To what extent would the poorest consumers nutritionally and socially benefit from a global food tax and subsidy reform ? A framed field experiment based on daily food intake

In this paper we propose a new method in experimental economics, designed to evaluate the effectiveness of public policy incentives aimed at altering consumer behaviors. We apply this method to wide-ranging policies on food prices, which use subsidies to increase the consumption of healthy products and taxes to reduce that of unhealthy ones. Our protocol allows for observation of an individual’s daily food consumption before and after the policy. We examine two separate policies: the one subsidizes fruit and vegetables, while the other one combines taxes and subsidies. We measure their nutritional and economic impacts on the choices of low-income French consumers, compared to a reference group. Both policies have a positive effect on the nutritional quality of food choices of the two groups but initial gaps widen, especially with the subsidies. In the low-income group this can be explained by an initially unfavorable pattern and by weaker price elasticities. The redistributive effects are therefore doubly regressive. Moreover, the individual price elasticities, that the experimental approach enables us to measure, show widely diverse behaviors. They are counter-effective for close to 40% of our sample of poor women.OBESITY;PUBLIC POLICY;SOCIAL INEQUALITIES;POVERTY;INCOME REDISTRIBUTION;REGRESSIVE TAX;INDIVIDUALIZED PRICE INDEX;NUTRITIONAL TAX SYSTEM;FOOD TAX

Flame sprayed dielectric coatings improve heat dissipation in electronic packaging

Heat sinks in electronic packaging can be flame sprayed with dielectric coatings of alumina or beryllia and finished off with an organic sealer to provide high heat and electrical resistivity

Solving the m-mixing problem for the three-dimensional time-dependent Schr\"{o}dinger equation by rotations: application to strong-field ionization of H2+

We present a very efficient technique for solving the three-dimensional time-dependent Schrodinger equation. Our method is applicable to a wide range of problems where a fullly three-dimensional solution is required, i.e., to cases where no symmetries exist that reduce the dimensionally of the problem. Examples include arbitrarily oriented molecules in external fields and atoms interacting with elliptically polarized light. We demonstrate that even in such cases, the three-dimensional problem can be decomposed exactly into two two-dimensional problems at the cost of introducing a trivial rotation transformation. We supplement the theoretical framework with numerical results on strong-field ionization of arbitrarily oriented H2+ molecules.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

A case-study on project-level CO2 mitigation costs in industrialised countries - the Climate Cent Foundation in Switzerland

We analyse CO2 emissions reduction costs based on project data from the Climate Cent Foundation (CCF), a climate policy instrument in Switzerland. We draw four conclusions. First, for the projects investigated, the CCF on average pays € 63/t. Due to the Kyoto Protocol, the CCF buys reductions until 2012 only. This cutoff increases reported per ton reduction costs, as the additional lifetime project costs are set in relation to reductions until 2012 only, rather than to reductions realised over the whole lifetime. Lifetime reduction costs are € 45/t. Second, correlation between CCF's payments and lifetime reduction costs per ton is low. Projects with low per ton reduction costs should thus be identified based on lifetime per ton reduction costs. Third, the wide range of project costs per ton observed casts doubts on the widely used identification of the merit order of reduction measures based on average per ton costs for technology types. Finally, the CCF covers only a fraction of additional reduction costs. Decisions to take reduction efforts thus depend on additional, non observable and/or non-economic motives. Any generalisation of results has to consider that this analysis is based on prospective costs of a sub-sample of projects in Switzerland

A case-study on project-level CO2 mitigation costs in industrialised countries - the Climate Cent Foundation in Switzerland

We analyse CO2 emissions reduction costs based on project data from the Climate Cent Foundation (CCF), a climate policy instrument in Switzerland. We draw four conclusions. First, for the projects investigated, the CCF on average pays € 63/t. Due to the Kyoto Protocol, the CCF buys reductions until 2012 only. This cutoff increases reported per ton reduction costs, as the additional lifetime project costs are set in relation to reductions until 2012 only, rather than to reductions realised over the whole lifetime. Lifetime reduction costs are € 45/t. Second, correlation between CCF's payments and lifetime reduction costs per ton is low. Projects with low per ton reduction costs should thus be identified based on lifetime per ton reduction costs. Third, the wide range of project costs per ton observed casts doubts on the widely used identification of the merit order of reduction measures based on average per ton costs for technology types. Finally, the CCF covers only a fraction of additional reduction costs. Decisions to take reduction efforts thus depend on additional, non observable and/or non-economic motives. Any generalisation of results has to consider that this analysis is based on prospective costs of a sub-sample of projects in Switzerland

Stratigraphical evidence of Elysium sea ice from HiRise images

Abstract not available

On the gamma-ray emission of Type Ia Supernovae

A multi-dimension, time-dependent Monte Carlo code is used to compute sample gamma-ray spectra to explore whether unambiguous constraints could be obtained from gamma-ray observations of Type Ia supernovae. Both spherical and aspherical geometries are considered and it is shown that moderate departures from sphericity can produce viewing-angle effects that are at least as significant as those caused by the variation of key parameters in one-dimensional models. Thus gamma-ray data could in principle carry some geometrical information, and caution should be applied when discussing the value of gamma-ray data based only on one-dimensional explosion models. In light of the limited sensitivity of current gamma-ray observatories, the computed theoretical spectra are studied to revisit the issue of whether useful constraints could be obtained for moderately nearby objects. The most useful gamma-ray measurements are likely to be of the light curve and time-dependent hardness ratios, but sensitivity higher than currently available, particularly at relatively hard energies (~2-3 MeV), is desirable.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures. Accepted by MNRAS. Minor changes to clarify discussion in Section

Evidence for O-atom exchange in the O(^1D) + N_2O reaction as the source of mass-independent isotopic fractionation in atmospheric N_2O

Recent experiments have shown that in the oxygen isotopic exchange reaction for O(^1D) + CO_2 the elastic channel is approximately 50% that of the inelastic channel [Perri et al., 2003]. We propose an analogous oxygen atom exchange reaction for the isoelectronic O(^1D) + N_2O system to explain the mass-independent isotopic fractionation (MIF) in atmospheric N_2O. We apply quantum chemical methods to compute the energetics of the potential energy surfaces on which the O(^1D) + N_2O reaction occurs. Preliminary modeling results indicate that oxygen isotopic exchange via O(^1D) + N_2O can account for the MIF oxygen anomaly if the oxygen atom isotopic exchange rate is 30–50% that of the total rate for the reactive channels