Exploring the financial and investment implications of the Paris Agreement

A global energy transition is underway. Limiting warming to 2°C (or less), as envisaged in the Paris Agreement, will require a major diversion of scheduled investments in the fossil-fuel industry and other high-carbon capital infrastructure towards renewables, energy efficiency, and other low or negative carbon technologies. The article explores the scale of climate finance and investment needs embodied in the Paris Agreement. It reveals that there is little clarity in the numbers from the plethora of sources (official and otherwise) on climate finance and investment. The article compares the US$100 billion target in the Paris Agreement with a range of other financial metrics, such as investment, incremental investment, energy expenditure, energy subsidies, and welfare losses. While the relatively narrowly defined climate finance included in the US$100 billion figure is a fraction of the broader finance and investment needs of climate-change mitigation and adaptation, it is significant when compared to some estimates of the net incremental costs of decarbonization that take into account capital and operating cost savings. However, even if the annual US$100 billion materializes, achieving the much larger implied shifts in investment will require the enactment of long-term internationally coordinated policies, far more stringent than have yet been introduced.</i

Energy efficiency and renewables

The debate between exponents of 'supply side' and 'demand side' approaches to dealing with environmental problems like climate change can sometimes become polarised. At one extreme it is sometimes claimed that the potential for energy efficiency and demands reductions is so large that we hardly need to worry about the supply side. At the other extreme it is sometimes claimed that the potential for renewables is so large that we can forget about energy conservation. This paper looks at how these views stand up in the context of both short and long term sustainable energy policy and seeks a pragmatic strategic compromise

Solar Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein Effect with Three Generations of Neutrinos

Under the assumption that the density variation of the electrons can be approximated by an exponential function, the solar Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein effect is treated for three generations of neutrinos. The generalized hypergeometric functions that result from the exact solution of this problem are studied in detail, and a method for their numerical evaluation is presented. This analysis plays a central role in the determination of neutrino masses, not only the differences of their squares, under the assumption of universal quark-lepton mixing.Comment: 22 pages, LaTeX, including 2 figure

Gravitational Collapse in Turbulent Molecular Clouds. I. Gasdynamical Turbulence

Observed molecular clouds often appear to have very low star formation efficiencies and lifetimes an order of magnitude longer than their free-fall times. Their support is attributed to the random supersonic motions observed in them. We study the support of molecular clouds against gravitational collapse by supersonic, gas dynamical turbulence using direct numerical simulation. Computations with two different algorithms are compared: a particle-based, Lagrangian method (SPH), and a grid-based, Eulerian, second-order method (ZEUS). The effects of both algorithm and resolution can be studied with this method. We find that, under typical molecular cloud conditions, global collapse can indeed be prevented, but density enhancements caused by strong shocks nevertheless become gravitationally unstable and collapse into dense cores and, presumably, stars. The occurance and efficiency of local collapse decreases as the driving wave length decreases and the driving strength increases. It appears that local collapse can only be prevented entirely with unrealistically short wave length driving, but observed core formation rates can be reproduced with more realistic driving. At high collapse rates, cores are formed on short time scales in coherent structures with high efficiency, while at low collapse rates they are scattered randomly throughout the region and exhibit considerable age spread. We suggest that this naturally explains the observed distinction between isolated and clustered star formation.Comment: Minor revisions in response to referee, thirteen figures, accepted to Astrophys.

Resonance Lifetimes from Complex Densities

The ab-initio calculation of resonance lifetimes of metastable anions challenges modern quantum-chemical methods. The exact lifetime of the lowest-energy resonance is encoded into a complex "density" that can be obtained via complex-coordinate scaling. We illustrate this with one-electron examples and show how the lifetime can be extracted from the complex density in much the same way as the ground-state energy of bound systems is extracted from its ground-state density

'I-I' and 'I-me' : Transposing Buber's interpersonal attitudes to the intrapersonal plane

Hermans' polyphonic model of the self proposes that dialogical relationships can be established between multiple I-positions1 (e.g., Hermans, 2001a). There have been few attempts, however, to explicitly characterize the forms that these intrapersonal relationships may take. Drawing on Buber's (1958) distinction between the 'I-Thou' and 'I-It' attitude, it is proposed that intrapersonal relationships can take one of two forms: an 'I-I' form, in which one I-position encounters and confirms another I-position in its uniqueness and wholeness; and an 'I-Me' form, in which one I-position experiences another I-position in a detached and objectifying way. This article argues that this I-Me form of intrapersonal relating is associated with psychological distress, and that this is so for a number of reasons: Most notably, because an individual who objectifies and subjugates certain I-position cannot reconnect with more central I-positions when dominance reversal (Hermans, 2001a) takes place. On this basis, it is suggested that a key role of the therapeutic process is to help clients become more able to experience moments of I-I intrapersonal encounter, and it is argued that this requires the therapist to confirm the client both as a whole and in terms of each of his or her different voices

Onset of Perturbative Color Opacity at Small x and Upsilon Coherent Photoproduction off heavy nuclei at LHC

We study photon-induced coherent production of Upsilon in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions at LHC and demonstrate that the counting rates will be sufficient to measure nuclear shadowing of generalized gluon distributions. This will establish the transition from the regime of color transparency to the regime of perturbative color opacity in an unambiguous way. We argue that such measurements will provide the possibility to investigate the interaction of ultra-small color dipoles with nuclei in QCD at large energies, which are beyond the reach of the electron-nucleon (nucleus) colliders, and will unambiguously discriminate between the leading twist and higher twist scenarios of gluon nuclear shadowing.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

Effective suppression of Dengue fever virus in mosquito cell cultures using retroviral transduction of hammerhead ribozymes targeting the viral genome

Outbreaks of Dengue impose a heavy economic burden on developing countries in terms of vector control and human morbidity. Effective vaccines against all four serotypes of Dengue are in development, but population replacement with transgenic vectors unable to transmit the virus might ultimately prove to be an effective approach to disease suppression, or even eradication. A key element of the refractory transgenic vector approach is the development of transgenes that effectively prohibit viral transmission. In this report we test the effectiveness of several hammerhead ribozymes for suppressing DENV in lentivirus-transduced mosquito cells in an attempt to mimic the transgenic use of these effector molecules in mosquitoes. A lentivirus vector that expresses these ribozymes as a fusion RNA molecule using an Ae. aegypti tRNAval promoter and terminating with a 60A tail insures optimal expression, localization, and activity of the hammerhead ribozyme against the DENV genome. Among the 14 hammerhead ribozymes we designed to attack the DENV-2 NGC genome, several appear to be relatively effective in reducing virus production from transduced cells by as much as 2 logs. Among the sequences targeted are 10 that are conserved among all DENV serotype 2 strains. Our results confirm that hammerhead ribozymes can be effective in suppressing DENV in a transgenic approach, and provide an alternative or supplementary approach to proposed siRNA strategies for DENV suppression in transgenic mosquitoes

RNAi for Treating Hepatitis B Viral Infection

Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is one of the leading causes of liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Current treatment strategies of HBV infection including the use of interferon (IFN)-α and nucleotide analogues such as lamivudine and adefovir have met with only partial success. Therefore, it is necessary to develop more effective antiviral therapies that can clear HBV infection with fewer side effects. RNA interference (RNAi), by which a small interfering RNA (siRNA) induces the gene silence at a post-transcriptional level, has the potential of treating HBV infection. The successful use of chemically synthesized siRNA, endogenous expression of small hairpin RNA (shRNA) or microRNA (miRNA) to silence the target gene make this technology towards a potentially rational therapeutics for HBV infection. However, several challenges including poor siRNA stability, inefficient cellular uptake, widespread biodistribution and non-specific effects need to be overcome. In this review, we discuss several strategies for improving the anti-HBV therapeutic efficacy of siRNAs, while avoiding their off-target effects and immunostimulation. There is an in-depth discussion on the (1) mechanisms of RNAi, (2) methods for siRNA/shRNA production, (3) barriers to RNAi-based therapies, and (4) delivery strategies of siRNA for treating HBV infection

HERA Collider Physics

HERA, the first electron-proton collider, has been delivering luminosity since 1992. It is the natural extension of an impressive series of fixed-target lepton-nucleon scattering experiments. The increase of a factor ten in center-of-mass energy over that available for fixed-target experiments has allowed the discovery of several important results, such as the large number of slow partons in the proton, and the sizeable diffractive cross section at large $Q^2$. Recent data point to a possible deviation from Standard Model expectations at very high $Q^2$, highlighting the physics potential of HERA for new effects. The HERA program is currently in a transition period. The first six years of data taking have primarily elucidated the structure of the proton, allowed detailed QCD studies and had a strong impact on the understanding of QCD dynamics. The coming years will bring the era of electroweak studies and high $Q^2$ measurements. This is therefore an appropriate juncture at which to review HERA results.Comment: 351 pages, 154 figures, submitted to Reviews of Modern Physic