Chapter 15 - National and sub-national policies and institutions

This chapter assesses national and sub-national mitigation policies and their institutional settings. There has been a marked increase in national policies and legislation on climate change since the AR4 with a diversity of approaches and a multiplicity of objectives (see Section 15.2). However, Figure 1.9 of Chapter 1 suggests that these policies, taken together, have not yet achieved a substantial deviation in emissions from the past trend. Limiting concentrations to levels that would be consistent with a likely probability of maintaining temperature increases below 2 degrees C this century (scenarios generally in the range of 430-480 ppmv CO2eq) would require that emissions break from these trends and be decreased substantially. In contrast, concentrations exceed 1000 ppmv CO2eq by 2100 in many baseline scenarios (that is, scenarios without additional efforts to reduce emissions). The literature on mitigation scenarios provides a wide range of CO2 shadow price levels consistent with these goals, with estimates of less than US$50/tCO2 in 2020 in many studies and exceeding US$100/tCO2 in others, assuming a globally-efficient and immediate effort to reduce emissions. These shadow prices exhibit a strongly increasing trend thereafter. Policies and instruments are assessed in this light. Section 15.2 assesses the role of institutions and governance. Section 15.3 lays out the classification of policy instruments and packages, while 15.4 discusses the methodologies used to evaluate policies and institutions. The performance of various policy instruments and measures are individually assessed in Sections 15.5 and 15.6. The two main types of economic instruments are price instruments, that is, taxes and subsidies (including removal of subsidies on fossil fuels), and quantity instruments - emission-trading systems. These are assessed in Sections 15.5.2 and 15.5.3 respectively. An important feature of both these instruments is that they can be applied at a very broad, economy-wide scale. This is in contrast to the regulation and information policies and voluntary agreements which are usually sector- specific. These policies are assessed in Sections 15.5.4, 15.5.5, and 15.5.7. Government provision and planning is discussed in 15.5.6. The next section, 15.6, provides a focused discussion on technology policy including research and development and the deployment and diffusion of clean energy technologies. In addition to technology policy, longer-term effects of the policies assessed in Section 15.5 are addressed in Section 15.6. Both these sections, 15.5 and 15.6, bring together lessons from policies and policy packages used at the sectoral level from Chapters 7 (Energy), 8 (Transport), 9 (Buildings), 10 (Industry), 11 (Agriculture, Forestry and Land Use) and Chapter 12 (Human Settlements, Infrastructure, and Spatial Planning). The following sections further assess the interaction among policy instruments, as they are not usually used in isolation, and the impacts of particular instruments depend on the entire package of policies and the institutional context. Section 15.7 reviews interactions, both beneficial and harmful, that may not have been planned. The presence of such interactions is in part a consequence of the multi-jurisdictional nature of climate governance as well as the use of multiple policy instruments within a jurisdiction. Section 15.8 examines the deliberate linkage of policies across national and sub-national jurisdictions. Other key issues are further discussed in dedicated sections. They are: the role of stakeholders including non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (15.9), capacity building (15.10), links between adaptation and mitigation policies (15.11), and investment and finance (15.12). Gaps in knowledge are collected in 15.13

Valuing the commons : an international study on the recreational benefits of the Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea provides benefits to all of the nine nations along its coastline, with some 85 million people living within the catchment area. Achieving improvements in water quality requires international cooperation. The likelihood of effective cooperation is known to depend on the distribution across countries of the benefits and costs of actions needed to improve water quality. In this paper, we estimate the benefits associated with recreational use of the Baltic Sea in current environmental conditions using a travel cost approach, based on data from a large, standardized survey of households in each of the 9 Baltic Sea states. Both the probability of engaging in recreation (participation) and the number of visits people make are modeled. A large variation in the number of trips and the extent of participation is found, along with large differences in current annual economic benefits from Baltic Sea recreation. The total annual recreation benefits are close to 15 billion EUR. Under a water quality improvement scenario, the proportional increases in benefits range from 7 to 18% of the current annual benefits across countries. Depending on how the costs of actions are distributed, this could imply difficulties in achieving more international cooperation to achieve such improvements.PostprintPeer reviewe

NANOG alone induces germ cells in primed epiblast in vitro by activation of enhancers.

Nanog, a core pluripotency factor in the inner cell mass of blastocysts, is also expressed in unipotent primordial germ cells (PGCs) in mice, where its precise role is yet unclear. We investigated this in an in vitro model, in which naive pluripotent embryonic stem (ES) cells cultured in basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) and activin A develop as epiblast-like cells (EpiLCs) and gain competence for a PGC-like fate. Consequently, bone morphogenetic protein 4 (BMP4), or ectopic expression of key germline transcription factors Prdm1, Prdm14 and Tfap2c, directly induce PGC-like cells (PGCLCs) in EpiLCs, but not in ES cells. Here we report an unexpected discovery that Nanog alone can induce PGCLCs in EpiLCs, independently of BMP4. We propose that after the dissolution of the naive ES-cell pluripotency network during establishment of EpiLCs, the epigenome is reset for cell fate determination. Indeed, we found genome-wide changes in NANOG-binding patterns between ES cells and EpiLCs, indicating epigenetic resetting of regulatory elements. Accordingly, we show that NANOG can bind and activate enhancers of Prdm1 and Prdm14 in EpiLCs in vitro; BLIMP1 (encoded by Prdm1) then directly induces Tfap2c. Furthermore, while SOX2 and NANOG promote the pluripotent state in ES cells, they show contrasting roles in EpiLCs, as Sox2 specifically represses PGCLC induction by Nanog. This study demonstrates a broadly applicable mechanistic principle for how cells acquire competence for cell fate determination, resulting in the context-dependent roles of key transcription factors during development.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Nature Publishing Group via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature1648

New μs isomers in Tz=1 nuclei produced in the 112Sn(63A MeV)+natNi reaction

Expérience GANIL, équipement SISSI/LISE

Haploinsufficiency of EHMT1 improves pattern separation and increases hippocampal cell proliferation

Contains fulltext : 169681.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Heterozygous mutations or deletions of the human Euchromatin Histone Methyltransferase 1 (EHMT1) gene are the main causes of Kleefstra syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder that is characterized by impaired memory, autistic features and mostly severe intellectual disability. Previously, Ehmt1+/- heterozygous knockout mice were found to exhibit cranial abnormalities and decreased sociability, phenotypes similar to those observed in Kleefstra syndrome patients. In addition, Ehmt1+/- knockout mice were impaired at fear extinction and novel- and spatial object recognition. In this study, Ehmt1+/- and wild-type mice were tested on several cognitive tests in a touchscreen-equipped operant chamber to further investigate the nature of learning and memory changes. Performance of Ehmt1+/- mice in the Visual Discrimination &Reversal learning, object-location Paired-Associates learning- and Extinction learning tasks was found to be unimpaired. Remarkably, Ehmt1+/- mice showed enhanced performance on the Location Discrimination test of pattern separation. In line with improved Location Discrimination ability, an increase in BrdU-labelled cells in the subgranular zone of the dentate gyrus was observed. In conclusion, reduced levels of EHMT1 protein in Ehmt1+/- mice does not result in general learning deficits in a touchscreen-based battery, but leads to increased adult cell proliferation in the hippocampus and enhanced pattern separation ability

Altering Chemosensitivity by Modulating Translation Elongation

BACKGROUND: The process of translation occurs at a nexus point downstream of a number of signal pathways and developmental processes. Modeling activation of the PTEN/AKT/mTOR pathway in the Emu-Myc mouse is a valuable tool to study tumor genotype/chemosensitivity relationships in vivo. In this model, blocking translation initiation with silvestrol, an inhibitor of the ribosome recruitment step has been showed to modulate the sensitivity of the tumors to the effect of standard chemotherapy. However, inhibitors of translation elongation have been tested as potential anti-cancer therapeutic agents in vitro, but have not been extensively tested in genetically well-defined mouse tumor models or for potential synergy with standard of care agents. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here, we chose four structurally different chemical inhibitors of translation elongation: homoharringtonine, bruceantin, didemnin B and cycloheximide, and tested their ability to alter the chemoresistance of Emu-myc lymphomas harbouring lesions in Pten, Tsc2, Bcl-2, or eIF4E. We show that in some genetic settings, translation elongation inhibitors are able to synergize with doxorubicin by reinstating an apoptotic program in tumor cells. We attribute this effect to a reduction in levels of pro-oncogenic or pro-survival proteins having short half-lives, like Mcl-1, cyclin D1 or c-Myc. Using lymphomas cells grown ex vivo we reproduced the synergy observed in mice between chemotherapy and elongation inhibition and show that this is reversed by blocking protein degradation with a proteasome inhibitor. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results indicate that depleting short-lived pro-survival factors by inhibiting their synthesis could achieve a therapeutic response in tumors harboring PTEN/AKT/mTOR pathway mutations

Promoter Complexity and Tissue-Specific Expression of Stress Response Components in Mytilus galloprovincialis, a Sessile Marine Invertebrate Species

The mechanisms of stress tolerance in sessile animals, such as molluscs, can offer fundamental insights into the adaptation of organisms for a wide range of environmental challenges. One of the best studied processes at the molecular level relevant to stress tolerance is the heat shock response in the genus Mytilus. We focus on the upstream region of Mytilus galloprovincialis Hsp90 genes and their structural and functional associations, using comparative genomics and network inference. Sequence comparison of this region provides novel evidence that the transcription of Hsp90 is regulated via a dense region of transcription factor binding sites, also containing a region with similarity to the Gamera family of LINE-like repetitive sequences and a genus-specific element of unknown function. Furthermore, we infer a set of gene networks from tissue-specific expression data, and specifically extract an Hsp class-associated network, with 174 genes and 2,226 associations, exhibiting a complex pattern of expression across multiple tissue types. Our results (i) suggest that the heat shock response in the genus Mytilus is regulated by an unexpectedly complex upstream region, and (ii) provide new directions for the use of the heat shock process as a biosensor system for environmental monitoring