Some Inconvenient Truths About Climate Change Policy: The Distributional Impacts of Transportation Policies

Instead of efficiently pricing greenhouse gases, policy makers have favored measures that implicitly or explicitly subsidize low carbon fuels. We simulate a transportation-sector cap & trade program (CAT) and three policies currently in use: ethanol subsidies, a renewable fuel standard (RFS), and a low carbon fuel standard (LCFS). Our simulations confirm that the alternatives to CAT are quite costly—2.5 to 4 times more expensive. We provide evidence that the persistence of these alternatives in spite of their higher costs lies in the political economy of carbon policy. The alternatives to CAT exhibit a feature that make them amenable to adoption|a right skewed distribution of gains and losses where many counties have small losses, but a smaller share of counties gain considerably—as much as $6,800 per capita, per year. We correlate our estimates of gains from CAT and the RFS with Congressional voting on the Waxman-Markey cap & trade bill, H.R. 2454. Because Waxman-Markey (WM) would weaken the RFS, House members likely viewed the two policies as competitors. Conditional on a district's CAT gains, increases in a district's RFS gains are associated with decreases in the likelihood of voting for WM. Furthermore, we show that campaign contributions are correlated with a district's gains under each policy and that these contributions are correlated with a Member's vote on WM.Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davi

ranacapa: An R package and Shiny web app to explore environmental DNA data with exploratory statistics and interactive visualizations.

Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is becoming a core tool in ecology and conservation biology, and is being used in a growing number of education, biodiversity monitoring, and public outreach programs in which professional research scientists engage community partners in primary research. Results from eDNA analyses can engage and educate natural resource managers, students, community scientists, and naturalists, but without significant training in bioinformatics, it can be difficult for this diverse audience to interact with eDNA results. Here we present the R package ranacapa, at the core of which is a Shiny web app that helps perform exploratory biodiversity analyses and visualizations of eDNA results. The app requires a taxonomy-by-sample matrix and a simple metadata file with descriptive information about each sample. The app enables users to explore the data with interactive figures and presents results from simple community ecology analyses. We demonstrate the value of ranacapa to two groups of community partners engaging with eDNA metabarcoding results

Cascading effects of a highly specialized beech-aphid–fungus interaction on forest regeneration

Specialist herbivores are thought to often enhance or maintain plant diversity within ecosystems, because they prevent their host species from becoming competitively dominant. In contrast, specialist herbivores are not generally expected to have negative impacts on non-hosts. However, we describe a cascade of indirect interactions whereby a specialist sooty mold (Scorias spongiosa) colonizes the honeydew from a specialist beech aphid (Grylloprociphilus imbricator), ultimately decreasing the survival of seedlings beneath American beech trees (Fagus grandifolia). A common garden experiment indicated that this mortality resulted from moldy honeydew impairing leaf function rather than from chemical or microbial changes to the soil. In addition, aphids consistently and repeatedly colonized the same large beech trees, suggesting that seedling-depauperate islands may form beneath these trees. Thus this highly specialized three-way beech-aphid–fungus interaction has the potential to negatively impact local forest regeneration via a cascade of indirect effects

Some Inconvenient Truths About Climate Change Policy: The Distributional Impacts of Transportation Policies

Instead of efficiently pricing greenhouse gases, policy makers have favored measures that implicitly or explicitly subsidize low carbon fuels. We simulate a transportation-sector cap & trade program (CAT) and three policies currently in use: ethanol subsidies, a renewable fuel standard (RFS), and a low carbon fuel standard (LCFS). Our simulations confirm that the alternatives to CAT are quite costly–2.5 to 4 times more expensive. We provide evidence that the persistence of these alternatives in spite of their higher costs lies in the political economy of carbon policy. The alternatives to CAT exhibit a feature that make them amenable to adoption–a right skewed distribution of gains and losses where many counties have small losses, but a smaller share of counties gain considerably–as much as $6,800 per capita, per year. We correlate our estimates of gains from CAT and the RFS with Congressional voting on the Waxman-Markey cap & trade bill, H.R. 2454. Because Waxman-Markey (WM) would weaken the RFS, House members likely viewed the two policies as competitors. Conditional on a district's CAT gains, increases in a district's RFS gains are associated with decreases in the likelihood of voting for WM. Furthermore, we show that campaign contributions are correlated with a district's gains under each policy and that these contributions are correlated with a Member's vote on WM.

The novel mu-opioid antagonist, GSK1521498, reduces ethanol consumption in C57BL/6J mice.

RATIONALE Using the drinking-in-the-dark (DID) model, we compared the effects of a novel mu-opioid receptor antagonist, GSK1521498, with naltrexone, a licensed treatment of alcohol dependence, on ethanol consumption in mice. OBJECTIVE We test the ability of GSK1521498 to reduce alcohol consumption and compare its intrinsic efficacy to that of naltrexone by comparing the two drugs at doses matched for equivalent receptor occupancy. METHODS Thirty-six C57BL/6J mice were tested in a DID procedure. In 2-day cycles, animals experienced one baseline, injection-free session, and one test session when they received two injections, one of test drug and one placebo. All animals received GSK1521498 (0, 0.1, 1 and 3 mg/kg, i.p., 30 min pre-treatment) and naltrexone (0, 0.1, 1 and 3 mg/kg, s.c. 10 min pre-treatment) in a cross-over design. Receptor occupancies following the same doses were determined ex vivo in separate groups by autoradiography, using [3H]DAMGO. Binding in the region of interest was measured integrally by computer-assisted microdensitometry and corrected for non-specific binding. RESULTS Both GSK1521498 and naltrexone dose-dependently decreased ethanol consumption. When drug doses were matched for 70-75 % receptor occupancy, GSK1521498 3 mg/kg, i.p., caused a 2.5-fold greater reduction in alcohol consumption than naltrexone 0.1 mg/kg, s.c. Both GSK1521498 and naltrexone significantly reduced sucrose consumption at a dose of 1 mg/kg but not 0.1 mg/kg. In a test of conditioned taste aversion, GSK1521498 (3 mg/kg) reduced sucrose consumption 24 h following exposure to a conditioning injection. CONCLUSIONS Both opioid receptor antagonists reduced alcohol consumption but GK1521498 has higher intrinsic efficacy than naltrexone

Barriers to Insulin Initiation: The Translating Research Into Action for Diabetes Insulin Starts Project

OBJECTIVE Reasons for failing to initiate prescribed insulin (primary nonadherence) are poorly understood. We investigated barriers to insulin initiation following a new prescription. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We surveyed insulin-naïve patients with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes, already treated with two or more oral agents who were recently prescribed insulin. We compared responses for respondents prescribed, but never initiating, insulin (n = 69) with those dispensed insulin (n = 100). RESULTS Subjects failing to initiate prescribed insulin commonly reported misconceptions regarding insulin risk (35% believed that insulin causes blindness, renal failure, amputations, heart attacks, strokes, or early death), plans to instead work harder on behavioral goals, sense of personal failure, low self-efficacy, injection phobia, hypoglycemia concerns, negative impact on social life and job, inadequate health literacy, health care provider inadequately explaining risks/benefits, and limited insulin self-management training. CONCLUSIONS Primary adherence for insulin may be improved through better provider communication regarding risks, shared decision making, and insulin self-management training

Economic sustainability modeling provides decision support for assessing hybrid poplar-based biofuel development in California

Biofuels are expected to play a major role in meeting California's long-term energy needs, but many factors influence the commercial viability of the various feedstock and production technology options. We developed a spatially explicit analytic framework that integrates models of plant growth, crop adoption, feedstock location, transportation logistics, economic impact, biorefinery costs and biorefinery energy use and emissions. We used this framework to assess the economic potential of hybrid poplar as a feedstock for jet fuel production in Northern California. Results suggest that the region has sufficient suitable croplands (2.3 million acres) and nonarable lands (1.5 million acres) for poplar cultivation to produce as much as 2.26 billion gallons of jet fuel annually. However, there are major obstacles to such large-scale production, including, on nonarable lands, low poplar yields and broad spatial distribution and, on croplands, competition with existing crops. We estimated the production cost of jet fuel to be $4.40 to$5.40 per gallon for poplar biomass grown on nonarable lands and $3.60 to$4.50 per gallon for biomass grown on irrigated cropland; the current market price is $2.12 per gallon. Improved poplar yields, use of supplementary feedstocks at the biorefinery and economic supports such as carbon credits could help to overcome these barriers

Facilitating access to surgical care through a decentralised case-finding strategy: experience in Madagascar

Over two-thirds of the world’s population lack access to surgical care. Non-governmental organisation’s providing free surgeries may overcome financial barriers, but other barriers to care still exist. This analysis paper discusses two different case-finding strategies in Madagascar that aimed to increase the proportion of poor patients, women and those for whom multiple barriers to care exist. From October 2014 to June 2015, we used a centralised selection strategy, aiming to find 70% of patients from the port city, Toamasina, and 30% from the national capital and two remote cities. From August 2015 to June 2016, a decentralised strategy was used, aiming to find 30% of patients from Toamasina and 70% from 11 remote locations, including the capital. Demographic information and self-reported barriers to care were collected. Wealth quintile was calculated for each patient using a combination of participant responses to asset-related and demographic questions, and publicly available data. A total of 2971 patients were assessed. The change from centralised to decentralised selection resulted in significantly poorer patients undergoing surgery. All reported barriers to prior care, except for lack of transportation, were significantly more likely to be identified in the decentralised group. Patients who identified multiple barriers to prior surgical care were less likely to be from the richest quintile (p=0.037) and more likely to be in the decentralised group (p=0.046). Our country-specific analysis shows that decentralised patient selection strategies may be used to overcome barriers to care and allow patients in greatest need to access surgical care

Formation and dynamics of van der Waals molecules in buffer-gas traps

We show that weakly bound He-containing van der Waals molecules can be produced and magnetically trapped in buffer-gas cooling experiments, and provide a general model for the formation and dynamics of these molecules. Our analysis shows that, at typical experimental parameters, thermodynamics favors the formation of van der Waals complexes composed of a helium atom bound to most open-shell atoms and molecules, and that complex formation occurs quickly enough to ensure chemical equilibrium. For molecular pairs composed of a He atom and an S-state atom, the molecular spin is stable during formation, dissociation, and collisions, and thus these molecules can be magnetically trapped. Collisional spin relaxations are too slow to affect trap lifetimes. However, helium-3-containing complexes can change spin due to adiabatic crossings between trapped and untrapped Zeeman states, mediated by the anisotropic hyperfine interaction, causing trap loss. We provide a detailed model for Ag3He molecules, using ab initio calculation of Ag-He interaction potentials and spin interactions, quantum scattering theory, and direct Monte Carlo simulations to describe formation and spin relaxation in this system. The calculated rate of spin-change agrees quantitatively with experimental observations, providing indirect evidence for molecular formation in buffer-gas-cooled magnetic traps.Comment: 20 pages, 13 figure

Anti-HIV-1 activity of cellulose acetate phthalate: Synergy with soluble CD4 and induction of "dead-end" gp41 six-helix bundles

BACKGROUND: Cellulose acetate phthalate (CAP), a promising candidate microbicide for prevention of sexual transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and other sexually transmitted disease (STD) pathogens, was shown to inactivate HIV-1 and to block the coreceptor binding site on the virus envelope glycoprotein gp120. It did not interfere with virus binding to CD4. Since CD4 is the primary cellular receptor for HIV-1, it was of interest to study CAP binding to HIV-1 complexes with soluble CD4 (sCD4) and its consequences, including changes in the conformation of the envelope glycoprotein gp41 within virus particles. METHODS: Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) were used to study CAP binding to HIV-1-sCD4 complexes and to detect gp41 six-helix bundles accessible on virus particles using antibodies specific for the α-helical core domain of gp41. RESULTS: 1) Pretreatment of HIV-1 with sCD4 augments subsequent binding of CAP; 2) there is synergism between CAP and sCD4 for inhibition of HIV-1 infection; 3) treatment of HIV-1 with CAP induced the formation of gp41 six-helix bundles. CONCLUSIONS: CAP and sCD4 bind to distinct sites on HIV-1 IIIB and BaL virions and their simultaneous binding has profound effects on virus structure and infectivity. The formation of gp41 six-helical bundles, induced by CAP, is known to render the virus incompetent for fusion with target cells thus preventing infection