Con Edison: The Crisis of the Investor-Owned Utility

Consolidated Edison of New York, Inc. (Con Edison) is an investor-owned urban utility which provides electricity to New York City and most of Westchester County. It is representative of the older investor-owned utilities which are currently in the poorest financial condition. Although these utilities do not serve rapidly expanding service areas, the replacement of obsolete generating plants necessitates continued large capital expenditures. Present conditions raise the possibility that older investor-owned utilities cannot survive in their present form of regulated private monopoly. The failure of Con Edison to pay a quarterly dividend on April 23, 1974 focused attention on the deteriorating financial condition of the utility industry. Investor confidence in all utility securities plummeted and an unprecedented plunge in the value of such securities followed. The key to Con Edison\u27s financial dilemma is that revenues have not increased sufficiently to compensate for higher operating and capital costs. While some of Con Edison\u27s problems are unique, its financial crisis stems from forces buffeting the entire utility industry. This Comment will examine its problems and make suggestions for ameliorating them

Con Edison: The Crisis of the Investor-Owned Utility

Consolidated Edison of New York, Inc. (Con Edison) is an investor-owned urban utility which provides electricity to New York City and most of Westchester County. It is representative of the older investor-owned utilities which are currently in the poorest financial condition. Although these utilities do not serve rapidly expanding service areas, the replacement of obsolete generating plants necessitates continued large capital expenditures. Present conditions raise the possibility that older investor-owned utilities cannot survive in their present form of regulated private monopoly. The failure of Con Edison to pay a quarterly dividend on April 23, 1974 focused attention on the deteriorating financial condition of the utility industry. Investor confidence in all utility securities plummeted and an unprecedented plunge in the value of such securities followed. The key to Con Edison\u27s financial dilemma is that revenues have not increased sufficiently to compensate for higher operating and capital costs. While some of Con Edison\u27s problems are unique, its financial crisis stems from forces buffeting the entire utility industry. This Comment will examine its problems and make suggestions for ameliorating them

Hypolithic and soil microbial community assembly along an aridity gradient in the Namib Desert

The Namib Dessert is considered the oldest desert in the world and hyperarid for the last 5 million years. However, the environmental buffering provided by quartz and other translucent rocks supports extensive hypolithic microbial communities. In this study, open soil and hypolithic microbial communities have been investigated along an East–West transect characterized by an inverse fog-rainfall gradient. Multivariate analysis showed that structurally different microbial communities occur in soil and in hypolithic zones. Using variation partitioning, we found that hypolithic communities exhibited a fog-related distribution as indicated by the significant East– West clustering. Sodium content was also an important environmental factor affecting the composition of both soil and hypolithic microbial communities. Finally, although null models for patterns in microbial communities were not supported by experimental data, the amount of unexplained variation (68–97 %) suggests that stochastic processes also play a role in the assembly of such communities in the Namib Desert.Web of Scienc

Glucocorticoids in Pediatric Gastrointestinal Disorders

3Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) are the most frequent chronic gastrointestinal disorders in pediatric age. They include two disease entities – Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) – which, although different in their pathogenesis, show common clinical characteristics such as chronic inflammation at different levels of the gastrointestinal tract and alternation between active and inactive phases. The incidence of IBD is increasing in recent years, particularly among children and adolescents, and it is currently estimated that 20–30 % of patients with IBD experience the onset of symptoms when they are under 20 years of age [1–3]. In childhood, IBDs are gener- ally more extended, more severe, and progress more rapidly than in adulthood. Moreover, therapy in children with IBD is more aggressive than in adults: Indeed, about 80 % of children need steroids, and about 30 % are subjected to an intestinal resection during a 5-year follow-up. Quality of life is severely affected in IBD, espe- cially for pediatric patients, owing to the chronic character of the disease that implies frequent hospitalizations and aggressive therapies, with a significant risk of side effects and a considerable impact on health care costs. IBD can result in loss of education and difficulty in gaining employment or insurance; overall, 15 % of patients with IBD are unable to work after 5–10 years of disease. Depressive disorders and low social func- tioning are also common among these patients, and the disease can also cause growth failure or retarded sexual development in young people [4–7]. It was recently reported that the mean individual annual costs in European countries amount to US$6,000 for CD and$4,600 for UC, and pediatric cases cost even more than adult ones [8].nonenoneDe Iudicibus, Sara; Martelossi, Stefano; Decorti, GiulianaDE IUDICIBUS, Sara; Martelossi, Stefano; Decorti, Giulian