Analysing Alternative Policy Response to High Oil Prices, Using an Energy Integrated CGE Microsimulation Approach for South Africa

An energy-focused integrated CGE microsimulation approach is used to assess the implications of differential government policy responses in South Africa, to increases in international oil prices. The first scenario assumes that increases in world oil and petroleum products are passed through to end users with no changes in government tax/subsidy instruments. The second scenario assumes that the world price increases are nullified by a full price subsidy by government in one scenario, while, in the third scenario, revenues generated from a 50 percent tax on the windfall profit of the synthetic petroleum industry, help to minimize the loss in government revenue. Overall output falls by between 2.2 and 2.5 percent, while the government deficit varies from a worsening of 12 to 22 percent under the three scenarios. Synthetic petroleum, coal, and electricity benefit under the floating price scenario, while none expands its output when a 50 percent tax is levied on the profit of the synthetic petroleum industry. Unemployment increases among medium and low-skilled workers, while skilled workers witness a substantial fall in their remuneration, particularly in rural areas. In both rural and urban areas, women are adversely affected relative to men. The poverty headcount ratio and inequality increase slightly more in the price-setting scenarios relative to the floating-price scenario. Thus, allowing the prices to be passed through to end users probably has a less adverse impact at a macroeconomic level, although there may be adverse distributional consequences.

Food, Nutrition and Agrobiodiversity Under Global Climate Change

Available evidence and predictions suggest overall negative effects on agricultural production as a result of climate change, especially when more food is required by a growing population. Information on the effects of global warming on pests and pathogens affecting agricultural crops is limited, though crop–pest models could offer means to predict changes in pest dynamics, and help design sound plant health management practices. Host-plant resistance should continue to receive high priority as global warming may favor emergence of new pest epidemics. There is increased risk, due to climate change, to food and feed contaminated by mycotoxin-producing fungi. Mycotoxin biosynthesis gene-specific microarray is being used to identify food-born fungi and associated mycotoxins, and investigate the influence of environmental parameters and their interactions for control of mycotoxin in food crops. Some crop wild relatives are threatened plant species and efforts should be made for their in situ conservation to ensure evolution of new variants, which may contribute to addressing new challenges to agricultural production. There should be more emphasis on germplasm enhancement to develop intermediate products with specific characteristics to support plant breeding. Abiotic stress response is routinely dissected to component physiological traits. Use of transgene(s) has led to the development of transgenic events, which could provide enhanced adaptation to abiotic stresses that are exacerbated by climate change. Global warming is also associated with declining nutritional quality of food crops. Micronutrient-dense cultivars have been released in selected areas of the developing world, while various nutritionally enhanced lines are in the release pipeline. The high-throughput phenomic platforms are allowing researchers to accurately measure plant growth and development, analyze nutritional traits, and assess response to stresses on large sets of individuals. Analogs for tomorrow’s agriculture offer a virtual natural laboratory to innovate and test technological options to develop climate resilience production systems. Increased use of agrobiodiversity is crucial to coping with adverse impacts of global warming on food and feed production and quality. No one solution will suffice to adapt to climate change and its variability. Suits of technological innovations, including climate-resilient crop cultivars, will be needed to feed 9 billion people who will be living in the Earth by the middle of the twenty-first century

Validation of the Peak Pruritus Numerical Rating Scale as a Patient-Reported Outcome Measure in Prurigo Nodularis

Abstract Introduction Validated patient report tools for quantifying patient experiences of itch in prurigo nodularis (PN) are limited. This study aimed to evaluate the validity of the 11-point peak pruritus numerical rating scale (PP NRS) as a single-item patient-reported outcome (PRO) measure for assessing itch severity in PN. Methods Content validity of the PP NRS was evaluated through qualitative interviews with adults with PN. The PP NRS was then psychometrically evaluated using data from a placebo-controlled trial of nemolizumab in adults with PN, during which patients completed the PP NRS daily. Meaningful within-patient change was estimated from the qualitative interviews and by anchor- and distribution-based analyses of trial data. Results The interview participants (N = 21) all understood the PP NRS and reported itch as their worst symptom overall. The PP NRS showed good test–retest reliability and demonstrated convergent validity and known-groups validity. PP NRS scores improved more in patients classified as “improved” on other clinical outcome measures than in those classified as “worsened/unchanged”. Triangulation of the different estimates identified a 2- to 5-point decrease in PP NRS score as a meaningful within-patient change threshold. Conclusion The PP NRS is a content-valid and reliable PRO measure for quantifying itch severity in adults with PN in clinical trials. Trial Registration Number NCT03181503

Effects of catalyst agglomerate shape in polymer electrolyte fuel cells investigated by a multi-scale modelling framework

A multi-scale modelling framework is developed for the PEFC cathode electrode. Unlike the conventional agglomerate model, the effects of the microstructure of the agglomerate are numerically coupled to the fuel cell-scale model in this framework. This is performed through solving the agglomerate-scale model first and subsequently extracting and using the data required to generate the performance curves in the fuel cell-scale model. This enables one to freely investigate the structure of the agglomerate without being limited to the only three agglomerate shapes that can be investigated using the conventional agglomerate model: spheres, long cylinders with sealed ends and long slabs with sealed ends. The numerical studies conducted in this work using the developed framework have revealed that the performance of the cathode electrode is highly sensitive to the specific surface area of the agglomerate if the size of the latter is relatively large, i.e. of the order of 1000 nm. Namely, the maximum reported current density has increased by about 60% when changing from the ‘large’ spherical agglomerate to the ‘large’ cylindrical agglomerate. Also, it has been shown that a slight change in the structure of the agglomerate may significantly improve the fuel cell performance

Modeling Gender Effects of Pakistan's Trade Liberalization

This study uses a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model specially constructed for investigating gender dimensions of the effects of trade liberalization in Pakistan in both production and consumption. The model employs various indicators to measure the gendered impacts, including income poverty (Foster-Greer-Thorbecke [FGT] Indices), time poverty (leisure), capability poverty (literacy and infant mortality), and welfare (Equivalent Variation [EV]). The simulation results show that revenue-neutral trade liberalization in Pakistan increased women's employment in unskilled jobs and increased women's real wage income more than men's for all types of labor, but kept the division of labor biased against women. The study finds that Pakistan's trade liberalization adversely affected women in relatively poor households by increasing their workload, deteriorating capabilities, and increasing relative income poverty. However, the effects remained gender neutral or favored women in the richest group of households.Capabilities, gender, poverty, trade liberalization, JEL Codes: C68, J16, O24,