Quantifying the "merit-order" effect in European electricity markets

The increase in renewable energy sources has contributed to containing and even lowering electricity wholesale prices in many markets (although not necessarily retail prices) by causing a shift in the merit order curve and substituting part of the generation of conventional thermal plants, which have higher marginal production costs. This merit order effect along with priority dispatch can affect revenues of conventional power plants, especially in Member States experiencing rapid deployment of variable renewables. In some Member States, this raises the question of how to ensure adequate investment signals on generation guaranteeing capacity and balancing power at the lowest possible cost. This Rapid Response Energy Brief quantifies the merit order effect in 2030 and 2050 in European electricity wholesale markets by comparing electricity systems in a Reference and Mitigation Scenario for both years. Scenario results show for the Scenario modelled that the reduction in wholesale electricity price between scenarios is on average €1.6/MWh and €4.2/MWh for 2030 and 2050 respectively. A simplified approach is also used to assess the impact of Demand Response on system costs

Health Costs of Reproduction are Minimal Despite High Fertility, Mortality and Subsistence Lifestyle

Women exhibit greater morbidity than men despite higher life expectancy. An evolutionary life history framework predicts that energy invested in reproduction trades-off against investments in maintenance and survival. Direct costs of reproduction may therefore contribute to higher morbidity, especially for women given their greater direct energetic contributions to reproduction. We explore multiple indicators of somatic condition among Tsimane forager-horticulturalist women (Total Fertility Rate = 9.1; n = 592 aged 15–44 years, n = 277 aged 45+). We test whether cumulative live births and the pace of reproduction are associated with nutritional status and immune function using longitudinal data spanning 10 years. Higher parity and faster reproductive pace are associated with lower nutritional status (indicated by weight, body mass index, body fat) in a cross-section, but longitudinal analyses show improvements in women’s nutritional status with age. Biomarkers of immune function and anemia vary little with parity or pace of reproduction. Our findings demonstrate that even under energy-limited and infectious conditions, women are buffered from the potential depleting effects of rapid reproduction and compound offspring dependency characteristic of human life histories

Comparative Analysis of Tandem Repeats from Hundreds of Species Reveals Unique Insights into Centromere Evolution

Centromeres are essential for chromosome segregation, yet their DNA sequences evolve rapidly. In most animals and plants that have been studied, centromeres contain megabase-scale arrays of tandem repeats. Despite their importance, very little is known about the degree to which centromere tandem repeats share common properties between different species across different phyla. We used bioinformatic methods to identify high-copy tandem repeats from 282 species using publicly available genomic sequence and our own data. The assumption that the most abundant tandem repeat is the centromere DNA was true for most species whose centromeres have been previously characterized, suggesting this is a general property of genomes. Our methods are compatible with all current sequencing technologies. Long Pacific Biosciences sequence reads allowed us to find tandem repeat monomers up to 1,419 bp. High-copy centromere tandem repeats were found in almost all animal and plant genomes, but repeat monomers were highly variable in sequence composition and in length. Furthermore, phylogenetic analysis of sequence homology showed little evidence of sequence conservation beyond ~50 million years of divergence. We find that despite an overall lack of sequence conservation, centromere tandem repeats from diverse species showed similar modes of evolution, including the appearance of higher order repeat structures in which several polymorphic monomers make up a larger repeating unit. While centromere position in most eukaryotes is epigenetically determined, our results indicate that tandem repeats are highly prevalent at centromeres of both animals and plants. This suggests a functional role for such repeats, perhaps in promoting concerted evolution of centromere DNA across chromosomes

Epidemiological and nutrition transition in developing countries: impact on human health and development

Whereas common infectious and parasitic diseases such as malaria and the HIV/AIDS pandemic remain major unresolved health problems in many developing countries, emerging non-communicable diseases relating to diet and lifestyle have been increasing over the last two decades, thus creating a double burden of disease and impacting negatively on already over-stretched health services in these countries. Prevalence rates for type 2 diabetes mellitus and CVD in sub-Saharan Africa have seen a 10-fold increase in the last 20 years. In the Arab Gulf current prevalence rates are between 25 and 35% for the adult population, whilst evidence of the metabolic syndrome is emerging in children and adolescents. The present review focuses on the concept of the epidemiological and nutritional transition. It looks at historical trends in socio-economic status and lifestyle and trends in nutrition-related non-communicable diseases over the last two decades, particularly in developing countries with rising income levels, as well as the other extreme of poverty, chronic hunger and coping strategies and metabolic adaptations in fetal life that predispose to non-communicable disease risk in later life. The role of preventable environmental risk factors for obesity and the metabolic syndrome in developing countries is emphasized and also these challenges are related to meeting the millennium development goals. The possible implications of these changing trends for human and economic development in poorly-resourced healthcare settings and the implications for nutrition training are also discussed

A phase 1 clinical trial of vorinostat in combination with decitabine in patients with acute myeloid leukaemia or myelodysplastic syndrome

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108599/1/bjh13016.pd

La culture publique commune : du contrat moral à l'accommodement raisonnable

Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 28 oct. 2009

La culture publique commune : du contrat moral à l'accommodement raisonnable

Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 28 oct. 2009