Valuing the attributes of renewable energy investments in Scotland

This study was funded by a grant from the Scottish Economic Policy Network (SEPN) with funding assistance provided by the University of Glasgow, Department of Economics (Professor Nick Hanley) and the University of Sterling (Robert Wright). The goal of the project was to determine the value of differing types of renewable energy projects by how they would effect environmental and community quality of life factors. The key issues examined include; air quality, landscape, wildlife, and long term local employment. Stated preference methods were employed through the use of a discrete choice experiment survey approach. Willingness-to-pay for different types of renewable energy projects was estimated, i.e., moderate onshore windmill farms, large onshore windmill farms, offshore windmill farms, and biomass fueled power plants. The most significant findings were that rural areas likely to be most highly impacted by the new energy projects were willing to accept low or moderate environmental damage in exchange for commercial development gains. Urban respondents on the other hand were more likely to oppose any disturbance to the landscape or wildlife and had no value placed on the economics development gains for the rural areas; income level of households showed no significant difference in environmental values

An extension and application of the Leontief pollution model for waste generation and disposal in Scotland

Solid waste generation, treatment and disposal are important policy concerns for the Scottish Parliament. As a result of the Environment Act 1995, a National Waste Strategy for Scotland was introduced with the general aim of reducing the amount of waste produced and dealing with what is produced in more sustainable ways. This implies the need for an empirical framework to inform policymakers regarding the relationship between economic activity and waste generation, treatment and disposal and the likely impacts of any policy actions or other disturbances on all types of sustainability indicators. In this paper we report on a study to develop an extended input-output (IO) system of the type originally proposed in the seminal paper by Leontief (1970). This involves extending the standard IOaccounts to take account of pollution or waste generation as an additional output accompanying production and consumption activities in the economy and of the activity required to clean up (or prevent) these unwanted outputs. The extension of IO tables to take account of pollution/waste generation is relatively widespread in the literature. It is usually achieved through the introduction of physical pollution/waste-output coefficients, and has been previously applied to Scotland for the case ofair pollution (see McNicoll & Blackmore, 1993, McGregor et al, 2001). Such an approach allows us to examine the impact of the economy on the environment, in terms of the amount of pollution/waste emitted as a result of economic activity. However, it does not allow us to track the feedback from the environment to the economy in terms of the resources used in environmental cleaning. If we areinterested in this aspect, we need to identify the input structure of any pollution abatement or waste disposal activities and identify columns in the IO tables representing cleaning activities

We want to sort! Assessing households' preferences for sorting waste

Support of Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education as well as Foundation for Polish Science is gratefully acknowledged.There are two major ways in which solid waste can be sorted and recycled - at the household level, when households are required to sort waste into a given number of categories, or in specialised sorting facilities. Traditionally, it has been thought that sorting at the household level is an inconvenience, as it uses space and requires time and effort. Our study provides empirical evidence to the contrary, indicating that home sorting is a net source of utility for some people. Through a carefully designed choice experiment we collected stated choices from members of a Polish municipality with respect to the way their waste is sorted and how often it is collected. In the hypothetical scenario employed, respondents were informed that waste will be sorted anyway - if not at the household level then at a specialised sorting facility. Interestingly, analysis shows that a large group of people are willing to sort waste at the household level even if unsorted waste would be collected at no extra cost. For a minority, increased home sorting of waste would, however, impose a loss of utility. Overall, our results indicate that most respondents preferred to sort waste themselves if given the choice. We provide a few possible explanations of this perhaps surprising result, including the desire to promote a green external image, and a concern about the effectiveness of separation activities performed by others.PostprintPeer reviewe

The Man Who Mistook His Neuropsychologist For a Popstar: When Configural Processing Fails in Acquired Prosopagnosia

We report the case of an individual with acquired prosopagnosia who experiences extreme difficulties in recognizing familiar faces in everyday life despite excellent object recognition skills. Formal testing indicates that he is also severely impaired at remembering pre-experimentally unfamiliar faces and that he takes an extremely long time to identify famous faces and to match unfamiliar faces. Nevertheless, he performs as accurately and quickly as controls at identifying inverted familiar and unfamiliar faces and can recognize famous faces from their external features. He also performs as accurately as controls at recognizing famous faces when fracturing conceals the configural information in the face. He shows evidence of impaired global processing but normal local processing of Navon figures. This case appears to reflect the clearest example yet of an acquired prosopagnosic patient whose familiar face recognition deficit is caused by a severe configural processing deficit in the absence of any problems in featural processing. These preserved featural skills together with apparently intact visual imagery for faces allow him to identify a surprisingly large number of famous faces when unlimited time is available. The theoretical implications of this pattern of performance for understanding the nature of acquired prosopagnosia are discussed.DY, Avery Braun, Jacob Waite, and Nadine Wanke, Bruno Rossion, Thomas Busigny and the grant awarded by AJ by the Experimental Psychology Society (EPS

Trust-based work-time and product improvements: Evidence from firm level data

We explore whether the introduction of trust based working hours is related to the subsequent innovation performance of firms. Employing a panel data set of over 5,000 German establishments, we implement a propensity score matching approach where we only consider firms that did not use trust based work contracts initially. Our results show that firms which adopt such contracts tend to be between 11 to 14 percent more likely to improve products. These results hold when we control for another form of flexible time work arrangements, namely working time accounts. Thus, the positive relationship between the adoption of trust based working hours and innovation seems to be driven by the degree of control and self-management over working days, rather than by merely allowing time flexibility

Particle Impact Analysis of Bulk Powder During Pneumatic Conveyance

Fragmentation of powders during transportation is a common problem for manufacturers of food and pharmaceutical products. We illustrate that the primary cause of breakage is due to inter-particle collisions, rather than particle-wall impacts, and provide a statistical mechanics model giving the number of collisions resulting in fragmentation

The impact of information provision on agglomeration bonus performance : an experimental study on local networks

This research was funded by the European Investment Bank (EIB) under the EIB-University Research Action ProgrammeThe agglomeration bonus is an incentive mechanism to induce adjacent landowners to spatially coordinate their land use for the delivery of ecosystem services from farmland. This paper uses laboratory experiments to explore the performance of the agglomeration bonus in achieving the socially optimal land management configuration in a local network environment where the information available to subjects varies and the strategic setting is unfavorable for efficient coordination. The experiments indicate that if subjects are informed about both their direct and indirect neighbors' actions, they are more likely to produce the socially optimal configuration. Thus effectiveness of the policy can be improved by implementing information dissemination exercises among landowners. However given the adverse strategic setting, increased game experience leads to coordination failure and optimal land choices only at the localized level independent of the information available to subjects. Thus success of the agglomeration bonus scheme on real landscapes will have to take account of the roles of both information and experience on participant behavior.PostprintPeer reviewe

Emerging Monoclonal Antibodies for the Treatment of Multiple Myeloma

Therapeutic measures designed to treat multiple myeloma (MM) have undergone a fundamental shift over the past two decades as a number of small molecules that attack this cancer by different mechanisms, including proteasome blockade, immunomodulation, and histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibition, have been introduced. The insertion of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) into the mix began in 2015 with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of daratumumab and elotuzumab, which target CD38 and SLAMF7, respectively. In 2020, they were joined by another anti-CD38 mAb, isatuximab, and the bispecific antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) belantamab mafodotin, which targets the B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA). This review focuses on additional mAbs currently under clinical study for MM. These include several BCMAxCD3-directed bispecifics (AMG 420, AMG 701, REGN5458, REGN5459, teclistamab, and TNB-383B), the ADCs indatuximab ravtansine and STRO-001, and checkpoint inhibitors, although the future status of the latter is in a state of flux due to toxicity issues that arose in trials in which these drugs, especially PD-1 or PD-L1 blockers, were combined with immunomodulators

Human notochordal cell transcriptome unveils potential regulators of cell function in the developing intervertebral disc

The adult nucleus pulposus originates from the embryonic notochord, but loss of notochordal cells with skeletal maturity in humans is thought to contribute to the onset of intervertebral disc degeneration. Thus, defining the phenotype of human embryonic/fetal notochordal cells is essential for understanding their roles and for development of novel therapies. However, a detailed transcriptomic profiling of human notochordal cells has never been achieved. In this study, the notochord-specific marker CD24 was used to specifically label and isolate (using FACS) notochordal cells from human embryonic and fetal spines (7.5-14 weeks post-conception). Microarray analysis and qPCR validation identified CD24, STMN2, RTN1, PRPH, CXCL12, IGF1, MAP1B, ISL1, CLDN1 and THBS2 as notochord-specific markers. Expression of these markers was confirmed in nucleus pulposus cells from aged and degenerate discs. Ingenuity pathway analysis revealed molecules involved in inhibition of vascularisation (WISP2, Noggin and EDN2) and inflammation (IL1-RN) to be master regulators of notochordal genes. Importantly, this study has, for the first time, defined the human notochordal cell transcriptome and suggests inhibition of inflammation and vascularisation may be key roles for notochordal cells during intervertebral disc development. The molecules and pathways identified in this study have potential for use in developing strategies to retard/prevent disc degeneration, or regenerate tissue.This research was funded by Arthritis Research UK (reference 21165 to SMR/JAH/LW) and the Henry Smith Charity (to JAH/SMR/MH). RRP was supported by a grant from the Programme for Advanced Medical Education, sponsored by Fundacão Calouste Gulbenkian, fundação Champalimaud, Ministério da Saúde, Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and Apifarma, Portugal. Support was also received from the UK Medical Research Council (MR/J003352/1 to KPH), the Wellcome Trust (NAH was a senior fellow in clinical science, 088566; additional support from grant, 097820), and the British Council (14BX15NHBG to NAH). Consumable and technical support for this project (Sonal Patel) was funded by the National Institute for Health Research Manchester Musculoskeletal Biomedical Research Unit. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the National Institute for Health Research, or the Department of Health. We are very grateful to all women who consented to take part in our research programme and for the assistance of research nurses and clinical colleagues at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. The authors would like to thank Prof Kathy Cheah and group for advice regarding the identification of sex-specific markers within microarray datasets.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio