Haematological and biochemical alterations of Catla catla fingerlings following sublethal exposure to Nuvan

The sublethal exposure (0.24 ppm) of Nuvan on some biochemical compositions such as serum protein, blood glucose, glutamate oxaloacetate transaminase (AST) and glutamate pyruvate transaminase (ALT) and on some hematological parameters such as red blood corpuscles (RBC), white blood corpuscles (WBC), hemoglobin content (Hb), mean corpuscular concentration (MCV), mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC) of Catla catla fingerlings were studied. The hematological and biochemical parameters evoked a significant reduction (excepting MCV, ALT and AST which is significantly increased) with increasing days of Nuvan exposure

The Creation and Benchmarking of a Green Municipal Bond Index

As the green bond market grows, many are wondering if there is a pricing difference between green bonds and conventional bonds. In order to explore these ideas, we created bond indices specific to the green-labelled and climate-aligned municipal bond market, primarily to test the competitiveness of the green sector of the muni bond market against the overall muni bond market. We used the S&P municipal bond index construction methodology in order to compare like with like, and benchmarked the green and climate indices against their counterpart S&P municipal indices. We find that the green and climate muni indices showed CAGRs of 4.5% from 2014 to 2017, compared with 3% for the S&P Investment Grade Municipal index. We also created several sector and state sub-indices, which also outperformed their S&P counterparts

Green Premium in the Primary and Secondary U.S. Municipal Bond Markets

Green municipal bonds are a growing segment of the US municipal bond market. As they face increasing demand, there have been questions about the performance of green muni bonds relative to their conventional counterparts. In this paper, we perform yield curve analysis on a selection of green-labelled muni bonds that were issued at the same time as conventional muni bonds by the same issuers. We further refine this down to a pair-wise analysis to check the yield differential between pairs of bonds that are identical except for the green label. We find that there is a growing trend towards green premium in both the primary and secondary markets in both the series trend analysis and in the pair-wise analysis

Green bond pricing: The search for greenium

Green bonds are a novel way to help unlock finance for investment in sustainable development. Some issuers and investors are watching this market with keen interest to see whether a green premium-or "greenium"-arises. The current consensus in the literature is that there is a detectable greenium in the secondary markets for corporate and US municipal bonds, but evidence for a greenium at issue is more difficult to detect. The authors provide a summary of the pricing literature and a description of their green municipal bond pricing analyses and then unpack these findings and offer an explanation as to why there is a difference in greenium behavior in the primary and secondary markets

Opportunities for chemical recycling to benefit from waste policy changes in the United Kingdom

Increased awareness in the United Kingdom around the issues of dealing with plastic waste, particularly non-recyclable plastics, has created political pressure to find new ways to manage this waste stream. As a result, the UK government recently convened consultations around adapting the national plastic waste management strategy in light of curtailed overseas plastic recycling. In this work, we consider the potential role that chemical recycling, such as gasification and pyrolysis, may have to play in the context of plastic waste valorization, and assess the policies and market conditions that would be required to make chemical recycling a feasible means by which to manage difficult to recycle plastic waste in the UK

The evolution of pricing performance of green municipal bonds

In this study, we investigated the performance of US green municipal bond compared with general municipal bonds. The performance of this bond sector was assessed with two different approaches: through the creation and benchmarking of a green municipal bond index; and by looking for differences in yields between green municipal bonds and their conventional counterparts. We found that an index comprised of green muni bonds outperforms the closest equivalent S&P index from 2014 to 2018, and there is a statistically significant green premium (‘greenium’) present in the secondary muni bond market of 5 basis points by 2018. There was no conclusive evidence for the presence of greenium at issue in the primary market, but there are some early signs that this could change. These results are key to encouraging growth in the green municipal bond market, which can help American cities to unlock more capital for more sustainable infrastructure projects

Plastic credit: A consortium blockchain-based plastic recyclability system

By the end of 2015, approximately 6300 million tons (Mt) of plastic waste had been generated globally, but less than 10% of plastics was recycled. Since different types of plastics have various degrees of recyclability, consumer information about plastic product recyclability is paramount in order to increase the levels of plastic recycled. Against this context, the objective of this work is to define a plastic credit system to increase the amount of recyclable plastics. The plastic credit system assigns credit information to each plastic product and its corresponding company based on the percentage recyclability value of the plastic type and its composition. The methodology proposed is based on a unified and transparent credit system established by a double-chain system, which comprises a public blockchain CreditChain and a consortium blockchain M-InfoChain. The results show through the overall system performance analysis that the designed plastic credit system is capable of promoting a demand shift towards plastic products with higher plastic recyclability and achieving a lightweight operation for resource requirements and system maintenance

Fuzzy Real Options Analysis Applied to Urban Renewable Energy Investments

The application of real options and fuzzy real options to renewable energy investment decisions is explored in the context of the valuation of three urban rooftop solar projects. Four real options methods were used to analyse the abandonment option present within these projects. Two of these methods, Fuzzy Black-Scholes and Fuzzy Binomial, used fuzzy numbers for the cashflow and salvage inputs. The resulting European put valuations for the option to sell the projects off for salvagewere consistent across the various techniques, including both classical and fuzzy. The real options present within the solar projects consistently added value to the adjusted net present values of the projects, which should improve their investment prospects. Additionally, we discuss the role of using fuzzy options pricing techniques as opposed to traditional real options and their usefulness to the practitioner

Anti-aging potential of extracts from Washingtonia filifera seeds

The aim of this study was to test the inhibitory effect of fruit extracts from Washingtonia filifera on skin aging-related enzymes. The pulp extracts did not exert a significant enzyme inhibition while seed extracts from W. filifera exhibit anti-elastase, anti-collagenase, and anti-tyrosinase activities. Tyrosinase was mildly inhibited while a stronger effect was observed with respect to elastase and collagenase inhibition. Alcoholic extracts provided better results than aqueous extracts. Among them, methanol extracts showed the prominent enzyme inhibitory activities being IC50 value for elastase and collagenase comparable and even better than the reference compound. The inhibition mode of the most active extracts was investigated by Lineweaver-Burk plot analysis. Seed extracts from W. filifera were also investigated for their photo-protective effect by Mansur equation and the antioxidant activity of W. filifera extract was evaluated in oxidative-stressed cells. To evaluate the safety of the extract, the effect on cell viability of human keratinocytes cells was analyzed. Methanol extract presented the best photo-protective effect and exerted an antioxidant activity in a cellular system with no cytotoxic effect. The overall results demonstrate that W. filifera extracts are promising sources of bioactive compounds that could be used in cosmetic and pharmaceutical preparation

Macromolecular-scale resolution in biological fluorescence microscopy

We demonstrate far-field fluorescence microscopy with a focal-plane resolution of 15–20 nm in biological samples. The 10- to 12-fold multilateral increase in resolution below the diffraction barrier has been enabled by the elimination of molecular triplet state excitation as a major source of photobleaching of a number of dyes in stimulated emission depletion microscopy. Allowing for relaxation of the triplet state between subsequent excitation–depletion cycles yields an up to 30-fold increase in total fluorescence signal as compared with reported stimulated emission depletion illumination schemes. Moreover, it enables the reduction of the effective focal spot area by up to ≈140-fold below that given by diffraction. Triplet-state relaxation can be realized either by reducing the repetition rate of pulsed lasers or by increasing the scanning speed such that the build-up of the triplet state is effectively prevented. This resolution in immunofluorescence imaging is evidenced by revealing nanoscale protein patterns on endosomes, the punctuated structures of intermediate filaments in neurons, and nuclear protein speckles in mammalian cells with conventional optics. The reported performance of diffraction-unlimited fluorescence microscopy opens up a pathway for addressing fundamental problems in the life sciences