What do we know about carbon taxes? an inquiry into their impacts on competitiveness and distribution of income

The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has set legally binding emissions targets for a basket of six greenhouse gases and timetables for industrialised countries. It has also incorporated three international flexibility mechanisms. However, the Articles defining the flexibility mechanisms carry wording that their use must be supplemental to domestic actions. This has led to the open debates on interpretations of these supplementarity provisions. Such debates ended at the resumed sixth Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC, held in Bonn, July 2001, and at the subsequent COP-7 in Marrakesh, November 2001. The final wording in the Bonn Agreement, reaffirmed in the Marrakesh Accords, at least indicates that domestic policies will have an important role to play in meeting Annex B countries’ emissions commitments. Carbon taxes have long been advocated because of their cost-effectiveness in achieving a given emissions reduction. In this paper, the main economic impacts of carbon taxes are assessed. Based on a review of empirical studies on existing carbon/energy taxes, it is concluded that competitive losses and distributive impacts are generally not significant and definitely less than often perceived. However, given the ultimate objective of the Framework Convention, future carbon taxes could have higher rates than those already imposed and thus the resulting economic impacts could be more acute. In this context, it has been shown that how to use the generated fiscal revenues will be of fundamental importance in determining the final economic impacts of carbon taxes. Finally, we briefly discuss carbon taxes in combination with other domestic and international instruments.Border tax adjustments; carbon taxes; distribution of income; double dividend; emissions trading; energy taxes; international competitiveness

Large-scale gene-expression studies and the challenge of multiple sclerosis.

In multiple sclerosis, a complex neurodegenerative disorder, a combination of genetic and environmental factors results in inflammation and myelin damage. Recent transcription-profiling studies have found distinct gene-expression patterns in diseased tissue; such large-scale studies at different stages of the disease are contributing to understanding multiple sclerosis and developing effective therapy

Uncertainty and global warming : an option - pricing approach to policy

Uncertainty is inherent in the analysis of global warming issues. Not only is there considerable scientific uncertainty about the magnitude of global warming, but even if that problem were resolved, there is uncertainty about what monetary value to assign to the costs and benefits of various policies to reduce global warming. And yet the influence of uncertainty in policymaker's decisions is ignored in most studies of the issue. The authors try to explicitly incorporate the effect of uncertainty in the choice of global warming abatement policies. The approach they develop draws on the emerging literature on investment under uncertainty - in particular, that on the option-valuation approach. Their numerical applications focus on the Cline's (1992) analysis of global warming, but it may be applied to a range of global warming analyses. First, they assess whether it is optimal to implement Cline's strategy of limiting global warming today, or whether it should be postponed, and for how long. Then, they identify the optimal policy to be implemented today for different levels of uncertainty about the costs and benefits of policies to reduce global warming.Economic Theory&Research,Montreal Protocol,Decentralization,Climate Change,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Climate Change,Montreal Protocol,Carbon Policy and Trading,Environmental Economics&Policies

Integrating biomedical research and electronic health records to create knowledge-based biologically meaningful machine-readable embeddings.

In order to advance precision medicine, detailed clinical features ought to be described in a way that leverages current knowledge. Although data collected from biomedical research is expanding at an almost exponential rate, our ability to transform that information into patient care has not kept at pace. A major barrier preventing this transformation is that multi-dimensional data collection and analysis is usually carried out without much understanding of the underlying knowledge structure. Here, in an effort to bridge this gap, Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of individual patients are connected to a heterogeneous knowledge network called Scalable Precision Medicine Oriented Knowledge Engine (SPOKE). Then an unsupervised machine-learning algorithm creates Propagated SPOKE Entry Vectors (PSEVs) that encode the importance of each SPOKE node for any code in the EHRs. We argue that these results, alongside the natural integration of PSEVs into any EHR machine-learning platform, provide a key step toward precision medicine

Spectral properties of the Second Variation of an optimal control problem

In this thesis we study the spectral properties of the Second Variation of an optimal control problem. In particular we focus on three aspects: the asymptotic distribution of the spectrum on the real line, the change in Morse index of an extremal subject to di erent boundary conditions and the determinant. We provide, under some regularity assumptions, an exhaustive Weyl-type law for the eigenvalue of the Second Variation. We prove a formula for the change of Morse index of an extremal satisfying di erent sets of boundary conditions. We apply it to get iteration formulas for periodic extremals and discretization formulas that reduce the problem of computing the index to a nite dimensional one. Moreover we present some ideas on how to apply the theory to variational problems on graphs. Finally we provide a way to compute the determinant of the Second Variation in terms of the fundamental solution of a system of ODEs, proving a generalized Hill-type formula. Application to stability are discussed

Functional determinants for the second variation

We study the determinant of the second variation of an optimal control problem for general boundary conditions. Generically, this operators are not trace class and the determinant is defined as a principal value limit. We provide a formula to compute this determinant in terms of the linearisation of the extremal flow. We illustrate the procedure in some special cases, proving some Hill-type formulas.Comment: 41 page

Role of RNASET2 in innate immune response regulation

Numerous studies have highlighted the existence of enzymes that, besides presenting a conserved role, take part in different biological processes acquiring new functions. In particular, the T2 RNase family of enzymes is one of the most investigated group, which is involved not only in RNA regulation, but also performs additional functions, regardless of the catalytic activity. It has been recently observed that, through the continuous cross-talk between the cancer cells and the adjacent microenvironment and the activation of inflammatory response by inducing macrophages activation, the human protein RNASET2 is able to control the ovarian cancer malignancy. However, the details about the mechanisms by which T2 enzymes interact with immune system remain poorly defined. The medicinal leech Hirudo verbana is here proposed as a consolidated invertebrate model to shed light on these aspects. The results presented in this project reveal that both human and leech T2 RNases cause fibroplasia, connective tissue remodeling and macrophage recruitment in leeches. Moreover, in vivo and in vitro experiments proved that HvRNASET2, released by granulocytes after bacterial infection, is a candidate molecule for counteracting pathogens. In particular, it plays a dual role, inducing bacterial clustering to facilitate macrophage phagocytosis and promoting immunocompetent cells recognition. In conclusion, HvRNASET2 acts as an effector of innate immune response, to favore an efficient microbial pathogen elimination and an effective oncosuppressive activity. These studies, related to roles of T2 RNases in tissue remodeling, immune response modulation and antimicrobial activity, could be essential for developing new therapeutic application

Operators arising as Second Variation of optimal control problems and their spectral asymptotics

We compute the asymptotic for the eigenvalues of a particular class of compact operators deeply linked with the second variation of optimal control problems. We characterize this family in terms of a set of finite dimensional data and we apply this results to a particular class of singular extremal to get a nice description of the spectrum of the second variation.Comment: 34 pages, new and improved exposition and many typos correcte

The Gut Microbiome in Neuromyelitis Optica.

Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) is a rare, disabling, sometimes fatal central nervous system inflammatory demyelinating disease that is associated with antibodies ("NMO IgG") that target the water channel protein aquaporin-4 (AQP4) expressed on astrocytes. There is considerable interest in identifying environmental triggers that may elicit production of NMO IgG by AQP4-reactive B cells. Although NMO is considered principally a humoral autoimmune disease, antibodies of NMO IgG are IgG1, a T-cell-dependent immunoglobulin subclass, indicating that AQP4-reactive T cells have a pivotal role in NMO pathogenesis. When AQP4-specific proliferative T cells were first identified in patients with NMO it was discovered that T cells recognizing the dominant AQP4 T-cell epitope exhibited a T helper 17 (Th17) phenotype and displayed cross-reactivity to a homologous peptide sequence within a protein of Clostridium perfringens, a commensal bacterium found in human gut flora. The initial analysis of gut microbiota in NMO demonstrated that, in comparison to healthy controls (HC) and patients with multiple sclerosis, the microbiome of NMO is distinct. Remarkably, C. perfringens was the second most significantly enriched taxon in NMO, and among bacteria identified at the species level, C. perfringens was the one most highly associated with NMO. Those discoveries, along with evidence that certain Clostridia in the gut can regulate the balance between regulatory T cells and Th17 cells, indicate that gut microbiota, and possibly C. perfringens itself, could participate in NMO pathogenesis. Collectively, the evidence linking microbiota to humoral and cellular immunity in NMO underscores the importance for further investigating this relationship