Equity and ecotax reform in the EU: achieving a 10 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions using excise duties

This paper considers the distributional effects of imposing additional excise duties on energy products according to carbon content. The assumed duties escalate from 1999 to 2010 and achieve levels reducing CO2 emissions by 10 per cent below baseline by 2010 for 11 EU member states. By 2010, real personal disposable incomes are 1.6 per cent above baseline and employment is 1.2 per cent above, assuming that the change is tax-revenue-neutral. The study concludes that the changes will be weakly regressive for nearly all the member states in the study if revenues are used to reduce employers’ taxes and strongly progressive if they are given back lump-sum to households.

Innovation for Low Carbon Shipping: An innovation system in the making

This paper uses an analysis of stakeholders in the shipping industry to assess the potential for low carbon ships to enter trades such as tankers and bulkers and to trigger a sustainability transition in maritime transport. An innovation system must perform innovation functions: development, entrepreneurship, deployment of resources and legitimation successfully in order to develop. The developments in LNG are compared to wind assistance technologies and an assessment of possible transitions pathways made. LNG is devloping an effective innovation system. LNG ships are being build and classed and are now in operation. However, infrastructure is still limited an the technology is not yet commercially viable without subsidies. It is being adopted and may soon enter full market deployment, driven by environmental legislation. Wind power in ships faces significant barriers, but offers a greater potential for emissions reduction and should therefore be supported to enable demonstrators to show their practicability in modern global logistics systems. The main barrier is the need to restructure sipping operations to take full advantage of wind power, with slower transit speeds and real time routing to maximise the eneregy input from wind

Detergent phosphates :an EU policy assessment

Sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP) is an important ingredient of many detergents. The use of STPP has been associated with the environmental problem of “eutrophication”, the increase of nutrient levels in water, which can lead to the formation of large masses of algae or blooms which are unsightly, cause slow moving water to be turbid, and may be toxic. This paper considers policies to reduce the use of STPP in detergents and assesses their success in reducing eutrophication together with the impact on the phosphate industry. The extent of eutrophication has been reduced, but there is still an ecological problem in many areas. Policy directed specifically at detergent phosphates has now been effectively made redundant by the EU requirement to install tertiary treatment plant. While the phosphate industry has experienced a considerable reduction in demand and has consequently contracted, it can be expected to stabilise. Policy on phosphorus will continue to evolve, from the current emphasis on implementing the EU Directive on Urban Waste Water Treatment to dealing with the consequences of this – sludge – and addressing the other main source of phosphorus – agriculture

Using lead market factors to assess the potential for a sustainability transition

AbstractThis paper considers how the lead market concept can contribute towards analysing system transformation as described by the multi-level perspective (MLP). Lead market arguments for the export potential of eco-innovations can provide an argument for policy support for environmental niches. International policy diffusion and learning across countries on the level of niche–regime interaction can improve the legitimacy of supporting policies. We propose how eco-innovation can be framed within an integrated MLP-lead market approach. Eco-innovations address two classes of regimes (infrastructure and eco-efficiency), which are likely to follow different transition pathways. The use of indicators for lead market factors for empirically analysing the opportunities for system transformation in the MLP framework is assessed. Indicators for the lead market factors can be attributed to the MLP. However, some of the indicators are more general in nature and do only indirectly point towards system transformation towards eco-innovations

Capped steam ahead : a case study among ship operators on a maritime ETS

International shipping is an important emitter of greenhouse gases. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) is discussing different approaches to reduce maritime CO2 emissions, in particular market-based mechanisms. In this paper, we assess potential implications of a maritime emission trading scheme (ETS) on the organisation and operations of shipping companies, primarily on the basis of a case study involving ship operators. Our results suggest that there is no knock-out criterion why a cap-andtrade approach should not work in the shipping sector in practice. A maritime ETS has the potential to engage this sector into cost-efficient emission reduction if designed to account for the special characteristics of the international shipping industry

Bounded rationality in savings decisions.

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN007953 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

A cautionary note: Toxicity of polyethylene glycol 200 injected intraperitoneally into mice

The parenteral administration of hydrophobic substances in vivo requires the use of organic solvents to ensure sufficient solubility and avoid precipitation. Dimethyl sulfoxide is commonly used for this purpose. Based on the common assumption that polyethylene glycol (PEG) is non-toxic, our local regulatory authorities recently recommended the use of PEG instead. However, mice injected intraperitoneally (i.p.) with PEG 200 at a dose of 8 mL/kg (i.e. 9 g/kg) did not tolerate PEG 200 well, and half of the animals had to be euthanized. Our results demonstrate that although PEG 200 is generally considered to be harmless, it can be toxic when injected i.p. and is painful for the recipient mice. Nevertheless, it can be used as a solvent for repeated i.p. injections in mice at a dose of 2 mL/kg (i.e. 2.25 g/kg) without obvious signs of systemic toxicity

Mapping innovation in the European transport sector : An assessment of R&D efforts and priorities, institutional capacities, drivers and barriers to innovation

The present document provides an overview of the innovation capacity of the European transport sectors. The analysis addresses transport-related innovation from three different angles. It identifies the drivers and barriers to innovation for the main transport sub-sectors; it assesses quantitative indicators through the detailed analysis of the main industrial R&D investors and public R&D priorities in transport; and it identifies the key actors for transport research and knowledge flows between them in order to detect shortcomings in the current institutional set-up of transport innovation. The analysis finds that despite the significant on-going research efforts in transport, largely driven by the automotive industry, the potential for systemic innovations that go beyond modal boundaries and leave the currently pre-dominant design are under-exploited due to prominent lock-in effects caused by infrastructure and the institutional set-up of the innovation systemsJRC.J.1-Economics of Climate Change, Energy and Transpor

Bypassing reproductive barriers in hybrid seeds using chemically induced epimutagenesis

The triploid block, which prevents interploidy hybridizations in flowering plants, is characterized by a failure in endosperm development, arrest in embryogenesis, and seed collapse. Many genetic components of triploid seed lethality have been successfully identified in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, most notably the paternally expressed genes (PEGs), which are upregulated in tetraploid endosperm with paternal excess. Previous studies have shown that the paternal epigenome is a key determinant of the triploid block response, as the loss of DNA methylation in diploid pollen suppresses the triploid block almost completely. Here, we demonstrate that triploid seed collapse is bypassed in Arabidopsis plants treated with the DNA methyltransferase inhibitor 5-Azacytidine during seed germination and early growth. We identified strong suppressor lines showing stable transgenerational inheritance of hypomethylation in the CG context, as well as normalized expression of PEGs in triploid seeds. Importantly, differentially methylated loci segregate in the progeny of “epimutagenized” plants, which may allow epialleles involved in the triploid block response to be identified in future studies. Finally, we demonstrate that chemically induced epimutagenesis facilitates hybridization between different Capsella species, thus potentially emerging as a strategy for producing triploids and interspecific hybrids with high agronomic interest

Unfolding the hippocampus: An intrinsic coordinate system for subfield segmentations and quantitative mapping

The hippocampus, like the neocortex, has a morphological structure that is complex and variable in its folding pattern, especially in the hippocampal head. The current study presents a computational method to unfold hippocampal grey matter, with a particular focus on the hippocampal head where complexity is highest due to medial curving of the structure and the variable presence of digitations. This unfolding was performed on segmentations from high-resolution, T2-weighted 7T MRI data from 12 healthy participants and one surgical patient with epilepsy whose resected hippocampal tissue was used for histological validation. We traced a critical image feature composed of the hippocampal sulcus and stratum radiatum lacunosum-moleculare, (SRLM) in these images, then employed user-guided semi-automated techniques to detect and subsequently unfold the surrounding hippocampal grey matter. This unfolding was performed by solving Laplace\u27s equation in three dimensions of interest (long-axis, proximal-distal, and laminar). The resulting ‘unfolded coordinate space’ provides an intuitive way of mapping the hippocampal subfields in 2D space (long-axis and proximal-distal), such that similar borders can be applied in the head, body, and tail of the hippocampus independently of variability in folding. This unfolded coordinate space was employed to map intracortical myelin and thickness in relation to subfield borders, which revealed intracortical myelin differences that closely follow the subfield borders used here. Examination of a histological resected tissue sample from a patient with epilepsy reveals that our unfolded coordinate system has biological validity, and that subfield segmentations applied in this space are able to capture features not seen in manual tracing protocols