The Impact of Border Carbon Adjustments under Alternative Producer Responses

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/)Border carbon adjustments (BCAs) have been proposed to address leakage and competitiveness concerns. In traditional assessments, firms regard BCAs as output taxes rather than implicit emissions taxes. Using a stylized energy-economic model, we analyze the impact of BCAs for alternative producer responses. When firms view BCAs as an implicit emissions tax, the outcome depends on whether or not firms can differentiate production across destination markets. If firms are able to produce a low-emissions variety for regions imposing BCAs, results are similar to when firms regard BCAs as an output tax. If firms produce a single variety for all markets, BCAs result in larger leakage reductions than in standard approaches. We also find that BCAs are less effective at addressing competitive concerns in scenarios that result in larger leakage reductions.This study received support from the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, which is funded by a consortium of government, industry and foundation sponsors

StyloThai: A scalable framework for stylometric authorship identification of Thai documents

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by ACM in ACM Transactions on Asian and Low-Resource Language Information Processing in January 2020, available online: https://doi.org/10.1145/3365832 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.© 2020 Association for Computing Machinery. All rights reserved. Authorship identification helps to identify the true author of a given anonymous document from a set of candidate authors. The applications of this task can be found in several domains, such as law enforcement agencies and information retrieval. These application domains are not limited to a specific language, community, or ethnicity. However, most of the existing solutions are designed for English, and a little attention has been paid to Thai. These existing solutions are not directly applicable to Thai due to the linguistic differences between these two languages. Moreover, the existing solution designed for Thai is unable to (i) handle outliers in the dataset, (ii) scale when the size of the candidate authors set increases, and (iii) perform well when the number of writing samples for each candidate author is low.We identify a stylometric feature space for the Thai authorship identification task. Based on our feature space, we present an authorship identification solution that uses the probabilistic k nearest neighbors classifier by transforming each document into a collection of point sets. Specifically, this document transformation allows us to (i) use set distance measures associated with an outlier handling mechanism, (ii) capture stylistic variations within a document, and (iii) produce multiple predictions for a query document. We create a new Thai authorship identification corpus containing 547 documents from 200 authors, which is significantly larger than the corpus used by the existing study (an increase of 32 folds in terms of the number of candidate authors). The experimental results show that our solution can overcome the limitations of the existing solution and outperforms all competitors with an accuracy level of 91.02%. Moreover, we investigate the effectiveness of each stylometric features category with the help of an ablation study. We found that combining all categories of the stylometric features outperforms the other combinations. Finally, we cross compare the feature spaces and classification methods of all solutions. We found that (i) our solution can scale as the number of candidate authors increases, (ii) our method outperforms all the competitors, and (iii) our feature space provides better performance than the feature space used by the existing study.The research was partially supported by the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (project# MP-62- 0003); and Thailand Research Fund and Office of the Higher Education Commission (MRG6180266).Published versio

Vibration Isolation Design for the Micro-X Rocket Payload

Micro-X is a NASA-funded, sounding rocket-borne X-ray imaging spectrometer that will allow high precision measurements of velocity structure, ionization state and elemental composition of extended astrophysical systems. One of the biggest challenges in payload design is to maintain the temperature of the detectors during launch. There are several vibration damping stages to prevent energy transmission from the rocket skin to the detector stage, which causes heating during launch. Each stage should be more rigid than the outer stages to achieve vibrational isolation. We describe a major design effort to tune the resonance frequencies of these vibration isolation stages to reduce heating problems prior to the projected launch in the summer of 2014.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, LTD15 Conference Proceeding

Methodological Bias in Estimates of Strain Composition and Straying of Hatchery‐Produced Steelhead in Lake Michigan Tributaries

Steelhead Oncorhynchus mykiss were first introduced into the Great Lakes in the late 1800s. Subsequently, natural recruitment of steelhead from spawning runs in streams across the basin has been regularly supplemented by hatchery production of strains derived from widely dispersed locales within the species’ native range. Estimates of hatchery contributions to the spawning runs of naturalized populations may be underrepresented by observations of marked fish, as not all hatchery fish are marked prior to release. To assess the potential bias in estimates of the hatchery contribution to steelhead spawning runs in four major rivers in Michigan, we used scale pattern analysis (SPA) to identify nonmarked hatchery fish and multilocus genotypes to estimate the proportional contributions of each hatchery strain to spawning runs. The four hatchery strains currently stocked are significantly genetically distinct (mean FST = 0.077), making it possible to identify specific strains by use of likelihood‐based assignment tests. The differences between direct (mark observations) and indirect (SPA and genetic analysis) estimates of hatchery contribution were mainly due to variations in the percentage of hatchery fish marked by states prior to release and the potential for confusion between certain marks and injuries. By combining direct and indirect assessment methodologies, we estimated that the percentage of hatchery fish returning to the four rivers ranged from 13% to 31% of total spawning runs. The large contribution of hatchery fish to nonstocked rivers differed significantly from expectations of strain‐specific stocking rates across the Lake Michigan basin and for individual streams, indicating high amounts of straying into Michigan streams.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/141020/1/nafm1288.pd

Protective effects of MCT diet in a mouse model of Dravet syndrome

Objective: Dravet syndrome (DS) is a severe developmental and epileptic encephalopathy with early childhood onset. Patients with DS do not respond well to antiepileptic drugs and have only a few treatment options available. Here, we evaluated the effect of medium chain triglyceride (MCT) diet therapy in a mouse model of DS. // Methods: Scn1aR1407X/+ DS mice were given diets supplemented with MCTs with varying ratios of decanoic (C10) and octanoic (C8) acid or a control diet for 4 weeks. Video monitoring was performed to evaluate spontaneous convulsive seizure frequency. Susceptibility to hyperthermia-induced seizures was also examined. Medium chain fatty acids, and mitochondrial and antioxidant markers were assessed in brain homogenate. // Results: Dietary intervention with MCTs significantly prolonged survival and reduced convulsive seizure frequency during the critical period of highest seizure occurrence in the Scn1aR1407X/+ DS mice. Moreover, MCT diet therapy showed protective effects against hyperthermia-induced seizures. We demonstrated that coadministration of C10/C8 was effective at reducing both seizures and mortality, whereas C10 alone only reduced mortality, suggesting that the ratio of C10 to C8 in the MCT is an important factor for efficacy. When C10 and C8 are supplemented at an 80:20 ratio in the diet, C10 accumulates in the brain in high enough concentrations to enhance brain energy metabolism by both stimulating mitochondrial enrichment and increasing its antioxidant status. // Significance: The results from this study indicate that MCT diet therapy may provide therapeutic benefits in DS. Future clinical studies would elucidate whether these positive effects are mirrored in human patients

Subsystems of a finite quantum system and Bell-like inequalities

YesThe set of subsystems Sigma(m) of a finite quantum system Sigma(n) with variables in Z(n) together with logical connectives, is a Heyting algebra. The probabilities tau(m vertical bar rho(n)) Tr vertical bar B(m)rho(n)] (where B(m) is the projector to Sigma(m)) are compatible with associativity of the join in the Heyting algebra, only if the variables belong to the same chain. Consequently, contextuality in the present formalism, has the chains as contexts. Various Bell-like inequalities are discussed. They are violated, and this proves that quantum mechanics is a contextual theory

Accessing Nuclear Structure for Field Emission, in Lens, Scanning Electron Microscopy (FEISEM)

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) has had a shorter time course in biology than conventional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) but has nevertheless produced a wealth of images that have significantly complemented our perception of biological structure and function from TEM information. By its nature, SEM is a surface imaging technology, and its impact at the subcellular level has been restricted by the considerably reduced resolution in conventional SEM in comparison to TEM. This restriction has been removed by the recent advent of high-brightness sources used in lensfield emission instruments (FEISEM) which have produced resolution of around 1 nanometre, which is not usually a limiting figure for biological material. This communication reviews our findings in the use of FEISEM in the imaging of nuclear surfaces, then associated structures, such as nuclear pore complexes, and the relationships of these structures with cytoplasmic and nucleoplasmic elements. High resolution SEM allows the structurally orientated cell biologist to visualise, directly and in three dimensions, subcellular structure and its modulation with a view to understanding its functional significance. Clearly, intracellular surfaces require separation from surrounding structural elements in vivo to allow surface imaging, and we review a combination of biochemical and mechanical isolation methods for nuclear surfaces

A cylindrically symmetric “micro-Mott” electron polarimeter

A small, novel, cylindrically symmetric Mott electron polarimeter is described. The effective Sherman function, Seff , or analyzing power, for 20 kV Au target bias with a 1.3 keV energy loss window is 0.16 ± 0.01, where uncertainty in the measurement is due primarily to uncertainty in the incident electron polarization. For an energy loss window of 0.5 keV, Seff reaches its maximum value of 0.24 ± 0.02. The device’s maximum efficiency, I/Io, defined as the detected count rate divided by the incident particle rate, is 3.7 ± 0.2 × 10−4 at 20 keV. The figure-of-merit of the device, η, is defined as Seff2 I/ Io and equals 9.0 ± 1.6 × 10−6. Potential sources of false asymmetries due to detector electronic asymmetry and beam misalignment have been investigated. The new polarimeter’s performance is compared to published results for similar compact retarding-field Mott polarimeters, and it is concluded that this device has a relatively large Seff and low efficiency. SIMION® electron trajectory simulations and Sherman function calculations are presented to explain the differences in performance between this device and previous designs. This design has an Seffthat is insensitive to spatial beam fluctuations and, for an energy loss window \u3e0.5 keV, negligible background due to spurious ion and X-ray production at the target

An equilibrium model for RFP plasmas in the presence of resonant tearing modes

The equilibrium of a finite-beta RFP plasma in the presence of saturated-amplitude tearing modes is investigated. The singularities of the MHD force balance equation JXB=grad(p) at the modes rational surfaces are resolved through a proper regularization of the zeroth-order (equilibrium) profiles, by setting to zero there the gradient of the pressure and parallel current density. An equilibrium model, which satisfies the regularization rule at the various rational surfaces, is developed. The comparison with the experimental data from the Reversed Field eXperiment (RFX) gives encouraging results. The model provides an easy tool for magnetic analysis: many aspects of the perturbations can be analyzed and reconstructed.Comment: Final accepted version. 36 page

The pleiotropic effects of decanoic acid treatment on mitochondrial function in fibroblasts from patients with complex I deficient Leigh syndrome

There is growing interest in the use of the ketogenic diet (KD) to treat inherited metabolic diseases including mitochondrial disorders. However, neither the mechanism whereby the diet may be working, nor if it could benefit all patients with mitochondrial disease, is known. This study focusses on decanoic acid (C10), a component of the medium chain triglyceride KD, and a ligand for the nuclear receptor PPAR-γ known to be involved in mitochondrial biogenesis. The effects of C10 were investigated in primary fibroblasts from a cohort of patients with Leigh syndrome (LS) caused by nuclear-encoded defects of respiratory chain complex I, using mitochondrial respiratory chain enzyme assays, gene expression microarray, qPCR and flow cytometry. Treatment with C10 increased citrate synthase activity, a marker of cellular mitochondrial content, in 50 % of fibroblasts obtained from individuals diagnosed with LS in a PPAR-γ-mediated manner. Gene expression analysis and qPCR studies suggested that treating cells with C10 supports fatty acid metabolism, through increasing ACADVL and CPT1 expression, whilst downregulating genes involved in glucose metabolism (PDK3, PDK4). PCK2, involved in blocking glucose metabolism, was upregulated, as was CAT, encoding catalase. Moreover, treatment with C10 also decreased oxidative stress in complex I deficient (rotenone treated) cells. However, since not all cells from subjects with LS appeared to respond to C10, prior cellular testing in vitro could be employed as a means for selecting individuals for subsequent clinical studies involving C10 preparations