Contracting Nitrogen Abatement in the Baltic Proper Watershed Under the Risk of Climate Change

Within the EU, it is agreed that watershed-based management of water quality problems is likely to be more economically efficient compared to existing institutional arrangements. Watershed authorities, assigned under the European Water Framework Directive, do however lack financial resources for policy implementation. EU funding for agri-environmental measures is mainly channeled through CAP via national governments to the farmers. In this paper, a mechanism for allocating international funds to watershed authorities is investigated assuming that there is a risk of moral hazard on behalf of the regional authority. The assumed purpose of the funding is to reduce nitrogen loads to the Baltic Proper, and the implications of uncertainty about the risk of climate change are investigated. Results shows that the risk premium associated with the presence of moral hazard can be high if there is a high likelihood of climate change and marginal damage is increasing rapidly in loads.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Management of Aided Construction Projects

Tanzania is a developing country standing in front of a lot of challenges. One of the biggest challenges, that this study considers, is the development of the construction management. In a time where the infrastructure and urbanization of the world is increasing it is important for developing countries such as Tanzania not to fall to far behind. However, in spite of this the development of the construction management of Tanzania is still going slow. The development of the infrastructure and urbanization is still inefficient and there are a lot of class differences between inhabitants living in urban and rural areas. This study is a review of the management of aided construction projects. The aim with the report is to examine the process and management of building construction in Tanzania and search for improvements and increased efficiency. The study deepens into a field study to investigate the case of foreign aid building support. The study has been made in a systematic process and is broadly made in two parts. The first part focuses on a literature study comprising articles, books and reports. The aim is to establish and present the main factors and procedure of the construction management in Tanzania. The second part is based on the field study. The purpose with the field study is to give a perspective of the aid building management and to track eventual inadequacies in the building process. Observations and interviews were done to find recommendations how to make the building process even more effective. The study found a lot of inadequacies in the building process such as lack of competence and knowledge, lack of communication and difficulties making time plans but despite the inadequacies, overall the aid construction project turned out successful. To expect the process only to run smoothly in this kind of project is to be a bit too optimistic. Differences of culture and working process are two things to have in mind before starting an aid project. I found spreading of knowledge as one of the main factors to increase the efficiency of the construction management and after my experience at Jua Kali orphanage center, I believe that foreign aid projects are a great way of doing this. For example, by using local labour you both support the local employment and it is also a great way of implementing new techniques. To reach a successful aid project it is also important to be humble to the new culture, flexible and sometimes be willing to meet halfway. To do a thorough feasibility study is also something I recommend before starting the project since it simplifies the future working process, time planning and budget calculations. To increase the efficiency of the construction management I also believe it is important that exalted organizations such as the government and other financial institutions, local and national authorities of the country, to prioritize economical support to the construction industry. By developing the infrastructure and urbanization it will promote the welfare of the whole country and at the same time decrease the dependency of foreign financial support

Putin och det andra Krimkriget

This essay is a rational choice study sculptured after Allison, Zelikows famous study, Essence of decision. It debates the options Putin had when he annexed Ukraine’s, Crimean peninsula? We try to put ourselves into the shoes of Putin to see what he sees and to make an investigation. What else could he have done and for what reasons? There are four options debated, 1, to annex Crimea with illegal troops, (the real events), 2, to annex southern and eastern Ukraine right away, 3, to claim a referendum, 4, to do nothing. It´s a decision theory study, which is supposed to cast light upon the historical frame of Putin’s annexation of Crimea. The study is targeting diplomacy, military, security and economic impact, as a fountain of decision making. Putin is characterized as a realistic actor who in his mind has the moral obligation to “cheat” within the international institutions and who is aiming for Russia’s maximum good: This is the playground of the realistic actor in an age of diplomacy and communications

A new census of protein tandem repeats and their relationship with intrinsic disorder

Protein tandem repeats (TRs) are often associated with immunity-related functions and diseases. Since that last census of protein TRs in 1999, the number of curated proteins increased more than seven-fold and new TR prediction methods were published. TRs appear to be enriched with intrinsic disorder and vice versa. The significance and the biological reasons for this association are unknown. Here, we characterize protein TRs across all kingdoms of life and their overlap with intrinsic disorder in unprecedented detail. Using state-of-the-art prediction methods, we estimate that 50.9% of proteins contain at least one TR, often located at the sequence flanks. Positive linear correlation between the proportion of TRs and the protein length was observed universally, with Eukaryotes in general having more TRs, but when the difference in length is taken into account the difference is quite small. TRs were enriched with disorder-promoting amino acids and were inside intrinsically disordered regions. Many such TRs were homorepeats. Our results support that TRs mostly originate by duplication and are involved in essential functions such as transcription processes, structural organization, electron transport and iron-binding. In viruses, TRs are found in proteins essential for virulence

Climate Policy for Aviation - Analyses of measures at multiple levels

The aviation sector is affected by local, national, multinational (EU) and/or global\ua0climate policies targeting domestic, intra-European and intercontinental flights in\ua0different and partly overlapping ways. The aim of this thesis is to strengthen further\ua0knowledge on climate policy for aviation at multiple governance levels and by doing so\ua0contribute to a more informed policy process. This work is done by analysing climate\ua0policy, by both qualitative document analysis and energy-economic modelling,\ua0concerning aviation.Our results show that actions to reduce aviation emissions are taken at all geographical\ua0levels of governance. On the local level, a surprisingly large share, more than a quarter,\ua0of the cities studied are taking policy initiatives to reduce aviation. Moreover, we have\ua0recognized that cities tend to choose the system boundary (consumption or territorial\ua0perspective) that results in the lowest reported emissions. The major perceived conflict\ua0of interest at the local level is economic growth vs reduced air travel. With limited\ua0authority within the local setting, such as in the case of aviation emissions, governing\ua0by ‘agenda setting’ can be an important channel for cities to express their concerns and\ua0support change at higher levels.On the national level, some countries have policies such as passenger taxes, biofuel\ua0blending mandates (from 2020 in Norway) and carbon taxes on jet fuel. National\ua0policies in a country within the European Economic Area (EEA) will overlap fully with\ua0CORSIA and/or the EU ETS, which adds challenges regarding additionality of the\ua0emissions said to be reduced due by the different policies. Further, there is a potential\ua0for national policies to be spread and thereby achieve cumulative emissions reduction

ProfNet, a method to derive profile-profile alignment scoring functions that improves the alignments of distantly related proteins

BACKGROUND: Profile-profile methods have been used for some years now to detect and align homologous proteins. The best such methods use information from the background distribution of amino acids and substitution tables either when constructing the profiles or in the scoring. This makes the methods dependent on the quality and choice of substitution table as well as the construction of the profiles. Here, we introduce a novel method called ProfNet that is used to derive a profile-profile scoring function. The method optimizes the discrimination between scores of related and unrelated residues and it is fast and straightforward to use. This new method derives a scoring function that is mainly dependent on the actual alignment of residues from a training set, and it does not use any additional information about the background distribution. RESULTS: It is shown that ProfNet improves the discrimination of related and unrelated residues. Further it can be used to improve the alignment of distantly related proteins. CONCLUSION: The best performance is obtained using superfamily related proteins in the training of ProfNet, and a classifier that is related to the distance between the structurally aligned residues. The main difference between the new scoring function and a traditional profile-profile scoring function is that conserved residues on average score higher with the new function

Prediction of MHC class I binding peptides, using SVMHC

BACKGROUND: T-cells are key players in regulating a specific immune response. Activation of cytotoxic T-cells requires recognition of specific peptides bound to Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) class I molecules. MHC-peptide complexes are potential tools for diagnosis and treatment of pathogens and cancer, as well as for the development of peptide vaccines. Only one in 100 to 200 potential binders actually binds to a certain MHC molecule, therefore a good prediction method for MHC class I binding peptides can reduce the number of candidate binders that need to be synthesized and tested. RESULTS: Here, we present a novel approach, SVMHC, based on support vector machines to predict the binding of peptides to MHC class I molecules. This method seems to perform slightly better than two profile based methods, SYFPEITHI and HLA_BIND. The implementation of SVMHC is quite simple and does not involve any manual steps, therefore as more data become available it is trivial to provide prediction for more MHC types. SVMHC currently contains prediction for 26 MHC class I types from the MHCPEP database or alternatively 6 MHC class I types from the higher quality SYFPEITHI database. The prediction models for these MHC types are implemented in a public web service available at http://www.sbc.su.se/svmhc/. CONCLUSIONS: Prediction of MHC class I binding peptides using Support Vector Machines, shows high performance and is easy to apply to a large number of MHC class I types. As more peptide data are put into MHC databases, SVMHC can easily be updated to give prediction for additional MHC class I types. We suggest that the number of binding peptides needed for SVM training is at least 20 sequences