Results from the Farm Behaviour Component of the Integrated Economic-Hydrologic Model for the Watershed Evaluation of Beneficial Management Practices Program

This report summarizes preliminary results from the Farm Behavior component of the South Tobacco Creek Integrated Modeling Project (STC Project) which is being undertaken as part of the Watershed Evaluation of BMPs (WEBs) Program. WEBS is a partnership between Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) and Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC) established to evaluate the economic and environmental performance of BMPs for water quality at the watershed scale. Water draining from South Tobacco Creek eventually enters to Lake Winnipeg which is degraded from the cumulative effects of nutrient loading, particularly phosphorous. Many jurisdictions across the world, including Canada, use payments programs to encourage land owners to change land management practices in order to reduce non-point source pollution. BMP incentive programs in Canada, such as Greencover, rely on fixed payment schemes which pay producers a set amount for BMPs, regardless of costs or benefits. In order to improve the performance of payment programs many jurisdictions have instituted auction type mechanisms. The purpose of the Farm Behavior component of the STC project is to examine the performance of various types of payment programs for BMPs relative to reducing phosphorous loads from STC. Theoretical and empirical evidence from conservation auctions suggest that the performance of auctions depends on several factors which affect the bidding behavior of producers during the auction, and therefore the cost-effectiveness of auctions over other types of payment programs. In particular, some producers actually benefit from BMPs, however under certain auction rules these producers would be paid the same amount as high cost producers; alternatively, producers with low costs of adopting BMPs may not always provide the greatest benefits in terms of pollution abatement depending on their location in the watershed, and physical features of their land. We assessed the relative performance of different payment programs by developing producer response functions for adoption of Beneficial Management Practices (BMPs). Producer adoption responses under different incentive schemes were tested using experiments with student subjects and limited trials with producers. We examined four BMPs: construction of holding ponds, riparian management, forage conversion, and conservation till. The results of the adoption response experiments conducted under WEBS were used to draw preliminary observations on BMP policy design and form the basis for recommendations for further research. The farm behavior project focuses on addressing the following two questions: 1. Does BMP adoption at a given farm make the individual farm household better or worse off from an economic perspective? 2. How much will it cost the government to get farms to adopt BMPs under different payment programs? Since producer heterogeneity is key to understanding the performance of conservation auctions, we examined the costs and benefits of BMPs at the individual farm level and developed on-farm costs for each BMP for each producer in the watershed. The basic components of the model are described below, however the details including underlying assumptions regarding baseline farm behavior, are outlined within the body of the report. We used the on-farm cost model to generate aggregate cost functions for BMPs for the watershed and to parameterize the policy experiments related to conservation auctions. Preliminary estimates of environmental benefits of individual BMP adoption were provided by Dr. Wanhong Yang using results from a SWAT model developed under a separate component of the South Tobacco Creek WEBS project. Based on this information, we were able to evaluate the performance of various auction formats in terms of cost effectiveness, distribution of payments amongst producers, and environmental benefit. The results from the Farm behavior component of the South Tobacco Creek project are preliminary, and are currently being refined. Therefore it is difficult to draw generalized conclusions at this point. Further experiments are being conducted to complete the data collection during FY 08-09 through Interim WEBS funding. Nonetheless main findings to date are summarized below: 1. The four BMPs assessed differ in terms of their cost as well as their ability to deliver environmental benefits. Unfortunately, there is no BMP that dominates across farms at all abatement levels. Farms have heterogeneous costs in terms of BMPs, and some farms are cost effective at supplying abatement using one BMP, but not another. 2. This suggests that if water quality benefits (e.g. phosphorous reduction) can be quantified through modeling by BMP and by farm, then water quality should be the contracting unit for the auction rather than the BMP. This would allow producers to select the most cost effective BMP for supplying water quality benefits, and then decision makers could allocate contracts based on ranking the costs of abatement. 3. At the next stage of the research we will test for synergies between farms – ie., whether the joint production function for water quality between farms differs from the sum of individual production functions. This will have implications for how the payment scheme should be designed. 4. Incorporating „fairness‟ types of allocation rules for conservation dollars, such as maximum participation in conservation programs is inefficient in terms of cost and environmental benefits. If fairness, or using conservation payments as a form of extension to learn about on farm costs of BMPs is the goal of the auction, then fixed payment programs which are open to everyone may be more desirable. 5. The performance of the auction depends on the shape of the cost function for BMPs and/or pollution abatement, as well as whether uniform (pay everyone the highest bid) or discriminatory pricing (pay everyone their own bid) rules are applied. In future research we will be investigating to what extent we can generalize results about the performance of uniform versus discriminatory pricing rules in this context. In conclusion, this research has allowed us to investigate individually the performance of incentive payments for individual BMPs. The results of the analysis provide us with a baseline of information by which we can begin to assess more complex conservation program issues, such as how to optimally select multiple BMPs within the watershed, and whether/how to spatially target BMPs.watersheds, South Tobacco Creek, water quality, Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Q12,Q52,D44,

Operating Room Management after 2008 Economic Crisis in Italy: A Literary Review

The 2008 financial crisis has changed administration methods of various activities and productive services, including health services.  In fact in Italy  it was necessary  a deep reorganization of the healthcare system due to a strong reduction in the  funds allocated to the health sector. Consequently the management of the hospital operative theaters like operating rooms (OR) has become a priority aspect in the health administration. In this context we performed a literary review about experiences or projects of operating room management (ORM) carried out in Italy between 2007 and nowadays. We searched Medline database and we found 12 articles meeting the inclusion criteria. Only one paper was submitted in 2007, the remain were drafted in the following years. The italian regions represented are mostly of the north center area. The topics discussed are heterogeneous: ORM reorganizations in clinical hospitals, simulations of models aimed to resolve OR slots assignment, surgical waiting lists management, OR process analysis and ORM literary review. Overall the results show that interest and competence for the ORM are quickly increasing in Italy. In fact, because OR are the most expansive and the most productive areas of every hospitals, it’s of paramount relief to implement strategies in order to optimize OR quality and minimize the non-productive and unnecessary costs, especially in the current period of austerity measures and continuous cuts to public funds. Keywords: hospitals, management, crisis, resources, surgery, healthcare, OR

A chemical survey of exoplanets with ARIEL

Thousands of exoplanets have now been discovered with a huge range of masses, sizes and orbits: from rocky Earth-like planets to large gas giants grazing the surface of their host star. However, the essential nature of these exoplanets remains largely mysterious: there is no known, discernible pattern linking the presence, size, or orbital parameters of a planet to the nature of its parent star. We have little idea whether the chemistry of a planet is linked to its formation environment, or whether the type of host star drives the physics and chemistry of the planet’s birth, and evolution. ARIEL was conceived to observe a large number (~1000) of transiting planets for statistical understanding, including gas giants, Neptunes, super-Earths and Earth-size planets around a range of host star types using transit spectroscopy in the 1.25–7.8 μm spectral range and multiple narrow-band photometry in the optical. ARIEL will focus on warm and hot planets to take advantage of their well-mixed atmospheres which should show minimal condensation and sequestration of high-Z materials compared to their colder Solar System siblings. Said warm and hot atmospheres are expected to be more representative of the planetary bulk composition. Observations of these warm/hot exoplanets, and in particular of their elemental composition (especially C, O, N, S, Si), will allow the understanding of the early stages of planetary and atmospheric formation during the nebular phase and the following few million years. ARIEL will thus provide a representative picture of the chemical nature of the exoplanets and relate this directly to the type and chemical environment of the host star. ARIEL is designed as a dedicated survey mission for combined-light spectroscopy, capable of observing a large and well-defined planet sample within its 4-year mission lifetime. Transit, eclipse and phase-curve spectroscopy methods, whereby the signal from the star and planet are differentiated using knowledge of the planetary ephemerides, allow us to measure atmospheric signals from the planet at levels of 10–100 part per million (ppm) relative to the star and, given the bright nature of targets, also allows more sophisticated techniques, such as eclipse mapping, to give a deeper insight into the nature of the atmosphere. These types of observations require a stable payload and satellite platform with broad, instantaneous wavelength coverage to detect many molecular species, probe the thermal structure, identify clouds and monitor the stellar activity. The wavelength range proposed covers all the expected major atmospheric gases from e.g. H2O, CO2, CH4 NH3, HCN, H2S through to the more exotic metallic compounds, such as TiO, VO, and condensed species. Simulations of ARIEL performance in conducting exoplanet surveys have been performed – using conservative estimates of mission performance and a full model of all significant noise sources in the measurement – using a list of potential ARIEL targets that incorporates the latest available exoplanet statistics. The conclusion at the end of the Phase A study, is that ARIEL – in line with the stated mission objectives – will be able to observe about 1000 exoplanets depending on the details of the adopted survey strategy, thus confirming the feasibility of the main science objectives.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Changes over time in creatinine clearance and comparison of emergent adverse events for HIV-positive adults receiving standard doses (300 mg/day) of lamivudine-containing antiretroviral therapy with baseline creatinine clearance of 30-49 vs ≥50 mL/min.

A retrospective analysis of the randomized controlled DART (Development of AntiRetroviral Therapy in Africa; ISRCTN13968779) trial in HIV-1-positive adults initiating antiretroviral therapy with co-formulated zidovudine/lamivudine plus either tenofovir, abacavir, or nevirapine was conducted to evaluate the safety of initiating standard lamivudine dosing in patients with impaired creatinine clearance (CLcr). Safety data collected through 96 weeks were analyzed after stratification by baseline CLcr (estimated using Cockcroft-Gault) of 30-49 mL/min (n = 168) versus ≥50 mL/min (n = 3,132) and treatment regimen. The Grade 3-4 adverse events (AEs) and serious AEs (for hematological, hepatic and gastrointestinal events), maximal toxicities for liver enzymes, serum creatinine and bilirubin and maximum treatment-emergent hematology toxicities were comparable for groups with baseline CLcr 30-49 versus CLcr≥50 mL/min. No new risks or trends were identified from this dataset. Substantial and similar increases in the mean creatinine clearance (>25 mL/min) were observed from baseline though Week 96 among participants who entered the trial with CLcr 30-49 mL/min, while no increase or smaller median changes in creatinine clearance ( 150 cells/ mm3) in mean CD4+ cells counts from baseline to Week 96 were also observed for participants who entered the trial with CLcr 30-49 mL/min and those with baseline CLcr ≥50 mL/min. Though these results are descriptive, they suggest that HIV-positive patients with CLcr of 30-49 mL/min would have similar AE risks in comparison to patients with CLcr ≥50 mL/min when initiating antiretroviral therapy delivering doses of 300 mg of lamivudine daily through 96 weeks of treatment. Overall improvements in CLcr were observed for patients with baseline CLcr 30-49 mL/min

A global reference database of crowdsourced cropland data collected using the Geo-Wiki platform

A global reference data set on cropland was collected through a crowdsourcing campaign using the Geo-Wiki crowdsourcing tool. The campaign lasted three weeks, with over 80 participants from around the world reviewing almost 36,000 sample units, focussing on cropland identification. For quality assessment purposes, two additional data sets are provided. The first is a control set of 1,793 sample locations validated by students trained in satellite image interpretation. This data set was used to assess the quality of the crowd as the campaign progressed. The second data set contains 60 expert validations for additional evaluation of the quality of the contributions. All data sets are split into two parts: the first part shows all areas classified as cropland and the second part shows cropland average per location and user. After further processing, the data presented here might be suitable to validate and compare medium and high resolution cropland maps generated using remote sensing. These could also be used to train classification algorithms for developing new maps of land cover and cropland extent

Enabling planetary science across light-years. Ariel Definition Study Report

Ariel, the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey, was adopted as the fourth medium-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision programme to be launched in 2029. During its 4-year mission, Ariel will study what exoplanets are made of, how they formed and how they evolve, by surveying a diverse sample of about 1000 extrasolar planets, simultaneously in visible and infrared wavelengths. It is the first mission dedicated to measuring the chemical composition and thermal structures of hundreds of transiting exoplanets, enabling planetary science far beyond the boundaries of the Solar System. The payload consists of an off-axis Cassegrain telescope (primary mirror 1100 mm x 730 mm ellipse) and two separate instruments (FGS and AIRS) covering simultaneously 0.5-7.8 micron spectral range. The satellite is best placed into an L2 orbit to maximise the thermal stability and the field of regard. The payload module is passively cooled via a series of V-Groove radiators; the detectors for the AIRS are the only items that require active cooling via an active Ne JT cooler. The Ariel payload is developed by a consortium of more than 50 institutes from 16 ESA countries, which include the UK, France, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Spain, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, and a NASA contribution

AN EXPERIMENTAL EXAMINATION OF TARGET BASED CONSERVATION AUCTIONS

Conservation auctions (CA) are typically employed to increase the provision of Ecological Goods and Services (EG&S) for achieving environmental goals. This paper exmaines the ability of a CA to meet an environmental target. Previous research on this topic used the number of contracts as a target rather than some specified environmental goal. We used experimental economic methods benchmarked to a wetlands restoration case study to examine a target constraint that must be met by bidders rather than a budget constraint. However, since no budget constraint is employed, agencies with limited resources might have to use other auction design procedures to ensure that financial outlays to pay winning bidders are not too high while meeting the target. Accordingly we utilized a reserve price experimental treatment to address this question. The research compares the various levels of budget and target approaches focusing on efficiency, environmental improvements, and rent seeking metrics