Exploration in red knots:The role of personality in the expression of individual behaviour across contexts

All individuals show behavioural traits that are consistent over time, but differ across individuals, and affect the expression of behaviours in different situations (personality traits). This personality traits have been shown to have consistent ecological and evolutionary consequences thus, studying the variation in personality traits is important. The aim of this thesis was to identify the variation in exploratory behaviour in red knots, understand the origin of this variation, understand how variation in exploration maintained in natural populations, and whether exploration measured in experimental setups could be extrapolated to ecological contexts. We found that experience during ontogeny (i.e., exposure to a certain physical or social environment) can be important for the development of personalities in juvenile red knots. For adults, exploratory behaviour assayed in experimental setups is highly consistent within individuals and can predict other behaviours in different contexts. That is, variation in exploratory personality (i.e., slow vs. fast explorer) predicts foraging tactics and dietary choice in the wild. Exploratory behaviour also relates to variation in movement across different temporal and spatial scales in previously unforeseen ways. Specifically, slow and fast explorers show divergent movement patterns during the day and night and differ in arrival times from migration. This thesis fills a gap in the literature to link an experimentally measured personality trait to real-world behavioural strategies and demonstrates the importance of studying personality across contexts. Understanding the causes, maintenance, and consequences of animal personalities should further our understanding of population responses to environmental change, population and community dynamics, and speciation

Bireycilik ve toplulukçuluk değerlerinin ölçülmesi: benlik kurgusu ve INDCOL ölçeklerinin Türkçe geçerlemesi

Bu çalışma ile bireycilik ve toplulukçuluk değerlerini bireysel düzeyde ölçmek üzere sıklıkla kullanılan, Benlik Kurgusu (Self Construal Scale; SCS) (Singelis, 1994) ile INDCOL ölçeklerinin (Singelis ve diğerleri, 1995) Türkçedeki psikometrik özellikleri değerlendirilmiştir. Üç farklı çalışan örnekleminden elde edilen veriler üzerinde yapılan analizler neticesinde SCS’nin geçerliği desteklenmemiş ve ölçeğin yapısının kuramsal olarak da gözden geçirilmesi gerektiği sonucuna varılmıştır. INDCOL ölçeğinin ise gerek faktör analizleri gerek korelasyon analizleri ile geçerlemesi sonucunda daha güvenilir bir ölçek olduğu sonucuna varılmıştır. Ancak Türkiye ortamında daha anlamlı olabilecek maddelerle geliştirilmesi önerilmektedir

A Self-Consistent Method to Assess Air Quality Co-Benefits from US Climate Policies

Air quality co-benefits can potentially reduce the costs of greenhouse gas mitigation. However, while many studies of the cost of greenhouse gas mitigation model the full macroeconomic welfare impacts, most studies of air quality co-benefits do not. We employ a US computable general equilibrium economic model previously linked to an air quality modeling system, and enhance it to represent the economy-wide welfare impacts of fine particulate matter. We present a first application of this method to explore the efficiency and the distributional implications of a clean energy standard (CES) and a cap–and–trade (CAT) program that both reduce CO2 emission by 10% in 2030 relative to 2006. We find that co-benefits from fine particulate matter reduction completely offset policy costs by 110% (40% to 190%), transforming the net welfare impact of the CAT into a gain of $1 (-$5 to $7) billion 2005 US$. For the CES, the corresponding co-benefit (median $8;$3 to $14)/tCO2 is a smaller fraction (median 5%; 2% to 9%) of its higher policy cost. The eastern US garners 78% and 71% of co-benefits for the CES and CAT, respectively. By representing the effects of pollution-related morbidities and mortalities as an impact to labor and the demand for health services, we find that the welfare impact per unit of reduced pollution varies by region. These interregional differences can enhance the preference of some regions, like Texas, for a CAT over a CES, or switch the calculation of which policy yields higher co-benefits, compared to an approach that uses one valuation for all regions. This framework could be applied to quantify consistent air quality impacts of other pricing instruments, subnational trading programs, or green tax swaps.The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support for this work provided by the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change through a consortium of industrial sponsors and Federal grants. Additionally, the authors acknowledge support from: the US EPA under the Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program (#R834279); MIT's Leading Technology and Policy Initiative; US Department of Energy Office of Science grant DE-FG02-94ER61937; the MIT Energy Initiative Total Energy Fellowship (Saari); and a MIT Martin Family Society Fellowship (Saari)

EU Peatlands: Current Carbon Stocks and Trace Gas Fluxes

Peatlands in Europe has formed a significant sink for atmospheric CO2 since the last glacial maximum. Currently they are estimated to hold ca. 42 Gt carbon in the form of peat and are therefore a considerable component in the European carbon budget. Due to the generally wet soil conditions in peatlands they are also significant emitters of the strong greenhouse gas (GHG) methane (CH4) and in some cases also of nitrous oxide (N2O). The EU funded CarboEurope-GHG Concerted Action attempts to develop a reliable and complete greenhouse gas budget for Europe and this report aims to provide a review and synthesis of the available information about GHG exchanges in European peatlands and their underlying processes. A best estimate for all the European countries shows that some are currently sinks for atmospheric CO2 while others are sources. In contrast, for CH4 and N2O, only the sources are relevant. Whilst some countries are CO2 sinks, all countries are net GHG emitters from peatlands. The results presented, however, carry large uncertainties, which cannot be adequately quantified yet. One outstanding uncertainty is the distribution of land use types, particular in Russia, the largest European peat nation. The synthesis of GHG exchange, nevertheless, indicates some interesting features. Russia hosts an estimated 41% of European peatlands and contributes most to all GHG exchanges (CO2: 25%, CH4: 52%, N2O: 26%, Total: 37%). Germany is the second-largest emitter (12% of European total) although it contains only 3.2% of European peatlands. The reason is the use of most of the peatland area for intensive cropland and grassland. The largest CO2 emitters are countries with large agricultural peatland areas (Russia, Germany, Belarus, Poland), the largest N2O emitters are those with large agricultural fen areas (Russia, Germany, Finland). In contrast, the largest CH4 emitters are concentrated in regions with large areas of intact mires, namely Russia and Scandinavia. High average emission densities above 3.5 t C-equiv. ha-1 are found in the Southeast Mediterranean, Germany and the Netherlands where agricultural use of peatlands is intense. Low average emission densities below 0.3 t C-equiv. ha-1 occur where mires and peatland forests dominate, e.g. Finland and the UK. This report concludes by pointing at key gaps in our knowledge about peatland carbon stocks and GHG exchanges which include insufficient basic information on areal distribution of peatlands, measurements of peat depth and also a lack of flux datasets providing full annual budgets of GHG exchanges

A growing disconnection from nature is evident in cultural products

Human connection with nature is widely believed to be in decline, even though empirical evidence on the magnitude and temporal pattern of the change is scarce. Studying works of popular culture in English throughout the 20th century and later, we document a cultural shift away from nature, beginning in the 1950s. Since then, references to nature have been decreasing steadily in fiction, song lyrics, and film storylines. No parallel decline is observed in references to the human-made environment. These findings are cause for concern, not only because they imply foregone benefits from engagement with nature, but also because cultural products are agents of socialization that can evoke curiosity, respect, and concern for the natural world

Convergent cascade catalyzed by monooxygenase - alcohol dehydrogenase fusion applied in organic media

With the aim of applying redox-neutral cascade reactions in organic media, fusions of a type II flavin-containing monooxy-genase (FMO-E) and horse liver alcohol dehydrogenase (HLADH) were designed. The enzyme orientation and expression vector were found to influence the overall fusion enzyme activity. The resulting bi-functional enzyme retained the catalytic properties of both individual enzymes. The lyophilized cell free extract containing the bifunctional enzyme was applied for the convergent cascade reaction consisting of cyclobutanone and 1,4-butanediol in different micro-aqueous media with only 5% (v/v) aqueous buffer without any addition of external cofactor. Methyl tert-butyl ether and cyclopentyl methyl ether were found to be the best organic media for the synthesis of γ-butyrolactone resulting in ~27% analytical yield

Global Health and Economic Impacts of Future Ozone Pollution

Abstract and PDF report are also available on the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change website (http://globalchange.mit.edu/).We assess the human health and economic impacts of projected 2000-2050 changes in ozone pollution using the MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis-Health Effects (EPPA-HE) model, in combination with results from the GEOS-Chem global tropospheric chemistry model that simulated climate and chemistry effects of IPCC SRES emissions. We use EPPA to assess the human health damages (including acute mortality and morbidity outcomes) caused by ozone pollution and quantify their economic impacts in sixteen world regions. We compare the costs of ozone pollution under scenarios with 2000 and 2050 ozone precursor and greenhouse gas emissions (SRES A1B scenario). We estimate that health costs due to global ozone pollution above pre-industrial levels by 2050 will be $580 billion (year 2000$) and that acute mortalities will exceed 2 million. We find that previous methodologies underestimate costs of air pollution by more than a third because they do not take into account the long-term, compounding effects of health costs. The economic effects of emissions changes far exceed the influence of climate alone.United States Department of Energy, Office of Science (BER) grants DE-FG02-94ER61937 and DE-FG02-93ER61677, the United States Environmental Protection Agency grant EPA-XA-83344601-0, and the industrial and foundation sponsors of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change