Measuring Residential Energy Efficiency Improvements with DEA

This paper measures energy efficiency improvements of US single-family homes between 1997 and 2001 using a two-stage procedure. In the first stage, an indicator of energy efficiency is derived by means of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), and the analogy between the DEA estimator and traditional measures of energy efficiency is demonstrated. The second stage employs a bootstrapped truncated regression technique to decompose the variation in the obtained efficiency estimates into a climatic component and factors attributed to efficiency improvements. Results indicate a small but significant improvement of energy efficiency over the studied time interval, mainly accounted for by fuel oil and natural gas users

Access and allocation in earth system governance: Water and climate change compared

A significant percentage of the global population does not yet have access to safe drinking water, sufficient food or energy to live in dignity. There is a continuous struggle to allocate the earth's resources among users and uses. This article argues that distributional problems have two faces: access to basic resources or ecospace; and, the allocation of environmental resources, risks, burdens, and responsibilities for causing problems. Furthermore, addressing problems of access and allocation often requires access to social processes (science, movements and law). Analysts, however, have tended to take a narrow, disciplinary approach although an integrated conceptual approach may yield better answers. This article proposes a multi-disciplinary perspective to the problem of access and allocation and illustrates its application to water management and climate change. © The Author(s) 2010

Development of new technological applications for post- and prenatal diagnosis of the hemoglobinopathies

Hemoglobinopathies (HbP) are recessive hereditary disorders of hemoglobin, characterized by microcytic hypochromic anemia. HbP diagnostics encompasses three specialties: hematological, biochemical and molecular testing. Results of all tests together form the complete diagnosis. The main objective of this thesis was to improve post- and prenatal diagnostics of the hemoglobinopathies. Several molecular assays have been designed, tested and validated. In addition, a number of informative hemoglobinopathy cases have been studied in detail. Diagnostics for hemoglobinopathies is strongly improved over the recent years. In particular the implementation of the MLPA technique made it possible to detect deletions and duplications in the globin gene clusters in patients who remain undiagnosed by applying the conventional techniques. The aCGH technology was developed in order to characterize the breakpoints of novel deletions detected by MLPA more precisely. This has led to the design of several relatively simple gap-PCR assays, which are useful in laboratories where MLPA and aCGH is not available. In addition, gap-PCR can be used for quick screening for the more locally occurring deletions or in family studies. A non-invasive prenatal diagnosis assay for hemoglobinopathies was developed by combining the PAP and MCA techniques. This method will be implemented in the current flow for prenatal diagnosis and will eventually make 50% of the invasive procedures redundant