112 research outputs found
KlimaschÀden und Klimaverhandlungen
Anfang Dezember, bei dem Weltklimagipfel in Kopenhagen, wird das Startsignal zu einer wichtigen Verhandlungsrunde im Kampf gegen den Klimawandel gegeben. Doch die Chancen, in Kopenhagen ein neues Klimaprotokoll und somit einen erfolgreichen Ausgang zu erzielen, sind in den vergangenen Monaten dramatisch gesunken. Vielerlei GrĂŒnde erschweren eine Einigung, darunter die ungleiche Verteilung historischer und zukĂŒnftiger CO2-Emissionen in Industrie- und SchwellenlĂ€ndern und die weltweit ungleiche Verteilung der prognostizierten SchĂ€den durch den Klimawandel. Insbesondere arme Regionen werden einen hohen Schaden zu verkraften haben. Aber auch Wachstumsregionen wie China und Indien werden im Jahr 2100 einen betrĂ€chtlichen Anteil ihres Bruttoinlandsprodukts durch KlimawandelschĂ€den verlieren.Klimaschutz, KlimaverĂ€nderung, Prognose, Internationale Umweltpolitik, Welt
Do we follow the money? The drivers of migration across regions in the EU
Most immigration theories tend to highlight that migration follows wealth and economic dynamism, but is this also the case across regions in Europe? The aim of the paper is to investigate whether migrants in Europe indeed follow the money and to contrast this with a variety of potential alternative explanations, including the presence of migrants from a similar origin. The analysis is based on panel data estimations including 133 European regions over a time period of 17 years. Different lag structures have been employed in order to distinguish between short- and long-run effects. The results cast some doubt about the prominence of pecuniary factors as a determinant of cross regional migration in Europe, with little evidence to support the idea that migration follows economic dynamism. Network effects, human capital related-, and âterritorially embeddedâ innovation enhancing regional characteristics, by contrast, seem to play a much stronger role than hitherto considered
Design of the iLocater Acquisition Camera Demonstration System
Existing planet-finding spectrometers are limited by systematic errors that
result from their seeing-limited design. Of particular concern is the use of
multi-mode fibers (MMFs), which introduce modal noise and accept significant
amounts of background radiation from the sky. We present the design of a
single-mode fiber-based acquisition camera for a diffraction-limited
spectrometer named "iLocater." By using the "extreme" adaptive optics (AO)
system of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), iLocater will overcome the
limitations that prevent Doppler instruments from reaching their full
potential, allowing precise radial velocity (RV) measurements of terrestrial
planets around nearby bright stars. The instrument presented in this paper,
which we refer to as the acquisition camera "demonstration system," will
measure on-sky single-mode fiber (SMF) coupling efficiency using one of the
8.4m primaries of the LBT in fall 2015
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The Emergence of Three Human Development Clubs
We examine the joint distribution of levels of income per capita, life expectancy, and years of schooling across countries in 1960 and in 2000. In 1960 countries were clustered in two groups; a rich, highly educated, high longevity âdevelopedâ group and a poor, less educated, high mortality, âunderdevelopedâ group. By 2000 however we see the emergence of three groups; one underdeveloped group remaining near 1960 levels, a developed group with higher levels of education, income, and health than in 1960, and an intermediate group lying between these two. This finding is consistent with both the ideas of a new âmiddle income trapâ that countries face even if they escape the âlow income trapâ, as well as the notion that countries which escaped the poverty trap form a temporary âtransition regimeâ along their path to the âdevelopedâ group
Tangent Lines and Lipschitz Differentiability Spaces
We study the existence of tangent lines, i.e. subsets of the tangent space isometric to the real line, in tangent spaces of metric spaces.We first revisit the almost everywhere metric differentiability of Lipschitz continuous curves. We then show that any blow-up done at a point of metric differentiability and of density one for the domain of the curve gives a tangent line. Metric differentiability enjoys a Borel measurability property and this will permit us to use it in the framework of Lipschitz differentiability spaces.We show that any tangent space of a Lipschitz differentiability space contains at least n distinct tangent lines, obtained as the blow-up of n Lipschitz curves, where n is the dimension of the local measurable chart. Under additional assumptions on the space, such as curvature lower bounds, these n distinct tangent lines span an n-dimensional part of the tangent space. \ua9 2016 Fabio Cavalletti and Tapio Rajala
Final Design and On-Sky Testing of the iLocater SX Acquisition Camera: Broadband Single-Mode Fiber Coupling
Enabling efficient injection of light into single-mode fibers (SMFs) is a key
requirement in realizing diffraction-limited astronomical spectroscopy on
ground-based telescopes. SMF-fed spectrographs, facilitated by the use of
adaptive optics (AO), offer distinct advantages over comparable seeing-limited
designs, including higher spectral resolution within a compact and stable
instrument volume, and a telescope independent spectrograph design. iLocater is
an extremely precise radial velocity (EPRV) spectrograph being built for the
Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). We have designed and built the front-end fiber
injection system, or acquisition camera, for the SX (left) primary mirror of
the LBT. The instrument was installed in 2019 and underwent on-sky
commissioning and performance assessment. In this paper, we present the
instrument requirements, acquisition camera design, as well as results from
first-light measurements. Broadband single-mode fiber coupling in excess of 35%
(absolute) in the near-infrared (0.97-1.31{\mu}m) was achieved across a range
of target magnitudes, spectral types, and observing conditions. Successful
demonstration of on-sky performance represents both a major milestone in the
development of iLocater and in making efficient ground-based SMF-fed
astronomical instruments a reality.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA
A genome-wide association study identifies protein quantitative trait loci (pQTLs)
There is considerable evidence that human genetic variation influences gene expression. Genome-wide studies have revealed that mRNA levels are associated with genetic variation in or close to the gene coding for those mRNA transcripts - cis effects, and elsewhere in the genome - trans effects. The role of genetic variation in determining protein levels has not been systematically assessed. Using a genome-wide association approach we show that common genetic variation influences levels of clinically relevant proteins in human serum and plasma. We evaluated the role of 496,032 polymorphisms on levels of 42 proteins measured in 1200 fasting individuals from the population based InCHIANTI study. Proteins included insulin, several interleukins, adipokines, chemokines, and liver function markers that are implicated in many common diseases including metabolic, inflammatory, and infectious conditions. We identified eight Cis effects, including variants in or near the IL6R (p = 1.8Ă10 -57), CCL4L1 (p = 3.9Ă10-21), IL18 (p = 6.8Ă10-13), LPA (p = 4.4Ă10-10), GGT1 (p = 1.5Ă10-7), SHBG (p = 3.1Ă10-7), CRP (p = 6.4Ă10-6) and IL1RN (p = 7.3Ă10-6) genes, all associated with their respective protein products with effect sizes ranging from 0.19 to 0.69 standard deviations per allele. Mechanisms implicated include altered rates of cleavage of bound to unbound soluble receptor (IL6R), altered secretion rates of different sized proteins (LPA), variation in gene copy number (CCL4L1) and altered transcription (GGT1). We identified one novel trans effect that was an association between ABO blood group and tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) levels (p = 6.8Ă10-40), but this finding was not present when TNF-alpha was measured using a different assay , or in a second study, suggesting an assay-specific association. Our results show that protein levels share some of the features of the genetics of gene expression. These include the presence of strong genetic effects in cis locations. The identification of protein quantitative trait loci (pQTLs) may be a powerful complementary method of improving our understanding of disease pathways. © 2008 Melzer et al
Primary bone diffuse large B-cell lymphoma: a retrospective evaluation on 76 cases from French institutional and LYSA studies
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