Vanishing lung emphysema during chemotherapy for malignant pleural mesothelioma.

We report the case of a 79-year-old man with a tobacco smoke-related left dystrophic bullous emphysema that showed a considerable recovery of the cystic abnormalities during chemotherapy for pleural malignant mesothelioma. We suggest that the disappearance of the dystrophic emphysema could be explained by the combined effect of chemotherapy and pleural disease. We briefly review the literature and we discuss the possible mechanism of this unforeseen manifestation

Escaping the climate policy uncertainty trap: options contracts for REDD+

Climate policy uncertainty significantly hinders investments in low-carbon technologies, and the global community is behind schedule to curb carbon emissions. Strong actions will be necessary to limit the increase in global temperatures, and continued delays create risks of escalating climate change damages and future policy costs. These risks are system-wide, long-term and large-scale and thus hard to diversify across firms. Because of its unique scale, cost structure and near-term availability, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation in developing countries (REDD+) has significant potential to help manage climate policy risks and facilitate the transition to lower greenhouse gas emissions. ‘Call’ options contracts in the form of the right but not the obligation to buy high-quality emissions reduction credits from jurisdictional REDD+ programmes at a predetermined price per ton of CO2 could help unlock this potential despite the current lack of carbon markets that accept REDD+ for compliance. This approach could provide a globally important cost-containment mechanism and insurance for firms against higher future carbon prices, while channelling finance to avoid deforestation until policy uncertainties decline and carbon markets scale up

Particle and energy fluxes in semiconductors: Full-band hydrodynamic equations and the thermodynamic limit

The hydrodynamic model for semiconductors includes equations of continuity for the carrier number, average energy, average velocity, and average energy flux. The last two equations can be recast as generalized drift-diffusion expressions, which are formally similar to those of the particle and energy fluxes provided by classical thermodynamics based upon entropy production. The derivation of the hydrodynamic model is reexamined, and the entropy principle is derived from the definition of fermion entropy. It is shown that the thermodynamic expressions are included as a limiting case of the hydrodynamic expressions and, in particular, that the hydrodynamic definitions of the momentum-relaxation time and energy-flux relaxation time provide the correct thermodynamic limit by fulfilling the Onsager relation. [S0163-1829(99)02840-4]

Pollution permits, strategic trading and dynamic technology adoption

This paper analyzes the dynamic incentives for technology adoption under a transferable permits system, which allows for strategic trading on the permit market. Initially, firms can invest both in low-emitting production technologies and trade permits. In the model, technology adoption and allowance price are generated endogenously and are interdependent. It is shown that the non-cooperative permit trading game possesses a pure-strategy Nash equilibrium, where the allowance value rejects the level of uncovered pollution (demand), the level of unused allowances (supply), and the technological status. These conditions are also satisfied when a price support instrument, which is contingent on the adoption of the new technology, is introduced. Numerical investigation confirms that this policy generates a floating price floor for the allowances, and it restores the dynamic incentives to invest. Given that this policy comes at a cost, a criterion for the selection of a self-financing policy (based on convex risk measures) is proposed and implemented