Addressing climate change with behavioral science: a global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior—several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people’s initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors

2012 ACCF/AHA/ACP/AATS/PCNA/SCAI/STS guideline for the diagnosis and management of patients with stable ischemic heart disease

The recommendations listed in this document are, whenever possible, evidence based. An extensive evidence review was conducted as the document was compiled through December 2008. Repeated literature searches were performed by the guideline development staff and writing committee members as new issues were considered. New clinical trials published in peer-reviewed journals and articles through December 2011 were also reviewed and incorporated when relevant. Furthermore, because of the extended development time period for this guideline, peer review comments indicated that the sections focused on imaging technologies required additional updating, which occurred during 2011. Therefore, the evidence review for the imaging sections includes published literature through December 2011

Time-Varying Estimation of Crop Insurance Program in Altering North Dakota Farm Economic Structure

This study examines how federal farm policies, specifically crop Insurance, have affected the farm economic structure of North Dakota's agriculture sector. The system of derived input demand equations is estimated to quantify the changes in North Dakota farmers' input use when they purchase crop insurance. Further, the cumulative rolling regression technique is applied to capture the varying effects of the farm policies over time. Empirical results from the system of input demand functions indicate that there is no moral hazard since North Dakota farmers will increase fertilizer and pesticide use in the presence of crop insurance. Results also indicate that farmers in this state will not increase the use of land

Dominantly inherited cutaneous small-vessel lymphocytic vasculitis maps to chromosome 6q26-q27.

Outside the context of hereditary deficiencies of complement and IgA, Mendelian inherited predisposition to small vessel lymphocytic vasculitis (SVLV) has rarely been documented. Here we report a large, multigenerational family segregating symmetrical cutaneous SVLV affecting the cheeks, thighs and hands. In all affected family members the disease presented in early infancy and there was no evidence for an association with systemic disease. Skin biopsy of lesions showed a lymphocytic vasculitis with red blood cell extravasation. Complementary studies, with extensive investigation focused on dysfunction of the immunological system were negative. The pattern of inheritance of SVLV in the family was compatible with an autosomal dominantly acting disease gene with incomplete penetrance. To localize the disease causing gene in the family a genome-wide linkage search was conducted using a high-density SNP array. Haplotype construction and analysis of recombination events permitted the minimal interval defining the disease locus to be refined to a 4.7 Mb region on chromosome 6q26-q27. The genes CCR6 and GPR31, which map to the linked region represent plausible candidates for the disease on the basis of their biological function. Extensive screening of both genes by mutational analysis failed to identify a deleterious mutation in the family

"Global Voices on Regional Integration." ZEI Discussion Paper No. 176, 2007

[From the Introduction]. Regional Integration offers great opportunities for the countries involved in the process. This has been one of the consensus findings of the first Summer Academy in Comparative Regional Integration at the Center for European Integration Studies (ZEI), sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with funds of the German Federal Foreign Office. The Summer Academy gathered young academics from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean to analyze a wide range of issues dealing with regional integration. This unique program was initiated by ZEIDirector Prof. Dr. Ludger Kühnhardt with the objective of strengthening the knowledge of young academics in matters of regional integration with regard to regional groupings around the world. Through lectures, workshops, discussions and a simulation the Summer Academy enabled 30 participants from 25 countries outside of Europe to develop problem-oriented approaches for deeper integration in their own region and to estimate the European Union’s capacity to serve as a role model