Rosca Participation in Benin: a Commitment Issue

In the light of first-hand data from a Beninese urban household survey in Cotonou, we investigate several motives aiming to explain participation in Rotating Savings and Credit ASsociations. We provide anecdotal pieces of evidence, descriptive statistics, FIML regressions and matching estimates which tend to indicate that most individuals use their participation in a rosca as a device to commit themselves to save money and to deal with self-control problems.ROSCA, self-control, commitment device, Benin

Une stratégie de conservation axée sur la connectivité pour les Laurentides au Québec

La crise actuelle de perte de biodiversité est sans précédent. Sans des actions concertées et avant-gardistes, les conséquences pourraient s’avérer catastrophiques pour toutes les espèces vivantes sur terre incluant l’être humain. La biodiversité est d’une importance capitale pour la fonctionnalité des écosystèmes et pour les biens et les services que ces derniers peuvent rendre. L’une des principales causes de l’érosion de la biodiversité est la fragmentation du territoire. Afin de bonifier la connectivité sur un territoire, la création de réseaux écologiques composés de noyaux de conservation, de zones tampons et de corridors fauniques s’avère une avenue intéressante et fort prometteuse. Plusieurs exemples de stratégies de conservation axées sur la connectivité existent au Québec, aux États-Unis et à travers le monde. Les engagements québécois en matière d’aires protégées, sans être idéaux, offrent plusieurs possibilités d’enrichir la protection et la conservation de notre environnement. Le territoire des Laurentides au Québec revêt plusieurs caractéristiques qui en font un endroit privilégié pour le développement, entre autres, résidentiel et industriel ainsi que les activités récréotouristiques et forestières, etc. Cette situation induit une pression sur le territoire en le morcelant. L’organisme à but non lucratif Éco-corridors laurentiens a pour mission la protection des milieux naturels dans les Laurentides. Il travaille à l’ébauche d’une stratégie de conservation axée sur la connectivité. L’objectif premier de cet essai est de proposer un scénario qui répondra aux priorités qu’Éco-corridor laurentiens s’est fixé. La stratégie de conservation présentée est un corridor faunique à pas japonais dans l’axe nord-sud reliant le parc national d’Oka au parc national du Mont-Tremblant. Afin de réaliser ce chantier ambitieux, certains outils informatiques en conservation écologique peuvent être utilisés et grandement faciliter le choix des emplacements à prioriser. Différents statuts de conservation et d’options d’acquisitions de propriétés doivent impérativement être considérés. La réhabilitation de certains milieux et le franchissement d’infrastructures routières sont aussi à analyser. Finalement, il est recommandé que toutes les parties prenantes, lors de la création d’une stratégie de conservation, que ce soit l’organisme Éco-corridor laurentiens, le gouvernement du Québec, les municipalités, ou encore les citoyens, déploient des efforts considérables et orientent leurs actions dans la même direction. Ainsi, ce projet d’avant-garde pourrait en devenir un de société pour le Québec, profitable autant à la population d’aujourd’hui qu’à celle de demain

Is it all about Money? A Randomized Evaluations of the Impact of Insurance Literacy and Marketing Treatments on the Demand for Health Microinsurance in Senegal

In Senegal mutual health organizations (MHOs) have been present in the greater region of Thiès for years. Despite their benefits, in some areas there remain low take-up rates. We offer an insurance literacy module, communicating the benefits from health microinsurance and the functioning of MHOs, to a randomly selected sample of households in the city of Thiès. The effects of this training, and three cross-cutting marketing treatments, are evaluated using a randomized control trial. We find that the insurance literacy module has no impact, but that our marketing treatment has a significant effect on the take up decisions of households.community based health insurance scheme; Randomized control trials; Africa; Senegal

Constraining the total aerosol indirect effect in the LMDZ and ECHAM4 GCMs using MODIS satellite data

Aerosol indirect effects are considered to be the most uncertain yet important anthropogenic forcing of climate change. The goal of the present study is to reduce this uncertainty by constraining two different general circulation models (LMDZ and ECHAM4) with satellite data. We build a statistical relationship between cloud droplet number concentration and the optical depth of the fine aerosol mode as a measure of the aerosol indirect effect using MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite data, and constrain the model parameterizations to match this relationship. We include here “empirical” formulations for the cloud albedo effect as well as parameterizations of the cloud lifetime effect. When fitting the model parameterizations to the satellite data, consistently in both models, the radiative forcing by the combined aerosol indirect effect is reduced considerably, down to −0.5 and −0.3Wm−2, for LMDZ and ECHAM4, respectively

Climate impacts of geoengineering marine stratocumulus clouds

Copyright © 2000 American Geophysical Union[1] Theoretical potential geoengineering solutions to the global warming problem have recently been proposed. Here, we present an idealized study of the climate response to deliberately seeding large-scale stratocumulus cloud decks in the North Pacific, South Pacific, and South Atlantic, thereby inducing cooling via aerosol indirect effects. Atmosphere-only, atmosphere/mixed-layer ocean, and fully coupled atmosphere/ocean versions of the Met Office Hadley Centre model are used to investigate the radiative forcing, climate efficacy, and regional response of temperature, precipitation, and net primary productivity to such geoengineering. The radiative forcing simulations indicate that, for our parameterization of aerosol indirect effects, up to 35% of the radiative forcing due to current levels of greenhouse gases could be offset by stratocumulus modification. Equilibrium simulations with the atmosphere/mixed-layer ocean model, wherein each of the three stratocumulus sheets is modified in turn, reveal that the most efficient cooling per unit radiative forcing occurs when the South Pacific stratocumulus sheet is modified. Transient coupled model simulations suggest that geoengineering all three stratocumulus areas delays the simulated global warming by about 25 years. These simulations also indicate that, while some areas experience increases in precipitation and net primary productivity, sharp decreases are simulated in South America, with particularly detrimental impacts on the Amazon rain forest. These results show that, while some areas benefit from geoengineering, there are significant areas where the response could be very detrimental with implications for the practical applicability of such a scheme

Usage des thermostats électroniques dans le marché résidentiel québécois : une analyse microéconomique

Récemment, les questions d'efficacité énergétique sont sur toutes les lèvres. Au Québec, comme ailleurs, il a été proposé que des gains substantiels pourraient être réalisés par l'usage résidentiel de thermostats électroniques pour le chauffage des locaux. La présente étude vise à analyser l'usage de tels thermostats par la clientèle résidentielle d'Hydro-Québec Distribution. Une modélisation faisant appel à la théorie sur les choix discrets ainsi qu'à l'analyse conditionnelle de la demande est mise de l'avant pour y arriver. Particulièrement, nous procédons à une analyse comportementale s'articulant sur un modèle discret-continu faisant intervenir un modèle multinomial logit. De cette façon, nous corrigeons pour un biais important, le biais d'auto-sélection. La dernière étape de notre modèle intègre les résultats du modèle discret-continu dans le but de faire ressortir l'impact de la composante chauffage sur la consommation totale annuelle d'électricité

The Impact of Insurance Literacy and Marketing Treatments on the Demand for Health Microinsurance in Senegal: A Randomised Evaluation

Mutual health organisations have been present in Senegal for years. Despite their benefits, in most areas take-up rates remain low. Using randomised controlled trials, we evaluate the effect of an insurance literacy module, communicating the benefits and functioning of health microinsurance, as well as three cross-cutting marketing treatments. The results from our various marketing treatments indicate a positive and significant effect on health insurance adoption, particularly for poor households, increasing take-up by around 35-40%. The insurance literacy module does not seem to have a positive impact on take-up decisions. We attempt to provide different contextual reasons for this result

Regional climate engineering by radiation management: prerequisites and prospects

Radiationmanagement (RM), as an option to engineer the climate, is highly controversial and suffers from a number of ethical and regulatory concerns, usually studied in the context of the objective to mitigate the global mean temperature. In this article, we discuss the idea that RM can be differentiated and scaled in several dimensions with potential objectives being to influence a certain climate parameter in a specific region. Some short-lived climate forcers (e.g., tropospheric aerosols) exhibit strong geographical and temporal variability, potentially leading to limited-area climate responses. Marine cloud brightening and thinning or dissolution of cirrus clouds could be operated at a rather local scale. It is therefore conceivable that such schemes could be applied with the objective to influence the climate at a regional scale. From a governance perspective, it is desirable to avoid any substantial climate effects of regional RM outside the target region. This, however, could prove impossible for a sustained, long-term RM. In turn, regional RM during limited time periods could prove more feasible without effects beyond the target area. It may be attractive as it potentially provides the opportunity to target the suppression of some extreme events such as heat waves. Research is needed on the traceability of regional RM, for example, using detection and attribution methods. Incentives and implications of regional RM need to be examined, and new governance options have to be conceived

Causes of irregularities in trends of global mean surface temperature since the late 19th century

The time series of monthly global mean surface temperature (GST) since 1891 is successfully reconstructed from known natural and anthropogenic forcing factors, including internal climate variability, using a multiple regression technique. Comparisons are made with the performance of 40 CMIP5 models in predicting GST. The relative contributions of the various forcing factors to GST changes vary in time, but most of the warming since 1891 is found to be attributable to the net influence of increasing greenhouse gases and anthropogenic aerosols. Separate statistically independent analyses are also carried out for three periods of GST slowdown (1896–1910, 1941–1975, and 1998–2013 and subperiods); two periods of strong warming (1911–1940 and 1976–1997) are also analyzed. A reduction in total incident solar radiation forcing played a significant cooling role over 2001–2010. The only serious disagreements between the reconstructions and observations occur during the Second World War, especially in the period 1944–1945, when observed near-worldwide sea surface temperatures (SSTs) may be significantly warm-biased. In contrast, reconstructions of near-worldwide SSTs were rather warmer than those observed between about 1907 and 1910. However, the generally high reconstruction accuracy shows that known external and internal forcing factors explain all the main variations in GST between 1891 and 2015, allowing for our current understanding of their uncertainties. Accordingly, no important additional factors are needed to explain the two main warming and three main slowdown periods during this epoch

Could an endoneurial endothelial crosstalk between Wnt/β-catenin and Sonic Hedgehog pathways underlie the early disruption of the infra-orbital blood-nerve barrier following chronic constriction injury?

BackgroundBlood–nerve barrier disruption is pivotal in the development of neuroinflammation, peripheral sensitization, and neuropathic pain after peripheral nerve injury. Activation of toll-like receptor 4 and inactivation of Sonic Hedgehog signaling pathways within the endoneurial endothelial cells are key events, resulting in the infiltration of harmful molecules and immunocytes within the nerve parenchyma. However, we showed in a previous study that preemptive inactivation of toll-like receptor 4 signaling or sustained activation of Sonic Hedgehog signaling did not prevent the local alterations observed following peripheral nerve injury, suggesting the implication of another signaling pathway.MethodsUsing a classical neuropathic pain model, the infraorbital nerve chronic constriction injury (IoN-CCI), we investigated the role of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway in chronic constriction injury-mediated blood–nerve barrier disruption and in its interactions with the toll-like receptor 4 and Sonic Hedgehog pathways. In the IoN-CCI model versus control, mRNA expression levels and/or immunochemical detection of major Wnt/Sonic Hedgehog pathway (Frizzled-7, vascular endothelial-cadherin, Patched-1 and Gli-1) and/or tight junction proteins (Claudin-1, Claudin-5, and Occludin) readouts were assessed. Vascular permeability was assessed by sodium fluorescein extravasation.ResultsIoN-CCI induced early alterations in the vascular endothelial-cadherin/β-catenin/Frizzled-7 complex, shown to participate in local blood–nerve barrier disruption via a β-catenin-dependent tight junction protein downregulation. Wnt pathway also mediated a crosstalk between toll-like receptor 4 and Sonic Hedgehog signaling within endoneurial endothelial cells. Nevertheless, preemptive inhibition of Wnt/β-catenin signaling before IoN-CCI could not prevent the downregulation of key Sonic Hedgehog pathway readouts or the disruption of the infraorbital blood–nerve barrier, suggesting that Sonic Hedgehog pathway inhibition observed following IoN-CCI is an independent event responsible for blood–nerve barrier disruption.ConclusionA crosstalk between Wnt/β-catenin- and Sonic Hedgehog-mediated signaling pathways within endoneurial endothelial cells could mediate the chronic disruption of the blood–nerve barrier following IoN-CCI, resulting in increased irreversible endoneurial vascular permeability and neuropathic pain development