Overoptimism and Lender Liability in the Consumer Credit Market

Credit purchases of consumer goods are commonly made upon terms governed by an agreement between the lender and the seller. This type of purchase is generally subject to a legal principle of joint responsibility under which the lender and the seller are jointly liable to the consumer for breach of the sale contract by the seller. We study the rationale for this principle in situations where market failure arises because consumers under estimate the risk of product failure - for example due to selle rmisrepresentation - and it is difficult to enforce seller responsibility. We show that joint responsibility increases welfare and reduces the incentives of sellers to misrepresent the quality of their products.consumer credit, lender liability, misrepresentation, overoptimism, product failure

Integrated Design Approach to Build a Safe and Sustainable Dual Intended Use Center in Praslin Island, Seychelles

A flexible multi-purpose center for a dual intended use—hospitality and observation and research related to climate change—has been designed in the fragile environment of Praslin Island, Seychelles. The technical solutions adopted for a low environmental impact LCA based in the designed center during the life cycle will be illustrated: starting from the local supply raw materials, the self-disassembling construction system, the described process is compatible with the site use that the owners have foreseen. Specific logistic systems have been chosen both to the transportation of the material on the site, and to the integrated structural and architectural solutions. In addition, a reconstruction of the natural characteristics of the building site has been developed both by google-earth observation and with a survey directly on the site through processing acquired images. The multi-disciplinary perspective through which the project has been conceived shows beneficial effects in terms of reduced impact on the original and resilient natural environment. Future developments of the work will be devoted to the optimization of this multi-disciplinary approach

A new study of an old sink of sulfur in hot molecular cores: the sulfur residue

Sulfur appears to be depleted by an order of magnitude or more from its elemental abundance in star-forming regions. In the last few years, numerous observations and experiments have been performed in order to to understand the reasons behind this depletion without providing a satisfactory explanation of the sulfur chemistry towards high-mass star-forming cores. Several sulfur-bearing molecules have been observed in these regions, and yet none are abundant enough to make up the gas-phase deficit. Where, then, does this hidden sulfur reside? This paper represents a step forward in our understanding of the interactions among the various S-bearing species. We have incorporated recent experimental and theoretical data into a chemical model of a hot molecular core in order to see whether they give any indication of the identity of the sulfur sink in these dense regions. Despite our model producing reasonable agreement with both solid-phase and gas-phase abundances of many sulfur-bearing species, we find that the sulfur residue detected in recent experiments takes up only ~6 per cent of the available sulfur in our simulations, rather than dominating the sulfur budget.Comment: 13 pages, 6 colourful figures, accepted by MNRA

Solid-phase chemistry driven by energetic processing

Molecules in the solid phase have been detected in the line of sight of quiescent molecular clouds and star forming regions as icy mantles on dust grains. Although about 10 molecular species have been firmly identified in icy grain mantles, it is believed that many, also complex, species are present in the solid phase which are not detected due to the detection limits of infrared spectroscopy. It is generally accepted that some of the observed species (such as CO) freeze out from the gas phase while others (such as water and methanol) are formed on grains after surface reactions. Other species (such as CO2 and OCS), are not expected to freeze out in significant amount from the gas phase and grain surface models do not account for their observed abundance. It has been suggested that these molecules, along with other more complex species, are formed after energetic processing (i.e. cosmic ion and UV irradiation) of icy grain mantles. All these species are released to the gas-phase after desorption of icy mantles. Here we will present some recent laboratory experiments which show the formation of (complex) molecular species after energetic processing of simple ices. Icy targets have been processed by ion bombardment and UV photolysis both in separate experiments and recently, for the first time, simultaneously. When C-rich species are present in the initial ice, an organic refractory material is also formed

Hydrogen Isotopic Substitution Studies of the 2165 Wavenumber (4.62 Micron) "XCN" Feature Produced by Ion Bombardment

The interstellar 4.62 μm absorption band, commonly seen toward embedded protostellar objects, has not yet been unambiguously identified; here we report new results which further elucidate the components of the band carrier, which is often referred to in the literature as the "XCN" band due to previous implications of carbon and nitrogen. If the atmosphere of the early Earth was not overly reducing, as some studies indicate, production of prebiotic molecules containing the cyanogen bond would have been difficult. In that case, CN-bearing molecules, necessary for the origin of life, may have come primarily from extraterrestrial sources, and the interstellar medium may be an important source of those molecules. Laboratory studies show that energetic processing of ice mixtures containing H, C, N, and O atoms readily reproduce a band similar in peak position and profile to that seen in the interstellar spectra. Earlier isotopic labeling experiments clearly identified carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen as active participants of the XCN species. In this paper, results of ion bombardment of CH3OH : N2 and CD3OD : N2 ices are presented. A shift in band position resulting from deuterium substitution demonstrates that hydrogen is also a component of the carrier in the laboratory-produced 4.62 μm band. Irradiation of ices through ion bombardment allows the testing of mixtures which include N2, a possible source of the available nitrogen in dense cloud ices that cannot be probed through UV photolysis experiments

How to Obtain Accurate Environmental Impacts at Early Design Stages in BIM When Using Environmental Product Declaration. A Method to Support Decision-Making

The construction sector plays an important role in moving towards a low-carbon economy. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is considered one of the most effective methods of analytically evaluating environmental profiles and an efficient tool for calculating the environmental impacts in building design-oriented methodologies, such as building information modelling (BIM). At early design stages, generic LCA databases are used to conduct the life cycle inventory (LCI), while detailed stages require more detailed data, such as environmental product declarations (EPDs), namely documents that provide accurate results and precise analyses based on LCA. Limitations are recognized when using EPDs in BIM elements at different levels of development (LOD) in the design stages, especially related to the data consistency and system boundaries of the LCA. This paper presents a method of achieving accurate LCA results, that helps with decision-making and provides support in the selection of building products and materials. The method is validated by its application in the structural concrete of an office building located in Germany. The method defines a safety factor adopted for embodied impacts (“cradle-to-gate”), based on EPD results to predict the environmental impact of BIM elements at different LODs. The results obtained show that by integrating the method to conduct the LCA, the range of errors and possible inconsistencies in the LCA results can be reduce

Improving building envelope efficiency: interaction between embedded energy and operational energy

This study aims to evaluate the relationship between the carbon footprint produced by the energy improvement of the building envelope, assumed as the technological component that most affects the over-all energy performance of the building, and that embedded in the materials of which it is assembled. The purpose of this research is to observe the relationship between the reduction of impacts due to the operational phase and the variation of impacts incorporated in the materials and components used to obtain these benefits, including the effects induced in the overall environmental performance of the entire process

Integrated Near-Infrared Band Strengths of Solid CH4 and Its Mixtures with N2

We studied icy CH4 and its mixtures with N2 (temperature 16-40 K), using near-IR transmittance spectroscopy (1.0-3.6 μm), and monitoring the film growth using interference patterns of two lasers. We measured peak position, full width at half-maximum, and strengths of the methane bands, and density and real refractive index of the icy films. Results confirm and extend but also partially contradict previous studies on similar mixtures. Experimental data can be applied to interpret observations of solar system (trans-Neptunian objects) and interstellar ices, where methane and nitrogen are believed to be present. We predict the optical depths of two methane NIR bands in the line of sight of some dense molecular clouds