IEEE