Economic growth with environmental damage and technical progress

The papers on economic growth with environmental constraints usually ignore the effect of technical progress, this results in static steady state solutions. This paper examines the problem of optimal economic growth with environmental damage, technical progress taken into account, which produces a steady state solution that corresponds to an equilibrium growth, with non-constant emissions and pollutant stock. As a means of steering the economy along the optimal path, two types of tradeable pollution permits are analyzed. The method of stabilizing the optimal path, leading to a steady state, is suggested. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1994Economic growth, pollution control, technical progress, tradeable pollution permits, stability,

Optimal greenhouse gas emissions under various assessments of climate change ambiguity

The probabilities associated with global warming damage are likely to be continuously revised in the light of new information. Such revisions of probability are the defining characteristic of ambiguity, as opposed to risk. This paper examines how climate change ambiguity may affect optimal greenhouse gas emission strategies, via the decision maker's attitude towards anticipated changes of damage probabilities. Two conceptualizations of ambiguity are distinguished, according to the emphasis placed on the ambiguity of priors or on the ambiguity of news, respectively. It is shown that the way in which ambiguity is viewed and the attitude taken towards it have a substantial influence on the optimal emission trajectory. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1996climate change, ambiguity, optimal control,

Is Gas Cartel's Profitable for Russia? (A Case of European Gas Market)

The problem of gas cartel formation is widely discussed in many countries, including Russia. Gas cartel can exist only within the world natural gas market, the latter being possible provided liquefied natural gas (LNG) becomes wide spread. Since for Russia, European gas market is of prime importance the paper analyses perspectives of gas cartel, relative to the European market. Equilibrium states of such a market have been found for the two cases - that of a competitive behavior of LNG exporters to Europe, and of gas cartel which includes Russia and LNG exporters. Conditions ensuring that Russia gets higher profit in case of participating in a gas cartel, rather than in case of competitive behavior of LNG exporters, have been obtained.Gas OPEC, Russian-European gas market

Liquid crystals in biotribology: synovial joint treatment

This book summarizes the theoretical and experimental studies confirming the concept of the liquid-crystalline nature of boundary lubrication in synovial joints. It is shown that cholesteric liquid crystals in the synovial liquid play a significant role in the mechanism of intra-articular friction reduction. The results of structural, rheological and tribological research of the creation of artificial synovial liquids - containing cholesteric liquid crystals in natural synovial liquids - are described. These liquid crystals reproduce the lubrication properties of natural synovia and provide a high chondroprotective efficiency. They were tested in osteoarthritis models and in clinical practice

Comparison of prompt-fission neutron multiplicities and energy spectra for intermediate energy proton-and neutron-induced fission

The number and spectra of neutrons, in particular the number and spectra of prompt neutrons from the fission of actinides, at the intermediate energies represent important physical quantities, which determine the possibility of applying of one or another design of ADS. The multiplicities and energy distributions of prompt neutrons in interactions of 232Th, 235, 238U and 237Np with 50 and 96 MeV protons were measured by our group. The data are compared with results of recent measurements of the average multiplicities and spectra of prompt neutrons at the fission of 235, 238U induced by neutrons of the same energies. The correlation of the measured characteristics with neutron-proton compositions of composite nuclei is discussed. The similarity of characteristics for fission induced by neutrons and protons is noted

The Telomeric Repeats of HHV-6A Do Not Determine the Chromosome into Which the Virus Is Integrated

Human herpes virus 6A (HHV-6A) is able to integrate into the telomeric and subtelomeric regions of human chromosomes representing chromosomally integrated HHV-6A (ciHHV-6A). The integration starts from the right direct repeat (DRR) region. It has been shown experimentally that perfect telomeric repeats (pTMR) in the DRR region are required for the integration, while the absence of the imperfect telomeric repeats (impTMR) only slightly reduces the frequency of HHV-6 integration cases. The aim of this study was to determine whether telomeric repeats within DRR may define the chromosome into which the HHV-6A integrates. We analysed 66 HHV-6A genomes obtained from public databases. Insertion and deletion patterns of DRR regions were examined. We also compared TMR within the herpes virus DRR and human chromosome sequences retrieved from the Telomere-to-Telomere consortium. Our results show that telomeric repeats in DRR in circulating and ciHHV-6A have an affinity for all human chromosomes studied and thus do not define a chromosome for integration

Identification of Genetic Risk Factors of Severe COVID-19 Using Extensive Phenotypic Data: A Proof-of-Concept Study in a Cohort of Russian Patients

The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn the attention of many researchers to the interaction between pathogen and host genomes. Over the last two years, numerous studies have been conducted to identify the genetic risk factors that predict COVID-19 severity and outcome. However, such an analysis might be complicated in cohorts of limited size and/or in case of limited breadth of genome coverage. In this work, we tried to circumvent these challenges by searching for candidate genes and genetic variants associated with a variety of quantitative and binary traits in a cohort of 840 COVID-19 patients from Russia. While we found no gene- or pathway-level associations with the disease severity and outcome, we discovered eleven independent candidate loci associated with quantitative traits in COVID-19 patients. Out of these, the most significant associations correspond to rs1651553 in MYH14p = 1.4 × 10−7), rs11243705 in SETX (p = 8.2 × 10−6), and rs16885 in ATXN1 (p = 1.3 × 10−5). One of the identified variants, rs33985936 in SCN11A, was successfully replicated in an independent study, and three of the variants were found to be associated with blood-related quantitative traits according to the UK Biobank data (rs33985936 in SCN11A, rs16885 in ATXN1, and rs4747194 in CDH23). Moreover, we show that a risk score based on these variants can predict the severity and outcome of hospitalization in our cohort of patients. Given these findings, we believe that our work may serve as proof-of-concept study demonstrating the utility of quantitative traits and extensive phenotyping for identification of genetic risk factors of severe COVID-19