Distributive effects of the new highway infrastructure in the Netherlands: the role of network effect and spatial spillovers

Network effects and spatial spillovers are intrinsic impacts of transport infrastructure. Network effects imply that an improvement in a particular link in a network generates effects in many other elements of that network, while spillover effects can be defined as those impacts occurring beyond the regions where the actual transport investment is made. These two related effects entail a redistribution of impacts among regions, and their omission from road planning is argued to cause the systematic underestimation of the profitability of transport projects and therefore the public financing they require. However, traditional transport appraisal methodologies fail to consider network and spillover effects. In this study we focus on the spillover impacts of two highway sections planned in the city region of Eindhoven, located in the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant, a region with traffic congestion problems. The new road infrastructure will be financed mainly by national government, the province and the urban region of Eindhoven (‘Stadsregio Eindhoven’), which consists of 21 municipalities. We measure the benefits of the additional links in terms of travel time savings and the accompanying monetary gains. The results show that important spillovers occur in those municipalities close to the new links. The province of Noord-Brabant will benefit the most. We also found important spillovers in the province of Limburg. This latter province will benefit from reduced travel times without contributing financially to the establishment of the analysed new road links

Analysis of monotonic greening and browning trends from global NDVI time-series

Remotely sensed vegetation indices are widely used to detect greening and browning trends; especially the global coverage of time-series normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data which are available from 1981. Seasonality and serial auto-correlation in the data have previously been dealt with by integrating the data to annual values; as an alternative to reducing the temporal resolution, we apply harmonic analyses and non-parametric trend tests to the GIMMS NDVI dataset (1981-2006). Using the complete dataset, greening and browning trends were analyzed using a linear model corrected for seasonality by subtracting the seasonal component, and a seasonal non-parametric model. In a third approach, phenological shift and variation in length of growing season were accounted for by analyzing the time-series using vegetation development stages rather than calendar days. Results differed substantially between the models, even though the input data were the same. Prominent regional greening trends identified by several other studies were confirmed but the models were inconsistent in areas with weak trends. The linear model using data corrected for seasonality showed similar trend slopes to those described in previous work using linear models on yearly mean values. The non-parametric models demonstrated the significant influence of variations in phenology; accounting for these variations should yield more robust trend analyses and better understanding of vegetation trends

Imaging spectroscopy to assess the composition of ice surface materials and their impact on glacier mass balance

Glacier surfaces are not only composed of ice or snow but are heterogeneous mixtures of different materials. The occurrence and dynamics of light-absorbing impurities affect ice surface characteristics and strongly influence glacier melt processes. However, our understanding of the spatial distribution of impurities and their impact on ice surface characteristics and the glacier's energy budget is still limited. We use imaging spectroscopy in combination with in-situ experiments to assess the composition of ice surface materials and their respective impact on surface albedo and glacier melt rates. Spectroscopy data were acquired in August 2013 using the Airborne Prism EXperiment (APEX) imaging spectrometer and were used to map the abundances of six predominant surface materials on Glacier de la Plaine Morte, Swiss Alps. A pixel-based classification revealed that about 10% of the ice surface is covered with snow, water or debris. The remaining 90% of the surface can be divided into three types of glacier ice, namely ~ 7% dirty ice, ~ 43% pure ice and ~ 39% bright ice. Spatially distributed spectral albedo derived from APEX reflectance data in combination with in-situ multi-angular spectroscopic measurements was used to analyse albedo patterns present on the glacier surface. About 85% of all pixels exhibit a low albedo between 0.1 and 0.4 (mean albedo 0.29 ± 0.12), indicating that Glacier de la Plaine Morte is covered with a significant amount of light-absorbing impurities, resulting in a strong ice-albedo feedback during the ablation season. Using a pixel-based albedo map instead of a constant albedo for ice (0.34) as input for a mass balance model revealed that the glacier-wide total ablation remained similar (10% difference). However, the large local variations in mass balance can only be reproduced using the pixel-based albedo derived from APEX, emphasizing the need to quantify spatial albedo differences as an important input for glacier mass balance models

Guidelines for Identifying Homologous Recombination Events in Influenza A Virus

The rapid evolution of influenza viruses occurs both clonally and non-clonally through a variety of genetic mechanisms and selection pressures. The non-clonal evolution of influenza viruses comprises relatively frequent reassortment among gene segments and a more rarely reported process of non-homologous RNA recombination. Homologous RNA recombination within segments has been proposed as a third such mechanism, but to date the evidence for the existence of this process among influenza viruses has been both weak and controversial. As homologous recombination has not yet been demonstrated in the laboratory, supporting evidence, if it exists, may come primarily from patterns of phylogenetic incongruence observed in gene sequence data. Here, we review the necessary criteria related to laboratory procedures and sample handling, bioinformatic analysis, and the known ecology and evolution of influenza viruses that need to be met in order to confirm that a homologous recombination event occurred in the history of a set of sequences. To determine if these criteria have an effect on recombination analysis, we gathered 8307 publicly available full-length sequences of influenza A segments and divided them into those that were sequenced via the National Institutes of Health Influenza Genome Sequencing Project (IGSP) and those that were not. As sample handling and sequencing are executed to a very high standard in the IGSP, these sequences should be less likely to be exposed to contamination by other samples or by laboratory strains, and thus should not exhibit laboratory-generated signals of homologous recombination. Our analysis shows that the IGSP data set contains only two phylogenetically-supported single recombinant sequences and no recombinant clades. In marked contrast, the non-IGSP data show a very large amount of potential recombination. We conclude that the presence of false positive signals in the non-IGSP data is more likely than false negatives in the IGSP data, and that given the evidence to date, homologous recombination seems to play little or no role in the evolution of influenza A viruses

Ecosystem service change caused by climatological and non‐climatological drivers: A Swiss case study

Understanding the drivers of ecosystem change and their effects on ecosystem services are essential for management decisions and verification of progress towards national and international sustainability policies (e.g. Aichi Biodiversity Targets, Sustainable Development Goals). We aim to disentangle spatially the effect of climatological and non‐climatological drivers on ecosystem service supply and trends. Therefore, we explored time series of three ecosystem services in Switzerland between 2004 and 2014: carbon dioxide regulation, soil erosion prevention, and air quality regulation. We applied additive models to describe the spatial variation attributed to climatological (i.e. temperature, precipitation and relative sunshine duration) and non‐climatological drivers (i.e. random effects representing other spatially structured processes) that may affect ecosystem service change. Obtained results indicated strong influences of climatological drivers on ecosystem service trends in Switzerland. We identified equal contributions of all three climatological drivers on trends of carbon dioxide regulation and soil erosion prevention, while air quality regulation was more strongly influenced by temperature. Additionally, our results showed that climatological and non‐climatological drivers affected ecosystem services both negatively and positively, depending on the regions (in particular lower and higher altitudinal areas), drivers, and services assessed. Our findings highlight stronger effects of climatological compared to non‐climatological drivers on ecosystem service change in Switzerland. Furthermore, drivers of ecosystem change display a spatial heterogeneity in their influence on ecosystem service trends. We propose an approach building on an additive model to disentangle the effect of climatological and non‐climatological drivers on ecosystem service trends. Such analyses should be extended in the future to ecosystem service flow and demand to complete ecosystem service assessments and to demonstrate and communicate more clearly the benefits of ecosystem services for human well‐being

Peptide receptor imaging of prostate cancer with radiolabelled bombesin analogues

Prostate Cancer (PC) is a type of cancer that is often diagnosed at very early stages due to improved detection among man in the Western world. Current imaging techniques are not optimal to determine extent of minimal early stage PC even though this is of great clinical importance. Human PC and high-grade PIN have shown high Gastrin-Releasing Peptide Receptor (GRPR) expression, while normal prostate tissue and BPH revealed to be predominantly GRPR-negative. Radiolabelled Gastrin-Releasing Peptide (GRP) or bombesin (BN) analogues targeting the GRPR can be used as non-invasive tools to diagnose, monitor and potentially treat PC. These BN analogues have already proven to be able to image PC in both tumour-bearing mice and clinical patients showing no important side effects. It's desirable that new peptides require fast-track standardised comparative testing in relevant PC models to select the best performing BN analogues for further evaluation in patients. Although knowledge about GRPR expression and development of new BN analogues can be extended, it is time to study performance of BN analogues for peptide receptor based imaging in patients validating results of PC imaging using histopathology as a golden standard