618 research outputs found
Environmental Policy and Firm Selection in the Open Economy
In this paper, we analyse the effects of a unilateral change in an emissions tax in a model of international trade with heterogeneous firms. We find a positive effect of tighter environmental policy on average productivity in the reforming country through reallocation of labour towards exporting firms. Domestic aggregate emissions fall, due to both a scale and a technique effect, but we show that the reduction in emissions following the tax increase is smaller than in autarky. Moreover, general equilibrium effects through changes in the foreign wage rate lead to a reduction in foreign emissions and, hence, to negative emissions leakage in case of transboundary pollution
Trade and the Environment: The Role of Firm Heterogeneity
This paper derives a new effect of trade liberalisation on the quality of the environment. We show that in the presence of heterogeneous firms the aggregate volume of emissions is influenced not only by the long-established scale effect, but also by a reallocation effect resulting from an increase in the relative size of more productive firms. We show how the relative importance of these effects, and hence the overall effect of trade liberalisation on the environment, is affected by the emission-intensity at the firm level: Aggregate emissions decrease when trade is liberalised if and only if firm-specific emission intensity decreases strongly with increasing firm productivity
Physical Properties and Baryonic Content of Low-Redshift Intergalactic Ly-alpha and O VI Absorption Systems: The PG1116+215 Sight Line
We present HST and FUSE observations of the intergalactic absorption toward
PG1116+215 in the 900-3000 A spectral region. We detect 25 Ly-alpha absorbers
at rest-frame equivalent widths W_r > 30 mA, yielding (dN/dz)_Ly-alpha =
154+/-18 over an unblocked redshift path of 0.162. Two additional weak Ly-alpha
absorbers with W_r ~ 15-20 mA are also present. Eight of the Ly-alpha absorbers
have large line widths (b > 40 km/sec). The detection of narrow OVI in the
broad Ly-alpha absorber at z=0.06244 supports the idea that the Ly-alpha
profile is thermally broadened in gas with T > 10^5 K. We find dN/dz ~ 50 for
broad Ly-alpha absorbers with W_r > 30 mA and b > 40 km/sec. If the broad
Ly-alpha lines are dominated by thermal broadening in hot gas, the amount of
baryonic material in these absorbers is enormous, perhaps as much as half the
baryonic mass in the low-redshift universe. We detect OVI absorption in several
of the Ly-alpha clouds along the sight line. Two detections at z=0.13847 and
z=0.16548 are confirmed by the presence of other ions at these redshifts, while
the detections at z=0.04125, 0.05895, 0.05928, and 0.06244 are based upon the
Ly-alpha and OVI detections alone. The information available for 13
low-redshift OVI absorbers with W_r > 50 mA along 5 sight lines yields
(dN/dz)_OVI ~ 14 and Omega_b(OVI) > 0.0027/h_75, assuming a metallicity of 0.1
solar and an OVI ionization fraction < 0.2. The properties and prevalence of
low-redshift OVI absorbers suggest that they too may be a substantial baryon
repository, perhaps containing as much mass as stars and gas inside galaxies.
The redshifts of the OVI absorbers are highly correlated with the redshifts of
galaxies along the sight line, though few of the absorbers lie closer than
600/h_75 kpc to any single galaxy. [abbreviated]Comment: 99 pages, 30 figures, aastex format, ApJS in pres
FUSE and STIS Observations of the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium towards PG1259+593
We use FUSE and STIS spectra to study intergalactic absorption towards the
quasar PG1259+593 (z=0.478). We identify 135 intergalactic absorption lines
with equivalent widths >10mA, tracing 78 absorption components in 72 Ly
alpha/beta absorption-line systems. We concentrate on the distribution and
physical properties of the WHIM as sampled by OVI and intrinsically broad Ly
alpha lines. The number of intervening OVI absorbers for equivalent widths W>24
mA is 3-6 over an unobscured redshift path of dz=0.368. This implies a number
density of OVI systems, dN/dz, of ~8-16 along this sight line. This range is
consistent with estimates from other sight lines, supporting the idea that
intervening intergalactic OVI absorbers contain an substantial fraction of the
baryonic mass in the low-redshift Universe. We identify a number of broad Ly
alpha absorbers with large Doppler parameters (b~40-200 km/s) and low column
densities (N(HI)<10^14 cm^-2). For pure thermal broadening, these widths
correspond to temperatures of ~1x10^5 to 3x10^6 K. While these broad absorbers
could be caused by blends of multiple, unresolved lines, continuum undulations,
or by kinematic flows and Hubble broadening, we consider the possibility that
some of these features are single-component, thermally broadened Ly alpha
lines. These systems could represent WHIM absorbers that are too weak, too
metal-poor, and/or too hot to be detected in OVI. If so, their widths and their
frequency in the PG1259+593 spectrum imply that these absorbers trace an even
larger fraction of the baryons in the low-redshift Universe than the OVI
absorbing systems (abridged version).Comment: 71 pages, 25 figures; accepted for publication in ApJ
Phosphocholine-Modified Lipooligosaccharides of Haemophilus influenzae Inhibit ATP-Induced IL-1beta Release by Pulmonary Epithelial Cells
Phosphocholine-modified bacterial cell wall components are virulence factors enabling immune evasion and permanent colonization of the mammalian host, by mechanisms that are poorly understood. Recently, we demonstrated that free phosphocholine (PC) and PC-modified lipooligosaccharides (PC-LOS) from Haemophilus influenzae, an opportunistic pathogen of the upper and lower airways, function as unconventional nicotinic agonists and efficiently inhibit the ATP-induced release of monocytic IL-1beta. We hypothesize that H. influenzae PC-LOS exert similar effects on pulmonary epithelial cells and on the complex lung tissue. The human lung carcinoma-derived epithelial cell lines A549 and Calu-3 were primed with lipopolysaccharide from Escherichia coli followed by stimulation with ATP in the presence or absence of PC or PC-LOS or LOS devoid of PC. The involvement of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors was tested using specific antagonists. We demonstrate that PC and PC-LOS efficiently inhibit ATP-mediated IL-1beta release by A549 and Calu-3 cells via nicotinic acetylcholine receptors containing subunits alpha7, alpha9, and/or alpha10. Primed precision-cut lung slices behaved similarly. We conclude that H. influenzae hijacked an endogenous anti-inflammatory cholinergic control mechanism of the lung to evade innate immune responses of the host. These findings may pave the way towards a host-centered antibiotic treatment of chronic airway infections with H. influenzae
The Diversity of High- and Intermediate-Velocity Clouds: Complex C versus IV Arch
We present Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) and Space Telescope
Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) observations of interstellar ultraviolet absorption
lines in the Galactic high-velocity cloud Complex C and the Intermediate
Velocity Arch (IV Arch) in direction of the quasar PG 1259+593 (l=120,b=+58
deg). Absorption lines from CII, NI, NII, OI, AlII, SiII, PII, SII, ArI, FeII,
and FeIII are used to study the atomic abundances in these two halo clouds at
V_LSR=-130 km/s (Complex C) and V_LSR=-55 km/s (IV Arch). The OI/HI ratio
provides the best measure of the overall metallicity in the diffuse
interstellar medium, because ionization effects do not alter the ratio, and
oxygen is at most only lightly depleted from the gas into dust grains. For
Complex C, we find an oxygen abundance of 0.093 (+0.125, -0.047) solar,
consistent with the idea that Complex C represents the infall of low
metallicity gas onto the Milky Way. In contrast, the oxygen abundance in the IV
Arch is 0.98 (+1.21,-0.46) solar, which indicates a Galactic origin. We report
the detection of an intermediate- velocity absorption component at +60 km/s
that is not seen in HI 21cm emission. The clouds along the PG 1259+593 sight
line have a variety of properties, proving that multiple processes are
responsible for the creation and circulation of intermediate- and high-velocity
gas in the Milky Way halo.Comment: 12 pages, 3 tables, 3 figures; accepted for publication in Ap
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