Assessment of Green Public Procurement as a Policy Tool: Cost-efficiency and Competition Considerations

Public procurement is officially regarded as an effective means to secure environmental improvement. Estimates indicate that public authorities within the European Union typically purchase goods and services corresponding to approximately 16 percent of GNP per annum. Hence, it is believed, private firms can be stimulated to invest in sustainable production technologies if the market power of public bodies is exerted through Green Public Procurement (GPP) policy and legislation. However, GPP has been little studied within a framework of welfare economics. From this perspective we assess GPP as an environmental policy tool and compare it to other tools, such as taxes. The general findings are that GPP should not be used when cost-efficiency serves as the guiding rule for environmental activities and that there is a great need for research on the subject in general. This need concerns, besides effects on the environment, especially its effects on market competition. In all, this paper opens up for an interesting and most necessary research area, which is motivated by the importance of resource use for sustainability.Cost effectiviness; Degree of competition; Environmental Policy; Policy tools; Public Procurement Auctions; Sustainability

Life-history evolution in harvested populations: the role of natural predation

Models and experiments of the evolution of age- and/or size-at-maturation in response to population harvesting have consistently shown that selective harvesting of older and larger individuals can cause earlier maturation. These predictions, however, are all based on single-species considerations and thus crucially neglect the selective forces caused or mediated by species interactions. Here we develop simple models of phenotypic evolution of age-at-first-reproduction in a prey population subject to different types of predation and harvesting. We show that, in the presence of natural predation, the potential evolutionary response of age-at-first-reproduction to population harvesting is ambiguous: harvesting can cause either earlier or later maturation depending on the type of predator interaction and its strength relative to the fishing pressure. The counterintuitive consequences of harvesting result from the indirect effects that harvesting of a prey population has on the selection pressure exerted by its natural predator, since this selection pressure itself typically depends on prey density. If harvest rates are high, the direct selection pressures considered in classical analyses prevail and harvesting decreases the age-at-first-reproduction, whereas at lower harvest rates the indirect, inter-specifically mediated effects of harvesting can qualitatively overturn predictions based on simpler single-species models

Evolution of multi-stage dormancy in temporally autocorrelated environments.

Question: Under what circumstances does a capacity for multi-stage dormancy (i.e. dormancy in more than one life-stage) evolve? Mathematical methods: Optimization in stochastic environments. Results are derived both analytically and by simulations. Key assumption: There exists some trade-off between resources allocated to reproduction and adult dormant survival. Different shapes of this trade-off are investigated. Major conclusions: Multi-stage dormancy can evolve in an environment with low serial autocorrelation. However, a slowly changing environment, with high positive autocorrelation, will prevent the evolution of dormancy in several life-stages. In general, a high positive environmental autocorrelation will separate the evolution of life parameters associated with active life from that of parameters associated with dormant life

A theory of stochastic harvesting in stochastic environments

We investigate how model populations respond to stochastic harvesting in a stochastic environment. In particular, we show that the effects of variable harvesting on the variance in population density and yield depend critically on the autocorrelation of environmental noise and on whether the endogenous dynamics of the population display over- or undercompensation to density. These factors interact in complicated ways; harvesting shifts the slope of the renewal function, and the net effect of this shift will depend on the sign and magnitude of the other influences. For example, when environmental noise exhibits a positive auto correlation, the relative importance of a variable harvest to the variance in density increases with overcompensation but decreases with undercompensation. For a fixed harvesting level, an increasing level of autocorrelation in environmental noise will decrease the relative variation in population density when overcompensation would otherwise occur. These and other intricate interactions have important ramifications for the interpretation of time series data when no prior knowledge of demographic or environmental details exists, These effects are important whenever the harvesting rate is sufficiently high or variable, conditions likely to occur in many systems, whether the harvesting is caused by commercial exploitation or by any other strong agent of density-independent mortality

Cambrian stratigraphy of the Tomten-1 drill core, Västergötland, Sweden

The Tomten-1 drilling at Torbjörntorp in Västergötland, southern Sweden, penetrated 29.85 m of Cambrian Series 2, Cambrian Series 3, Furongian, and Lower–Middle Ordovician strata. Lithostratigraphically, the succession includes the File Haidar, Borgholm and Alum Shale formations, and the Latorp and Lanna limestones. The drill core succession is described herein for the first time, with special focus on the biostratigraphy of the Cambrian Alum Shale Formation. In the Cambrian Series 3, through Furongian Alum Shale Formation, agnostoids and trilobites have been identified to species level and the succession is subdivided into nine biozones (in ascending order): the Ptychagnostus gibbus, Ptychagnostus atavus, Lejopyge laevigata, Agnostus pisiformis, Olenus gibbosus, Parabolina spinulosa, Ctenopyge tumida, Ctenopyge bisulcata and Ctenopyge linnarssoni zones. The succession is interrupted by numerous stratigraphic gaps of variable magnitudes, as is evident from the biostratigraphy and conspicuous unconformities

TRIF adaptor signaling is important in abdominal aortic aneurysm formation

Objective: Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) is characterized by inflammation, loss of smooth muscle cells (SMCs), and degradation of the extracellular matrix in the vessel wall. Innate immune receptors such as Toll-like receptors (TLRs) were recently shown to regulate immunological processes leading to the formation and progression of atherosclerotic plaques as well as to other cardiovascular pathologies. Our aim was to investigate whether blockage of TLR signaling, under the control of TIR domain-containing adaptor protein including IFN-beta (TRIF), could inhibit the inflammatory response and AAA development in mice. Results: In human AAA, an increased TLR3 and TLR4 expression in association with macrophages and T lymphocytes was demonstrated with immunohistochemical analysis. Angiotensin (Ang) II-induced aneurysm formation was significantly reduced by 30% in ApoE(-/-)Trif(-/-) mice compared to ApoE(-/-) mice. Morphologically, AngII-infused ApoE(-/-)Trif(-/-) mice had a more intact cellular and extracellular matrix while ApoE(-/-) mice infused with AngII displayed an increased medial thickness associated with aortic dissection, thrombus formation, and a more disorganized vessel wall. Gene expression analysis of the abdominal aorta revealed a profound decrease of the inflammatory genes CD68 (P <0.05), CD11b (P <0.05), and TNF-alpha (P <0.05) and the protease gene MMP-12 (P <0.01) in ApoE(-/-)Trif(-/-) mice compared to ApoE(-/-) mice infused with AngII. Conclusion: Our results suggest that signaling through TRIF is important for the inflammatory response of AngII-induced AAA and that blockage of the TRIF pathway reduces vascular inflammation and protects against AAA formation. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.Peer reviewe

Effects of enrichment on simple aquatic food webs

Simple models, based on Lotka-Volterra types of interactions between predator and prey, predict that enrichment will have a destabilizing effect on populations and that equilibrium population densities will change at the top trophic level and every second level below. We experimentally tested these predictions in three aquatic food web configurations subjected to either high or low nutrient additions. The results were structured by viewing the systems as either food chains or webs and showed that trophic level biomass increased with enrichment, which contradicts food chain theory. However, within each trophic level, food web configuration affected the extent to which different functional groups responded to enrichment. By dividing trophic levels into functional groups, based on vulnerability to consumption, we were able to identify significant effects that were obscured when systems were viewed as food chains. The results support the prediction that invulnerable prey may stabilize trophic-level dynamics by replacing other, more vulnerable prey. Furthermore, the vulnerable prey, such as Daphnia and edible algae, responded as predicted by the paradox of enrichment hypothesis; that is, variability in population density increased with enrichment. Hence, by describing ecosystems as a matrix of food web interactions, and by recognizing the interplay between interspecific competition and predation, a more complete description of the ecosystem function was obtained compared to when species were placed into distinct trophic levels