Paradigms in the trade–climate nexus: ‘liberal environmentalism’, the Environmental Goods Agreement and the role of the EU

What explains the evolution of negotiations on liberalising environmentally friendly goods and services over the past 15 years and the EU’s position on these? In December 2016 negotiators did not succeed in their goal of concluding an Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA) in Geneva. This was considered by many participants and observers as a missed opportunity for a win-win for the global economy and the environment. Protectionist wrangling over which products should be on a list for speedy liberalisation was seen as the main reason why the negotiations (temporarily) failed. However, we show that the environmental objectives of these negotiations had already gradually been pushed to the back by commercial objectives. While there had been attempts in early phases of the negotiations to make the environmental effects of goods primordial, in the end a commercial logic prevailed. We point to the importance of the paradigm of ‘liberal environmentalism’, which makes it difficult to promote trade-conditioning measures in an already commercially biased policy subsystem. We focus particularly on the EU as one of the key actors in the EGA negotiations. Through a number of interviews with European policy-makers and civil society representatives, and desk research of negotiating documents and secondary literature, we find evidence of the prevalence of liberal environmentalist thinking, the dominance of trade actors in the policy subsystem and difficulties for environmental actors to penetrate these negotiations. We conclude that trying to reconcile trade and environmental objectives in a synergetic (‘win-win’) manner does not make a successful conclusion necessarily easier

An Orthogonal Family of Quincunx Wavelets with Continuously Adjustable Order

We present a new family of two-dimensional and three-dimensional orthogonal wavelets which uses quincunx sampling. The orthogonal refinement filters have a simple analytical expression in the Fourier domain as a function of the order λ, which may be noninteger. We can also prove that they yield wavelet bases of $L _{ 2 } (R ^{ 2 })$ for any λ>0. The wavelets are fractional in the sense that the approximation error at a given scale a decays like $O(a ^{ \lambda } )$; they also essentially behave like fractional derivative operators. To make our construction practical, we propose an fast Fourier transform-based implementation that turns out to be surprisingly fast. In fact, our method is almost as efficient as the standard Mallat algorithm for separable wavelets

Temporal variations in the potential hydrological performance of extensive green roof systems

Existing literature provides contradictory information about variation in potential green roof hydrological performance over time. This study has evaluated a long-term hydrological monitoring record from a series of extensive green roof test beds to identify long-term evolutions and sub-annual (seasonal) variations in potential hydrological performance. Monitoring of nine differently-configured extensive green roof test beds took place over a period of 6 years in Sheffield, UK. Long-term evolutions and sub-annual trends in maximum potential retention performance were identified through physical monitoring of substrate field capacity over time. An independent evaluation of temporal variations in detention performance was undertaken through the fitting of reservoir-routing model parameters. Aggregation of the resulting retention and detention variations permitted the prediction of extensive green roof hydrological performance in response to a 1-in-30-year 1-h summer design storm for Sheffield, UK, which facilitated the comparison of multi and sub-annual hydrological performance variations. Sub-annual (seasonal) variation was found to be significantly greater than long-term evolution. Potential retention performance increased by up to 12% after 5-years, whilst the maximum sub-annual variation in potential retention was 27%. For vegetated roof configurations, a 4% long-term improvement was observed for detention performance, compared to a maximum 63% sub-annual variation. Consistent long-term reductions in detention performance were observed in unvegetated roof configurations, with a non-standard expanded-clay substrate experiencing a 45% reduction in peak attenuation over 5-years. Conventional roof configurations exhibit stable long-term hydrological performance, but are nonetheless subject to sub-annual variation

Graph Theoretical Analysis of Structural Covariance Reveals the Relevance of Visuospatial and Attentional Areas in Essential Tremor Recovery After Stereotactic Radiosurgical Thalamotomy.

Essential tremor (ET) is the most common movement disorder. Its pathophysiology is only partially understood. Here, we leveraged graph theoretical analysis on structural covariance patterns quantified from morphometric estimates for cortical thickness, surface area, and mean curvature in patients with ET before and one year after (to account for delayed clinical effect) ventro-intermediate nucleus (Vim) stereotactic radiosurgical thalamotomy. We further contrasted the observed patterns with those from matched healthy controls (HCs). Significant group differences at the level of individual morphometric properties were specific to mean curvature and the post-/pre-thalamotomy contrast, evidencing brain plasticity at the level of the targeted left thalamus, and of low-level visual, high-level visuospatial and attentional areas implicated in the dorsal visual stream. The introduction of cross-correlational analysis across pairs of morphometric properties strengthened the presence of dorsal visual stream readjustments following thalamotomy, as cortical thickness in the right lingual gyrus, bilateral rostral middle frontal gyrus, and left pre-central gyrus was interrelated with mean curvature in the rest of the brain. Overall, our results position mean curvature as the most relevant morphometric feature to understand brain plasticity in drug-resistant ET patients following Vim thalamotomy. They also highlight the importance of examining not only individual features, but also their interactions, to gain insight into the routes of recovery following intervention

Sunbiggin Tarn & Moors & Little Asby Common SSSI water quality monitoring survey

Report to Friends of the Lake District and Natural England. 1. Sunbiggin Tarn is a small marl lake on the Orton fells in North West England, where there is concern about nutrient levels and consequent algal growth that places the lake in an ecologically unfavourable state. This work was designed to investigate the causes of this nutrient enrichment based on monthly samples from seven inflow streams and the lake between April 2019 and February 2020 and a depth profile measured in mid-summer. 2. There are several lines of evidence for calcite precipitation in the tarn during summer. Alkalinity in summer is lower than in the winter; the tarn alkalinity in the winter is similar to the inflowing streams but lower than the streams in the summer; calculations show that the calcite was highly oversaturated in summer; finally, data from the Environment Agency from 2004 to 2006 show summer concentrations of dissolved calcium are about half that of winter concentrations. 3. There is some evidence for internal loading of total phosphorus during the summer since surface concentrations in May, June and July are higher than at other times of years. More frequent depth profiles would be needed to determine if this resulted from internal loading. The current data and calculations suggest that anoxia-triggered release of phosphorus from the sediment is likely to be more important than release of phosphorus from apatite dissolution at depth in producing the high concentrations of soluble reactive phosphorus measured at the bottom of the tarn. 4. The concentration of total phosphorus in the tarn seems to be consistent with the stream concentrations, although the effects of any groundwater inputs are unknown. In contrast, there is a large loss of total nitrogen within the tarn since the concentrations are much lower in the tarn than the inflowing streams. 5. The concentrations of total phosphorus in 2019-2020 was lower than in 2003 and 2004-2006 and the mean and median concentrations of phytoplankton chlorophyll a were lower in 2019-2020 than in 2004-2006 but slightly higher than in 2003. There is therefore some suggestion that the ecological conditions in the tarn are improving. 6. The concentrations of nitrate in the tarn are unlikely to inhibit charophyte growth directly but could have an indirect effect by stimulating phytoplankton and epiphytic algae growth that could shade the charophyte beds. The generally low concentrations of nitrogen in the tarn suggest that this is unlikely. Rather primary production could be limited by nitrogen rather than phosphorus, at least in some seasons. 7. More detailed, targeted future investigations are suggested to address some of the uncertainties noted in order to produce more evidence-based knowledge for the conservation and management of Sunbiggin Tarn

Seasonal H1N1 2007 influenza virus infection is associated with elevated pre‐exposure antibody titers to the 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) virus

AbstractThe new influenza strain detected in humans in April 2009 has caused the first influenza pandemic of the 21st century. A cross‐reactive antibody response, in which antibodies against seasonal H1N1 viruses neutralized the 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) virus (2009 pH1N1), was detected among individuals aged >60 years. However, factors other than age associated with such a cross‐reactive antibody response are poorly documented. Our objective was to examine factors potentially associated with elevated pre‐exposure viro‐neutralization and hemagglutination‐inhibition antibody titers against the 2009 pH1N1. We also studied factors associated with antibody titers against the 2007 seasonal H1N1 virus. One hundred subjects participating in an influenza cohort were selected. Sera collected in 2008 were analysed using hemagglutination inhibition and viro‐neutralization assays for the 2009 pH1N1 virus and the 2007 seasonal H1N1 virus. Viro‐neutralization results were explored using a linear mixed‐effect model and hemagglutination‐inhibition results using linear‐regression models for interval‐censored data. Elevated antibody titers against 2009 pH1N1 were associated with seasonal 2007 H1N1 infection (viro‐neutralization, p 0.006; hemagglutination‐inhibition, p 0.018). Elevated antibody titers were also associated with age in the viro‐neutralization assay (p <0.0001). Seasonal 2007 H1N1 infection is an independent predictor of elevated pre‐exposure antibody titers against 2009 pH1N1 and may have contributed to lowering the burden of the 2009 pH1N1 pandemic

Isotropic Polyharmonic B-Splines: Scaling Functions and Wavelets

In this paper, we use polyharmonic B-splines to build multidimensional wavelet bases. These functions are nonseparable, multidimensional basis functions that are localized versions of radial basis functions. We show that Rabut's elementary polyharmonic B-splines do not converge to a Gaussian as the order parameter increases, as opposed to their separable B-spline counterparts. Therefore, we introduce a more isotropic localization operator that guarantees this convergence, resulting into the isotropic polyharmonic B-splines. Next, we focus on the two-dimensional quincunx subsampling scheme. This configuration is of particular interest for image processing, because it yields a finer scale progression than the standard dyadic approach. However, up until now, the design of appropriate filters for the quincunx scheme has mainly been done using the McClellan transform. In our approach, we start from the scaling functions, which are the polyharmonic B-splines and, as such, explicitly known, and we derive a family of polyharmonic spline wavelets corresponding to different flavors of the semi-orthogonal wavelet transform; e.g., orthonormal, B-spline, and dual. The filters are automatically specified by the scaling relations satisfied by these functions. We prove that the isotropic polyharmonic B-spline wavelet converges to a combination of four Gabor atoms, which are well separated in the frequency domain. We also show that these wavelets are nearly isotropic and that they behave as an iterated Laplacian operator at low frequencies. We describe an efficient fast Fourier transform-based implementation of the discrete wavelet transform based on polyharmonic B-splines