Design for Wire + Arc Additive Manufacture: design rules and build orientation selection

Wire + Arc Additive Manufacture (WAAM) is an additive manufacturing technology that can produce near net-shape parts layer by layer in an automated manner using welding technology controlled by a robot or CNC machine. WAAM has been shown to produce parts with good structural integrity in a range of materials including titanium, steel and aluminium and has the potential to produce high value structural parts at lower cost with much less waste material and shorter lead times that conventional manufacturing processes. This paper provides an initial set of design rules for WAAM and presents a methodology for build orientation selection for WAAM parts. The paper begins with a comparison between the design requirements and capabilities of WAAM and other additive manufacturing technologies, design guidelines for WAAM are then presented based on experimental work. A methodology to select the most appropriate build orientation for WAAM parts is then presented using a multi attribute decision matrix approach to compare different design alternatives. Two aerospace case study parts are provided to illustrate the methodology

European Forests and Carbon Sequestration Services: An Economic Assessment of Climate Change Impacts

This paper reports an original economic valuation of the impact of climate change on the provision of forest regulating services in Europe. To the authors’ knowledge the current paper represents the first systematic attempt to estimate human well-being losses with respect to changes in biodiversity and forest regulating services that are directly driven by climate change. First, selected 34 European countries are grouped by their latitude intervals to capture the differentiated regional effects of forests in response to climate change. Moreover, the future trends of forest areas and stocked carbon in 2050 are projected through the construction and simulation of global circulation models such as HADMC3 following four different future developing paths described by the four IPCC scenarios. Finally, the valuation exercise is anchored in an ecosystem service based approach, involving the use of general circulation models and integrated assessment models. Our findings address two dimensions in the evaluation of climate impacts on European forests: Firstly, future projections yield different states of the world depending upon the IPCC scenario adopted. Secondly, spatial issues matter in an assessment of the distributional impacts of climate change, as these impacts are not distributed in a uniform way across the European countries under consideration.Economic Valuation, Forest Ecosystem, Carbon Sequestration, Climate Change Impacts

An Economic Model for Bioprospecting Contracts

This paper explores the use of a micro-economic model to analyse the provisions and parties of bioprospecting contracts. It focuses on the pharmaceutical industry as the representative biodiversity buyer, presenting an original theoretical framework that explains the main contract characteristics or stylised facts. Against this background, it considers the main contractors involved in these private contracts, i.e. biodiversity sellers and biodiversity buyers, analysing both the magnitude and distribution of the respective payoffs. Particular attention is devoted to the different, mixed impacts of bioprospecting contracts and patenting on social welfare. The positive welfare impacts delivered by bioprospecting contracts are associated with the potential discovery of a new drug product, i.e. productivity gains, non-monetary benefit-sharing or transfers and royalty revenues. The negative welfare impact results from the legal creation of a monopoly and the related well-known effect on the consumer surplus. Finally, the potential redistribution effects are limited, and a potential enforcement of this objective may jeopardise the desirability of the contracts since this action would lead to a significant increase in the transaction costs.Bioprospecting Contract, Genetic Resource, Biodiversity Buyer, Biodiversity Seller, Patenting, Welfare Analysis, Benefit Sharing

The Economic Valuation of Marine Ecosystems

In a democratic system, policy makers have to take the preferences of the citizens into account. Since we live in a world with scarce resources, one is asked to make choices regarding the use and management of these resources. In this context, if policy makers decide to invest in the protection of marine ecosystems, less financial resources will be available for other policy areas, for example national health. Moreover, the investment in the protection of marine ecosystems brings along with it the provision of a wide range of benefits to humans though most are not priced in the existing markets – for example climate regulation and provision of habitat for biodiversity. Given that most human activities are priced in one way or other, in some decision contexts, the temptation exists to downplay or ignore these important marine ecosystem benefits on the basis of the non-existence of prices. The simple and simplistic idea in the minds of many policymakers is that a lack of prices is equivalent to a lack of values. Clearly, this is a biased perspective. Against this background, this paper explores the motivation for an economic valuation of this complex resource. The state-of-the-art economic valuation methodologies follow the guidelines proposed by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, taking into account the existing scientific knowledge on the functioning of marine ecosystems, marine ecosystem goods and services and its impacts on human welfare. Finally, we critically review some economic valuation studies, arguing that the economic valuation of marine ecosystem services and biodiversity can make sense if and only if important guidelines are observed.Economic Valuation, Marine Ecosystem, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Approach, Europe

A Hybrid Approach to the Valuation of Climate Change Effects on Ecosystem Services: Evidence from the European Forests

In this paper we present a systematic attempt to assess economic value of climate change impact on forest ecosystems and human welfare. In the present study, climate change impacts are downscaled to the different European countries, which in turn constitute the elements of our analysis. First, we anchor the valuation exercise in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) Approach and therefore the link between the different forest ecosystem goods and services, including provisioning, regulating and cultural services, human well-being and climate change. Second, climate change is operationalized by exploring the different storylines developed by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and applied, downscaled, for each of the European countries under consideration. Third, and bearing in mind the different nature of the benefits provided by the different types of forest ecosystems under examination, we shall explore different economic valuation methodologies so as to shed light on the magnitude of the involved welfare changes. According to the estimation results the four different IPCC scenarios, i.e. A1F1, A2, B1 and B2, are associated to different welfare impacts. First, these reveal to depend on both the nature of the forest ecosystem service. For example, cultural values reveal to be more sensitive to the four IPCC scenarios than the other ones, with the wood forest products being more resilient to climate change. Second, the distributional impacts of climate change on the provision of these goods and services do also depend on the geo-climatic regions under consideration. For the Scandinavian group of countries, B1 is ranked with the highest level of provision of carbon sequestration services, amounting to 46.3 billion dollars. In addition, we can see that cultural services provided by forest ecosystems have their highest levels in the Mediterranean countries, ranging from 8.4 to 9.0 million dollars, respectively in the B2 and B1 scenarios. Finally, we can see that the total value of wood forest products ranges between 41.2 and 47.5 million dollars for Central Europe to 5.4 and 7.2 million dollars in Northern Europe, respectively A1 and A2 scenarios. For this service, Mediterranean Europe provides a relatively weak role in the provision with values ranging from 6.4 million dollars in A1 scenario to 8.7 million dollars in the B2. In short, and to conclude, the valuation results (1) may contribute to a better understanding of the potential welfare loss in the context of climate change and the economic trade-offs between potential mitigation or adaptation strategies; and (2) confirm that climate change will be responsible for a re-distribution of welfare among the European countries, signalling the potential for a(n) agreement(s) among these same countries focus on the re-allocation of potential trade-offs among the countries.Wood Products, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Market and Non-market Valuation Methods, Ecosystem Goods and Services, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Economic Assessment of Forest Ecosystem Services Losses: Cost of Policy Inaction

This paper presents a bottom-up methodological framework for estimating some of the key ecosystem services provided by forests biomes worldwide. We consider the provision of wood and non-wood forest products, recreation and passive use, and forests’ contribution to climate regulation in terms of carbon sequestration capacity. The valuation framework derives per hectare estimates by applying meta-analysis, value transfer and scaling up procedures in order to control for existing heterogeneities across world regions and forest biomes. The first part of the study estimates stock values per hectare for each forest ecosystem service in the baseline year 2000 and in the year 2050. Carbon stocks represent, in general, the highest value per hectare, followed by provisioning services, passive use and recreational values. The second part provides an estimation of the welfare loss (or gain) associated with policy inaction in the period 2000-2050 leading to a change in the forest area. Welfare results are mixed and require a careful interpretation. In different world regions, no policy initiative can results in both gains and losses, which appear to be sensitive to the use of lower or upper bounds values per hectare.forest ecosystem goods and services; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment; value-transfer, meta-analysis; market and non-market valuation

Climate Benefits Tenure Costs: The Economic Case for Securing Indigenous Land Rights in the Amazon

A new report offers evidence that the modest investments needed to secure land rights for indigenous communities will generate billions in returns—economically, socially and environmentally—for local communities and the world's changing climate. The report, Climate Benefits, Tenure Costs: The Economic Case for Securing Indigenous Land Rights, quantifies for the first time the economic value of securing land rights for the communities who live in and protect forests, with a focus on Colombia, Brazil, and Bolivia

Modeling the Links between Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services and Human Wellbeing in the Context of Climate Change: Results from an Econometric Analysis on the European Forest Ecosystems

25 p.The paper conducts an empirical investigation on the complex relationship between biodiversity and the values of ecosystem goods and services that are supported by biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, aiming to produce an econometric quantification of the magnitudes involved. Furthermore, we operate this study at a in the context of global climate change, which is considered one of the major drivers today that alter the pattern of biodiversity distribution, affect the ecosystem functioning and change the flows of ecosystem goods and services to be provided by a healthy ecosystem. In the paper, we first built a composite biodiversity indicator on the concept of Natural Capital Index so as to integrate information regarding the quantitative and qualitative changes of ecosystems driven by warming climate conditions. Furthermore, the composite indicator is integrated into the econometric specification so as to capture the marginal impacts of changes in biodiversity on the value of ecosystem goods and services due to climate change. The econometric problem is solved in a structural simultaneous system using three-stage-least-squares (3SLS) to analyze climate change impacts on forest ecosystems and the respective ecosystem service values across 17 European countries

Investigation of CXCR4 Chemokine Receptor Involvement in the Uptake and Penetration of siRNA Nanoparticles in Pancreatic Cancer Cell Lines and 3D Tumor Spheroids

With the urgency of developing novel therapies for pancreatic cancer, the Oupický lab designed a polymer, PAMD-Toc, that incorporates AMD3100, an antagonist of the most widely expressed chemokine receptor in cancer cells, CXCR4. This study seeks to determine if the CXCR4 receptor is involved in the uptake and penetration of siRNA-carrying PAMD-Toc nanoparticles into pancreatic cancer cells and tumors. Findings suggest that the presence of CXCR4 increases the efficacy of PAMD-Toc nanoparticle uptake and tumor penetration, which makes PAMD-Toc nanoparticles a promising siRNA delivery vector for pancreatic cancer gene therapy.https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/surp2022/1027/thumbnail.jp

Design study for wire and arc additive manufacture

Additive Manufacture (AM) is a technique whereby freeform structures are produced by building up material in a layer by layer fashion. Among the different AM processes, Wire and Arc Additive Manufacture (WAAM) has the ability to manufacture large custom-made metal workpiece with high efficiency. A design study has been performed to explore the process capabilities of fabricating complicated geometries using WAAM. Features such as enclosed structures, crossing structures, and balanced building structures have been investigated in this study. Finite Element (FE) models are employed to take the thermo-mechanical performance into account. Robot tool path design has been performed to transfer the WAAM component designs into real components efficiently. This paper covers these essential design steps from a technical as well as practical point of view