International food trade contributes to dietary risks and mortality at global, regional and national levels

Food trade is generally perceived to increase the availability and diversity of foods available to consumers, but there is little empirical evidence on its implications for human health. Here we show that a substantial proportion of dietary risks and diet-related mortality worldwide is attributable to international food trade and that whether the contributions of food trade are positive or negative depends on the types of food traded. Using bilateral trade data for 2019 and food-specific risk–disease relationships, we estimate that imports of fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts improved dietary risks in the importing countries and were associated with a reduction in mortality from non-communicable diseases of ~1.4 million deaths globally. By contrast, imports of red meat aggravated dietary risks in the importing countries and were associated with an increase of ~150,000 deaths. The magnitude of our findings suggests that considering impacts on dietary risks will become an important aspect of health-sensitive trade and agriculture policies, and of policy responses to disruptions in food chains

The study of ionospheric anomalies in Japan area during 1998–2010 by Kon et al.: An inaccurate claim of earthquake-related signatures?

The problem of identifying precursory signals of earthquakes in the hope of mitigate the seismic hazard is a very important topic, but inaccurate documentations of precursory signatures decrease the credibility of this field of research. The statistical analysis by Kon et al. (2011) shows that there is tendency of positive total electron content (TEC) anomalies to occur 1–5 days before 52 M > 6 earthquakes which struck Japan during 1998–2010. Kon et al. (2011) also report in detail three selected case studies claiming the occurrence of TEC anomalies possibly related to large and destructive earthquakes. This paper casts doubts on the possibility that in the three cases the TEC disturbances were caused by seismic events suggesting that these TEC changes could be induced by normal variations of the global geomagnetic activity. As a consequence, also the results of the Superimposed Epoch Analysis performed by Kon et al. (2011) could be seriously influenced by global magnetospheric signals

Calcium potassium tris(oxalato-O-1, O-2)-chromate(III) pentahydrate

The Cr-III atom in CaK[Cr(C2O4)(3)].5H(2)O, has a regular octahedral geometry with three oxalato groups completing the coordination, Both the calcium and potassium cations are coordinated to the O atom of the oxalate group

Nanoscale fluid flows in the vicinity of patterned surfaces

Molecular dynamics simulations of dense and rarefied fluids comprising small chain molecules in chemically patterned nano-channels predict a novel switching from Poiseuille to plug flow along the channel. We also demonstrate behavior akin to the lotus effect for a nanodrop on a chemically patterned substrate. Our results show that one can control and exploit the behavior of fluids at the nanoscale using chemical patterning.Comment: Phys. Rev. Lett. in pres

A discrete slug population model determined by egg production

Slugs are significant pests in agriculture (as well as a nuisance to gardeners), and it is therefore important to understand their population dynamics for the construction of efficient and effective control measures. Differential equation models of slug populations require the inclusion of large (variable) temporal delays, and strong seasonal forcing results in a non-autonomous system. This renders such models open to only a limited amount of rigorous analysis. In this paper, we derive a novel batch model based purely upon the quantity of eggs produced at different times of the year. This model is open to considerable reduction; from the resulting two variable discrete-time system it is possible to reconstruct the dynamics of the full population across the year and give conditions for extinction or global stability and persistence. Furthermore, the steady state temporal population distribution displays qualitatively different behavior with only small changes in the survival probability of slugs. The model demonstrates how small variations in the favorability of different years may result in widely different slug population fluctuations between consecutive years, and is in good agreement with field data

Are we heading towards a replicability crisis in energy efficiency research? A toolkit for improving the quality, transparency and replicability of energy efficiency impact evaluations

Several high-profile replication failures have called into question the reproducibility of results in medicine, neuroscience, genetics, psychology and economics (Camerer et al. 2016). A paper published in Science found that just one third of psychology studies could be replicated when the study was run for a second time (OSC 2015). To our knowledge, there have been no attempted replications of energy efficiency studies; so can we be confident that the estimated energy savings from policy initiatives like the European roll out of smart meters will be realised? Or that electric vehicles will reduce carbon emissions by predicted levels? Or is energy heading towards its own reproducibility crisis? Researchers call for the increased use of randomised control trials (RCTs) to evaluate energy efficiency policy and the introduction of protocols or guidelines for conducting experiments (Vine et al. 2014; Frederiks et al. 2016). However, no guidelines for increasing reproducibility have been proposed. Moreover, RCTs are just one method for causal analysis and RCTs cannot answer all important causal questions. This paper will outline research methods for improved impact assessment of energy efficiency policy, including RCTs, but also quasi-experiments and systematic reviews that go beyond the conclusions of single experiments. It will then present tools for increasing replicability: pre-registration of trials; pre-analysis plans; reporting standards; synthesis tools and; publication of datasets with computer code in data repositories. Based on work by our research group at the UCL Energy Institute, we recognize that not all of these tools (mostly from medical trials) provide ‘off-the-shelf’ models for energy efficiency evaluations, and so consider adaptations for energy research. Our aim is to stimulate discussion and get feedback from the research community at ECEEE so the toolkit can be developed and potentially adopted more widely

The low-frequency response in the surface superconducting state of ZrB12_{12} single crystal}

The large nonlinear response of a single crystal ZrB$_{12}$ to an ac field (frequency 40 - 2500 Hz) for $H_0>H_{c2}$ has been observed. Direct measurements of the ac wave form and the exact numerical solution of the Ginzburg-Landau equations, as well as phenomenological relaxation equation, permit the study of the surface superconducting states dynamics. It is shown, that the low frequency response is defined by transitions between the metastable superconducting states under the action of an ac field. The relaxation rate which determines such transitions dynamics, is found.Comment: 7 pages, 11 figure

Magnus and Iordanskii Forces in Superfluids

The total transverse force acting on a quantized vortex in a superfluid is a problem that has eluded a complete understanding for more than three decades. In this letter I propose a remarkably simple argument, somewhat reminiscent of Laughlin's beautiful argument for the quantization of conductance in the quantum Hall effect, to define the superfluid velocity part of the transverse force. This term is found to be $- \rho_s {\kappa}_s \times {v}_s$. Although this result does not seem to be overly controversial, this thermodynamic argument based only on macroscopic properties of the superfluid does offer a robust derivation. A recent publication by Thouless, Ao and Niu has demonstrated that the vortex velocity part of the transverse force in a homogeneous neutral superfluid is given by the usual form $\rho_s {\kappa}_s \times {v}_V$. A combination of these two independent results and the required Galilean invariance yields that there cannot be any transverse force proportional to the normal fluid velocity, in apparent conflict with Iordanskii's theory of the transverse force due to phonon scattering by the vortex.Comment: RevTex, 1 Encapsulated Postscript figur