Carbon and Climate Gaming

The issue of carbon use and possible associated climatic change has received growing attention in the last few years as an important aspect of assessing the impacts of various energy options. At IIASA that attention has been reflected in the Energy Systems Program and in the Global Climate Task of the Resources and Environment (REN) Area. As explained in this paper, the problem of climatic change can be viewed both as a problem of societal risk management and as a problem in strategic gaming behavior of the various decision makers involved. It is natural, then, that a joint working group at IIASA has formed, quite spontaneously, from representatives of the IIASA climate task (REN), the IIASA risk management project (Management and Technology Area, MMT), and the IIASA gaming project (MMT and Systems and Decision Sciences Area, SDS). This research group benefits from the multidisciplinary character of IIASA, which, along with its neutral scientific stance and long-standing interest in climate and energy, puts IIASA in an excellent position to increase our understanding of the problem of carbon use and climatic change. A list of IIASA papers and publications relating to climate is included here. This paper describes an effort which began in March of 1980 and is expected to continue for another year or more. The paper consists primarily of material developed for a research proposal intended to assure continuation of the project. Two other working papers describing the project are also available. The paper entitled "An Interactive Model for Determining Coal Costs for a CO2-Game" (WP-80-154) describes in more detail the logic and a possible framework for parts of the proposed computer game. The paper "CO2: An Introduction and Possible Board Game" (WP-80-153) offers a non-technical sketch of the question and a description of the second proposed game. The development of the carbon and climate games described in these papers is being carried out at IIASA, while the actual gaming experiments are expected to take place both at IIASA and at other locations convenient for interested groups

Quantum dot emission from site-controlled ngan/gan micropyramid arrays

InxGa1−xN quantum dots have been fabricated by the selective growth of GaN micropyramid arrays topped with InGaN/GaN quantum wells. The spatially, spectrally, and time-resolved emission properties of these structures were measured using cathodoluminescence hyperspectral imaging and low-temperature microphotoluminescence spectroscopy. The presence of InGaN quantum dots was confirmed directly by the observation of sharp peaks in the emission spectrum at the pyramid apices. These luminescence peaks exhibit decay lifetimes of approximately 0.5 ns, with linewidths down to 650 me

Phylogenetic Analyses of Two Mitochondrial Metabolic Genes Sampled in Parallel from Angiosperms Find Fundamental Interlocus Incongruence

Plant molecular phylogeneticists have supported an analytical approach of combining loci from different genomes, but the combination of mitochondrial sequences with chloroplast and nuclear sequences is potentially problematic. Low substitution rates in mitochondrial genes should decrease saturation, which is especially useful for the study of deep divergences. However, individual mitochondrial loci are insuffi ciently informative, so that combining congruent loci is necessary. For this study atp1 and cox1 were selected, which are of similar lengths, encode components of the respiratory pathway, and generally lack introns. Thus, these genes might be expected to have similar functional constraints, selection pressures, and evolutionary histories. Strictly parallel sampling of 52 species was achieved as well as six additional composite terminals with representatives from the major angiosperm clades. However, analyses of the separate loci produced strongly incongruent topologies. The source of the incongruence was investigated by validating sequences with questionable affi nities, excluding RNA-edited nucleotides, deleting taxa with unexpected phylogenetic associations, and comparing different phylogenetic methods. However, even after potential artifacts were addressed and sites and taxa putatively associated with confl ict were excluded, the resulting gene trees for the two mitochondrial loci were still substantially incongruent by all measures examined. Therefore, combining these loci in phylogenetic analysis may be counterproductive to the goal of fully resolving the angiosperm phylogeny

The quadratic spinor Lagrangian is equivalent to the teleparallel theory

The quadratic spinor Lagrangian is shown to be equivalent to the teleparallel / tetrad representation of Einstein's theory. An important consequence is that the energy-momentum density obtained from this quadratic spinor Lagrangian is essentially the same as the ``tensor'' proposed by Moller in 1961.Comment: 10 pages, RevTe

Exploitation of the Escherichia coli lac operon promoter for controlled recombinant protein production

The Escherichia coli lac operon promoter is widely used as a tool to control recombinant protein production in bacteria. Here we give a brief review of how it functions, how it is regulated, and how, based on this knowledge, a suite of lac promoter derivatives has been developed to give controlled expression that is suitable for diverse biotechnology applications

Mapping and counter-mapping COVID-19: From crisis to cartocracy

Editorial

Phosphorescence-Fluorescence ratio imaging for monitoring the oxygen status during photodynamic therapy

The effectiveness of photodynamic therapy is strongly dependent on the availabilty of oxygen. In the present paper we show that the ratio between photosensitiser phosphorescence and fluorescence is a parameter that can be used to monitor the competition between singlet oxygen production and other processes quenching the photosensitiser triplet state. We present a theoretical basis for the validity of this approach and a series of in vitro imaging experiments

Visual stress, its treatment with spectral filters, and its relationship to visually induced motion sickness

We review the concept of visual stress and its relation to neurological disease. Visual stress can occur from the observation of images with unnatural spatial structure and an excess of contrast energy at spatial frequencies to which the visual system is generally most sensitive. Visual stress can often be reduced using spectral filters, provided the colour is selected with precision to suit each individual. The use of such filters and their effects on reading speed are reviewed. The filters have been shown to benefit patients with a variety of neurological conditions other than reading difficulty, all associated with an increased risk of seizures. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd