The Environmental Kuznets Curve and Flow versus Stock Pollution: The Neglect of Future Damages

In this paper we offer a possible explanation for the empirical finding that the pollution-income relationship (PIR) for flow pollutants is an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), i.e. inverted-U shaped, but that the PIR for stock pollutants is monotonically rising. We analyse an overlapping generations model with two pollutants: The flow pollutant causes immediate damages, but the stock pollutant harms the environment only in the future. Hence, a succession of myopic governments lets stock pollution grow with income. In contrast, the flow pollutant follows an EKC whose downturn might be caused by the neglect of future damages and by ever rising stock pollution: Without the stock pollutant the PIR for the flow pollutant can increase monotonically. We also show that the turning point of the EKC for the flow pollutant lies at lower levels of income and of flow pollution if stock pollution is high and harmful. This casts doubts on most empirical EKC studies because they assume that the turning point occurs at the same income level in all countries. However, it is consistent with recent empirical findings that the income level at the turning point of the EKC varies across countrie

Vacuum-assisted closure therapy as adjunct to treatment of grotesque subcutaneous emphysema after blunt chest trauma: A case report

Subcutaneous emphysema (SE) is a potentially life-threatening complication derived from a pneumothorax. Treatment can be challenging and on an emergency basis. A 79-year-old patient was admitted with blunt chest trauma after a motor vehicle accident. Computed tomography showed incarceration of lung parenchyma in a fractured rib without pneumothorax. The patient was initially stable, but later on developed several episodes of acute dyspnea with bilateral pneumothoraces and life-threatening SE. Further assessment using chest X-ray was complicated by SE. Treatment consisted of chest tube insertion and additional vacuum-assisted closure (VAC) therapy of the SE using a pectoral incision. Symptoms resolved quickly, and chest tube and VAC-therapy could be discontinued by day 7 and 3, respectively. Immediate chest tube insertion is the first-line treatment for trauma patients with massive SE, even if a pneumothorax may not reliably be diagnosed initially. Supportive VAC-therapy must be considered to accelerate the decline of massive SE

Mitochondrial genome sequence and gene order of Sipunculus nudus give additional support for an inclusion of Sipuncula into Annelida

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Mitochondrial genomes are a valuable source of data for analysing phylogenetic relationships. Besides sequence information, mitochondrial gene order may add phylogenetically useful information, too. Sipuncula are unsegmented marine worms, traditionally placed in their own phylum. Recent molecular and morphological findings suggest a close affinity to the segmented Annelida.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The first complete mitochondrial genome of a member of Sipuncula, <it>Sipunculus nudus</it>, is presented. All 37 genes characteristic for metazoan mtDNA were detected and are encoded on the same strand. The mitochondrial gene order (protein-coding and ribosomal RNA genes) resembles that of annelids, but shows several derivations so far found only in Sipuncula. Sequence based phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial protein-coding genes results in significant bootstrap support for Annelida <it>sensu lato</it>, combining Annelida together with Sipuncula, Echiura, Pogonophora and Myzostomida.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The mitochondrial sequence data support a close relationship of Annelida and Sipuncula. Also the most parsimonious explanation of changes in gene order favours a derivation from the annelid gene order. These results complement findings from recent phylogenetic analyses of nuclear encoded genes as well as a report of a segmental neural patterning in Sipuncula.</p

Direct health costs of environmental tobacco smoke exposure and indirect health benefits due to smoking ban introduction

Background: Introducing comprehensive smoke-free policies to public places is expected to reduce health costs. This includes prevented health damages by avoiding environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure as well as indirect health benefits from reduced tobacco consumption. Methods: The aim of this study was to estimate direct health costs of ETS exposure in public places and indirect health benefits from reduced tobacco consumption. We calculated attributable hospital days and years of life lost (YLL), based on the observed passive smoking and disease rates in Switzerland. The exposure-response associations of all relevant health outcomes were derived by meta-analysis from prospective cohort studies in order to calculate the direct health costs. To assess the indirect health benefits, a meta-analysis of smoking ban studies on hospital admissions for acute myocardial infarction was conducted. Results: ETS exposure in public places in Switzerland causes 32 000 preventable hospital days (95% CI: 10 000-61 000), 3000 YLL (95% CI: 1000-5000), corresponding to health costs of 330 Mio CHF. The number of hospital days for ischaemic heart disease attributable to passive smoking is much larger if derived from smoking ban studies (41 000) than from prospective cohort studies (3200), resulting in additional health costs of 89 Mio CHF, which are attributed to the indirect health benefits of a smoking ban introduction. Conclusion: The example of smoking ban studies on ischaemic heart disease hospitalization rates suggests that total health costs that can be prevented with smoking bans are considerably larger than the costs arising from the direct health impact of ETS exposure in public place

Integrated Impact Assessment of Active Travel: Expanding the Scope of the Health Economic Assessment Tool (HEAT) for Walking and Cycling.

The World Health Organization's Health Economic Assessment Tool (HEAT) for walking and cycling is a user-friendly web-based tool to assess the health impacts of active travel. HEAT, developed over 10 years ago, has been used by researchers, planners and policymakers alike in appraisals of walking and cycling policies at both national and more local scales. HEAT has undergone regular upgrades adopting the latest scientific evidence. This article presents the most recent upgrades of the tool. The health impacts of walking and/or cycling in a specified population are quantified in terms of premature deaths avoided (or caused). In addition to the calculation of benefits derived from physical activity, HEAT was recently expanded to include assessments of the burden associated with air pollution exposure and crash risks while walking or cycling. Further, the impacts on carbon emissions from mode shifts to active travel modes can now be assessed. The monetization of impacts using Value of Statistical Life and Social Costs of Carbon now uses country-specific values. As active travel inherently results in often substantial health benefits as well as not always negligible risks, assessments of active travel behavior or policies are incomplete without considering health implications. The recent developments of HEAT make it easier than ever to obtain ballpark estimates of health impacts and carbon emissions related to walking and cycling

Creep Fractures in the Mantle and their role for Deep Fluid Transfer

When hot and ductile rocks fail they do so with an astonishing variety. Observations from crustal deformation show that when the fluid content is low (less than a few per cent) they form the cores of anastomosing mylonitic shear zones, which feature strong gradients in grain size towards their metamorphic fluid rich centre (Fusseis et al., 2009). In circumstances where the fluid/melt content is high they form macroscopically visible ductile fractures (Weinberg and Regenauer-Lieb, 2010) which allow melt transfer into the shallower crust forming the feeder zone of granites. We show here that all of the above phenomena are new types of instabilities well known from high temperature deformation of ceramics, i.e. materials that otherwise show brittle cleavage at cold laboratory conditions. The new failure modes boil down to a series of microscopic processes, where upon increasing temperature and decreasing applied stress failure modes transition from brittle cleavage to transgranular and intergranular “creep fractures”, summarized by Ashby’s classical deformation mechanism maps (Ghandi and Ashby, 1979). Although Material Scientists are well aware of these creep enhanced fracture modes we have been lacking concise evidence in the laboratory and field proving the existence of these failure transitions. As creep fracture processes are happening on relatively slow geodynamic time scales they have been argued to provide the critical mechanism linking plate tectonic processes and deep fluid transfer processes (Regenauer-Lieb, 1999). In these considerations fluids are viewed as creating their own pathways through facilitating shear localization by creep fractures, rather than being a passive constituent simply following brittle fractures that are generated inside a shear zone caused by other localization mechanisms. Recently, the missing laboratory (Rybacki et al., 2008) and field evidence for creep fractures have been found (Fusseis et al., 2009). Ghost images of both creep fractures and brittle fractures can also be seen in OH diffusion profiles on grain boundaries (Sommer et al., 2008) and fully embedded intragranular cracks in mantle xenoliths (Sommer et al., 2012). In order to illustrate the fundamental implications for deep fluid transfer we extend classical solutions of material sciences to geodynamic conditions and incorporate melting reactions into the numerical formulation. We will show the implications to a number of applied field studies

Economic Growth and the Diffusion of Clean Technologies: Explaining Environmental Kuznets Curves

Production often causes pollution as a by-product. Once environmental degradation becomes too severe, regulation is introduced by which society forces the economy to make a transition to cleaner production processes. We model this transition as a change in general purpose technology" and investigate how it interferes with economic growth driven by quality-improvements. The model gives an explanation for the inverted U-shaped pollution-income relation found in empirical research for many pollutants (Environmental Kuznets Curve). We provide an analytical foundation for the claim that the rise and decline of pollution can be explained by policy-induced technology shifts and intrasectoral changes