The undebated issue of justice: silent discourses in Dutch flood risk management

Flood risk for all types of flooding is projected to increase based on climate change projections and increases in damage potential. These challenges are likely to aggravate issues of justice in flood risk management (henceforth FRM). Based on a discursive-institutionalist perspective, this paper explores justice in Dutch FRM: how do institutions allocate the responsibilities and costs for FRM for different types of flooding? What are the underlying conceptions of justice? What are the future challenges with regard to climate change? The research revealed that a dichotomy is visible in the Dutch approach to FRM: despite an abundance of rules, regulations and resources spent, flood risk or its management, are only marginally discussed in terms of justice. Despite that the current institutional arrangement has material outcomes that treat particular groups of citizens differently, depending on the type of flooding they are prone to, area they live in (unembanked/embanked) or category of user (e.g. household, industry, farmer). The paper argues that the debate on justice will (re)emerge, since the differences in distributional outcomes are likely to become increasingly uneven as a result of increasing flood risk. The Netherlands should be prepared for this debate by generating the relevant facts and figures. An inclusive debate on the distribution of burdens of FRM could contribute to more effective and legitimate FRM

Association of the ADAM33 gene with asthma and bronchial hyperresponsiveness

Asthma is a common respiratory disorder characterized by recurrent episodes of coughing, wheezing and breathlessness. Although environmental factors such as allergen exposure are risk factors in the development of asthma, both twin and family studies point to a strong genetic component. To date, linkage studies have identified more than a dozen genomic regions linked to asthma. In this study, we performed a genome-wide scan on 460 Caucasian families and identified a locus on chromosome 20p13 that was linked to asthma (log10 of the likelihood ratio (LOD), 2.94) and bronchial hyperresponsiveness (LOD, 3.93). A survey of 135 polymorphisms in 23 genes identified the ADAM33 gene as being significantly associated with asthma using case-control, transmission disequilibrium and haplotype analyses (P = 0.04?0.000003). ADAM proteins are membrane-anchored metalloproteases with diverse functions, which include the shedding of cell-surface proteins such as cytokines and cytokine receptors. The identification and characterization of ADAM33, a putative asthma susceptibility gene identified by positional cloning in an outbred population, should provide insights into the pathogenesis and natural history of this common disease

Estimating Global Damages from Sea Level Rise with the Coastal Impact and Adaptation Model (CIAM)

The costs of coastal sector impacts from sea level rise (SLR) are an important component of the total projected economic damages of climate change, a major input to decision-making and design of climate policy. Moreover, the ultimate costs to coastal resources will depend strongly on adaptation, society's response to cope with the impacts. This paper presents a new model to assess coastal impacts from SLR, combining global scope with high spatial resolution to fill a gap between very detailed local studies and aggregate global estimates. The Coastal Impact and Adaptation Model (CIAM) determines the optimal strategy for adaptation at the local level, evaluating over 12,000 coastal segments, as described in the DIVA database (Vafeidis et al, 2006), based on their socioeconomic characteristics and the potential impacts of relative sea level rise and uncertain storm surge. An application of CIAM is then presented to demonstrate the model's ability to assess local impacts and direct costs, choose the least-cost adaptation, and estimate global net damages for several probabilistic SLR scenarios (Kopp et al, 2014). CIAM finds that there is large potential for coastal adaptation to reduce the expected impacts of SLR compared to the alternative of no adaptation, lowering global net present costs by a factor of 10 to less than $1.5 trillion over the next two centuries, although this does not include initial transition costs to overcome an under-adapted current state. In addition to producing aggregate estimates, CIAM results can also be interpreted at the local level, where we find that retreat (e.g., relocate inland) is often a more cost-effective adaptation strategy than protect (e.g., construct physical defenses)

The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale - Parent Version: Extended Applicability and Validity for Use with Younger Youth and Children with Histories of Early-Life Caregiver Neglect

The Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale - Parent Version (RCADS-P) is a widely used parent-report measure, initially developed to assess anxiety and depression in youth in grades 3-12 from school-based and clinic-referred settings. It is important however to be able to assess these problems in even younger children due to the need for earlier understanding, identification, intervention and prevention efforts of anxiety and depression in younger children, and continual monitoring of these problems across the youth life span. For the present study, we used a sample of 307 children and adolescents ages 3.0 to 17.5 years old (M=8.68, SE=4.10). For the first set of analyses, we divided the sample into Younger youth (kindergarten to grade 2; n=152) and Older youth (grade 3 to 12; n=155) to see whether each group independently met benchmarks for acceptable reliability and validity. Given the number of children who also develop anxiety and depression following early-life adversities and adverse care (such as caregiver neglect), we also divided our sample differently into a Post-Institutionalized group (i.e., previously institutionalized youth; n=100) and a Comparison group (i.e., youth without histories of early-life caregiver neglect; n=195) to examine whether each of these groups also met benchmarks for acceptable reliability and validity. Specifically, in each of these grade and experience groups, we examined the factor structure (including measurement invariance), internal consistency and convergent and discriminant validity of the RCADS-P anxiety and depression scales scores. Results demonstrated that younger youth RCADS-P reports were associated with acceptable reliability and validity estimates. Similar support for the RCADS-P scores was found for the Post-Institutionalized youth. The present study therefore extends needed support for the use of the RCADS-P to assess and monitor these two new and important youth groups