Monitoring the evolution of income poverty and real incomes over time

This paper brings together two approaches to the monitoring of household living standards: the macro-economic (national accounts) analysis of aggregates and the social indicators based on household microdata (European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions [EU-SILC]). Both are essential. The national accounts are necessary to provide an overall perspective; the distributional data in EU-SILC are necessary to measure income poverty. The progress, or lack of progress, in reducing income poverty has to be seen in relation to what is happening to the level of real incomes. We begin with the EU-SILC-based headline at-risk-of-poverty indicator, and then consider its relation to the level of household real income as presented in the national accounts. Moving step by step, we seek to identify the reasons for differences between EU-SILC and national accounts measures of real incomes. From this, we make a number of recommendations about possible improvements in the underlying data and in the construction of the social indicators. The substantive results help illuminate the differing experience of the pre-crisis period 2005 to 2008 and the subsequent three year period 2008 to 2011 (income reference years)

Drought impacts on children's respiratory health in the Brazilian Amazon.

notes: PMCID: PMC3893650types: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov'tThis is an open access article that is freely available in ORE or from the publisher's web site. Please cite the published version.Drought conditions in Amazonia are associated with increased fire incidence, enhancing aerosol emissions with degradation in air quality. Quantifying the synergic influence of climate and human-driven environmental changes on human health is, therefore, critical for identifying climate change adaptation pathways for this vulnerable region. Here we show a significant increase (1.2%-267%) in hospitalisations for respiratory diseases in children under-five in municipalities highly exposed to drought. Aerosol was the primary driver of hospitalisations in drought affected municipalities during 2005, while human development conditions mitigated the impacts in 2010. Our results demonstrated that drought events deteriorated children's respiratory health particularly during 2005 when the drought was more geographically concentrated. This indicates that if governments act on curbing fire usage and effectively plan public health provision, as a climate change adaptation procedure, health quality would improve and public expenditure for treatment would decrease in the region during future drought events.Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC

Regional air quality impacts of future fire emissions in Sumatra and Kalimantan

Fire emissions associated with land cover change and land management contribute to the concentrations of atmospheric pollutants, which can affect regional air quality and climate. Mitigating these impacts requires a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between fires and different land cover change trajectories and land management strategies. We develop future fire emissions inventories from 2010–2030 for Sumatra and Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) to assess the impact of varying levels of forest and peatland conservation on air quality in Equatorial Asia. To compile these inventories, we combine detailed land cover information from published maps of forest extent, satellite fire radiative power observations, fire emissions from the Global Fire Emissions Database, and spatially explicit future land cover projections using a land cover change model. We apply the sensitivities of mean smoke concentrations to Indonesian fire emissions, calculated by the GEOS-Chem adjoint model, to our scenario-based future fire emissions inventories to quantify the different impacts of fires on surface air quality across Equatorial Asia. We find that public health impacts are highly sensitive to the location of fires, with emissions from Sumatra contributing more to smoke concentrations at population centers across the region than Kalimantan, which had higher emissions by more than a factor of two. Compared to business-as-usual projections, protecting peatlands from fires reduces smoke concentrations in the cities of Singapore and Palembang by 70% and 40%, and by 60% for the Equatorial Asian region, weighted by the population in each grid cell. Our results indicate the importance of focusing conservation priorities on protecting both forested (intact or logged) peatlands and non-forested peatlands from fire, even after considering potential leakage of deforestation pressure to other areas, in order to limit the impact of fire emissions on atmospheric smoke concentrations and subsequent health effects

The future role of Scottish local government economic development

Since 1979 local authorities have been subjected to two main pressures from central government: increasing control over the range and type of services that can be provided; and greater emphasis on the private sector's role. So far, beyond being affected by the general financial constraints that local government has been placed under, the economic development services that many local authorities provide have escaped largely unscathed. This situation seems now likely to change radically as a result of three measures. These are:- a) the Local Government and Housing Bill; b) Scottish Enterprise; and c) changes to the structure of local government. When considered in isolation these measures contain much that is attractive and which could produce a more effective economic development service; for example, a specific power to carry out economic development and the creation of an integrated training and enterprise development service. However the argument that is put forward in this paper is that these measures have to be seen as complementary. They are part of an overall strategy intended to result in a major reduction in local government's local economic development activities

Molecular characterisation of virulence graded field isolates of myxoma virus

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Myxoma virus </it>(MV) has been endemic in Europe since shortly after its deliberate release in France in 1952. While the emergence of more resistant hosts and more transmissible and attenuated virus is well documented, there have been relatively few studies focused on the sequence changes incurred by the virus as it has adapted to its new host. In order to identify regions of variability within the MV genome to be used for phylogenetic studies and to try to investigate causes of MV strain attenuation we have molecularly characterised nine strains of MV isolated in Spain between the years 1992 and 1995 from wide ranging geographic locations and which had been previously graded for virulence by experimental infection of rabbits.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The findings reported here show the analysis of 16 genomic regions accounting for approximately 10% of the viral genomes. Of the 20 genes analysed 5 (M034L, M069L, M071L, M130R and M135R) were identical in all strains and 1 (M122R) contained only a single point mutation in an individual strain. Four genes (M002L/R, M009L, M036L and M017L) showed insertions or deletions that led to disruption of the ORFs.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The findings presented here provide valuable tools for strain differentiation and phylogenetic studies of MV isolates and some clues as to the reasons for virus attenuation in the field.</p

A Greatly Under-Appreciated Fundamental Principle of Physical Organic Chemistry

If a species does not have a finite lifetime in the reaction medium, it cannot be a mechanistic intermediate. This principle was first enunciated by Jencks, as the concept of an enforced mechanism. For instance, neither primary nor secondary carbocations have long enough lifetimes to exist in an aqueous medium, so SN1 reactions involving these substrates are not possible, and an SN2 mechanism is enforced. Only tertiary carbocations and those stabilized by resonance (benzyl cations, acylium ions) are stable enough to be reaction intermediates. More importantly, it is now known that neither H3O+ nor HO− exist as such in dilute aqueous solution. Several recent high-level calculations on large proton clusters are unable to localize the positive charge; it is found to be simply “on the cluster” as a whole. The lifetime of any ionized water species is exceedingly short, a few molecular vibrations at most; the best experimental study, using modern IR instrumentation, has the most probable hydrated proton structure as H13O6+, but only an estimated quarter of the protons are present even in this form at any given instant. Thanks to the Grotthuss mechanism of chain transfer along hydrogen bonds, in reality a proton or a hydroxide ion is simply instantly available anywhere it is needed for reaction. Important mechanistic consequences result. Any charged oxygen species (e.g., a tetrahedral intermediate) is also not going to exist long enough to be a reaction intermediate, unless the charge is stabilized in some way, usually by resonance. General acid catalysis is the rule in reactions in concentrated aqueous acids. The Grotthuss mechanism also means that reactions involving neutral water are favored; the solvent is already highly structured, so the entropy involved in bringing several solvent molecules to the reaction center is unimportant. Examples are given

Development and demonstration of a Lagrangian dispersion modeling system for real‐time prediction of smoke haze pollution from biomass burning in Southeast Asia

Abstract Transboundary smoke haze caused by biomass burning frequently causes extreme air pollution episodes in maritime and continental Southeast Asia. With millions of people being affected by this type of pollution every year, the task to introduce smoke haze related air quality forecasts is urgent. We investigate three severe haze episodes: June 2013 in Maritime SE Asia, induced by fires in central Sumatra, and March/April 2013 and 2014 on mainland SE Asia. Based on comparisons with surface measurements of PM10 we demonstrate that the combination of the Lagrangian dispersion model NAME with emissions derived from satellite‐based active‐fire detection provides reliable forecasts for the region. Contrasting two fire emission inventories shows that using algorithms to account for fire pixel obscuration by cloud or haze better captures the temporal variations and observed persistence of local pollution levels. Including up‐to‐date representations of fuel types in the area and using better conversion and emission factors is found to more accurately represent local concentration magnitudes, particularly for peat fires. With both emission inventories the overall spatial and temporal evolution of the haze events is captured qualitatively, with some error attributed to the resolution of the meteorological data driving the dispersion process. In order to arrive at a quantitative agreement with local PM10 levels, the simulation results need to be scaled. Considering the requirements of operational forecasts, we introduce a real‐time bias correction technique to the modeling system to address systematic and random modeling errors, which successfully improves the results in terms of reduced normalized mean biases and fractional gross errors

Exome sequencing implicates genetic disruption of prenatal neuro-gliogenesis in sporadic congenital hydrocephalus

Congenital hydrocephalus (CH), characterized by enlarged brain ventricles, is considered a disease of excessive cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) accumulation and thereby treated with neurosurgical CSF diversion with high morbidity and failure rates. The poor neurodevelopmental outcomes and persistence of ventriculomegaly in some post-surgical patients highlight our limited knowledge of disease mechanisms. Through whole-exome sequencing of 381 patients (232 trios) with sporadic, neurosurgically treated CH, we found that damaging de novo mutations account for >17% of cases, with five different genes exhibiting a significant de novo mutation burden. In all, rare, damaging mutations with large effect contributed to ~22% of sporadic CH cases. Multiple CH genes are key regulators of neural stem cell biology and converge in human transcriptional networks and cell types pertinent for fetal neuro-gliogenesis. These data implicate genetic disruption of early brain development, not impaired CSF dynamics, as the primary pathomechanism of a significant number of patients with sporadic CH

Interannual climate variation, land type and village livelihood effects on fires in Kalimantan, Indonesia

The increasing extent and frequency of fires globally requires nuanced understanding of the drivers of largescale events for improved prevention and mitigation. Yet, the drivers of fires are often poorly understood by various stakeholders in spatially expansive and temporally dynamic landscapes. Further, perceptions about the main cause of fires vary amongst stakeholders, which amplify ongoing challenges from policies being implemented inconsistently across different governance levels. Here, we develop a spatially and temporallyexplicit typology of fire prevalence across Kalimantan, Indonesia, a region with significant contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. Based on livelihood information and data on climate, soil type and forest degradation status, we find that in intact forest the density of fires in villages that largely coincide with oil palm concessions was twice as high as in villages outside the concessions across all years. Fires occurring in degraded land on mineral soil across all years were also most prevalent in villages with industrial plantations (oil palm or timber). On the other hand, in degraded peatland, where fires are most intense during dry years induced by the El Niño episodes, occurrence rates were high regardless of village primary livelihoods. Based on these findings we recommend two key priorities for fire mitigation going forward for policy across different governance levels in Kalimantan: degraded peatland as the priority area and industrial plantations as the priority sector. Our study suggests a fire prevention and mitigation approach, which accounts for climate, land type and village livelihood, has the potential to deliver more effective means of management