Efficiency and Performance in the Gas Industry

Efficiency Performance Gas Industry

Regulatory reform in the UK gas market: the case of the storage auction

The UK gas industry has undergone major changes since it was privatised in 1986 as a fully integrated monopoly. The most significant of these has occurred not as a result of the privatisation legislation but by the intervention of the ordinary competition authorities in support of an active industry regulator. While price capping continues to be used as the primary instrument for welfare protection against the still substantial monopolistic powers of the incumbent, new competition (which has been positively encouraged) has had the greater impact on prices and choice. Recently, however, the regulator has encouraged the use of auctions for the sale of storage capacity. This paper considers the merits of auctions and makes a tentative evaluation of their effectiveness. Further use of auctions is recommended but reserve prices are considered inappropriate where monopoly power still remains.

Optimal sliding scale regulation: An application to regional electricity distribution in England and Wales

This paper examines optimal price (i.e. ‘sliding scale’) regulation of a monopoly when productivity and managerial effort are not observed. We show how to operationalise this model of incentive regulation and use actual data from electricity distribution in England and Wales to make welfare comparisons of sliding scale regulation with a stylised price cap regime and the First-Best (the full information case). Our method enables us to quantify technical uncertainty as faced by the electricity regulator in the 1990s and shows that there are significant welfare gains from a sliding scale relative to the stylised price cap regime.Sliding scale, regulation, electricity distribution

Virtually Standing Up or Standing By? Correlates of Enacting Social Control Online

Research has consistently established the robustness of the bystander effect, or the tendency of individuals to not intervene on behalf of others in emergency situations. This study examines the bystander effect in an online setting, focusing on factors that lead individuals to intervene, and therefore enact informal social control, on behalf of others who are being targeted by hate material. To address this question, we use an online survey (N=647) of youth and young adults recruited from a demographically balanced sample of Americans. Results demonstrate that the enactment of social control is positively affected by the existence of strong offline and online social bonds, collective efficacy, prior victimization, self-esteem, and an aversion for the hate material in question. Additionally, the amount of time that individuals spend online affects their likelihood of intervention. These findings provide important insights into the processes that underlie informal social control and begin to bridge the gap in knowledge between social control in the physical and virtual realms

Banishment in Public Housing: Testing an Evolution of Broken Windows

Banishment policies grant police the authority to formally ban individuals from entering public housing and arrest them for trespassing if they violate the ban. Despite its widespread use and the social consequences resulting from it, an empirical evaluation of the effectiveness of banishment has not been performed. Understanding banishment enforcement is an evolution of broken windows policing, this study explores how effective bans are at reducing crime in public housing. We analyze crime data, spanning the years 2001–2012, from six public housing communities and 13 surrounding communities in one southeastern U.S. city. Using Arellano-Bond dynamic panel models, we investigate whether or not issuing bans predicts reductions in property and violent crimes as well as increases in drug and trespass arrests in public housing. We find that this brand of broken windows policing does reduce crime, albeit relatively small reductions and only for property crime, while resulting in an increase in trespass arrests. Given our findings that these policies have only a modest impact on property crime, yet produce relatively larger increases in arrests for minor offenses in communities of color, and ultimately have no significant impact on violent crime, it will be important for police, communities, and policy makers to discuss whether the returns are worth the potential costs

Multiscale soil moisture estimates using static and roving cosmic-ray soil moisture sensors

Soil moisture plays a critical role in land surface processes and as such there has been a recent increase in the number and resolution of satellite soil moisture observations and the development of land surface process models with ever increasing resolution. Despite these developments, validation and calibration of these products has been limited because of a lack of observations on corresponding scales. A recently developed mobile soil moisture monitoring platform, known as the "rover", offers opportunities to overcome this scale issue. This paper describes methods, results and testing of soil moisture estimates produced using rover surveys on a range of scales that are commensurate with model and satellite retrievals. Our investigation involved static cosmic-ray neutron sensors and rover surveys across both broad (36 x 36 km at 9 km resolution) and intensive (10 x 10 km at 1 km resolution) scales in a cropping district in the Mallee region of Victoria, Australia. We describe approaches for converting rover survey neutron counts to soil moisture and discuss the factors controlling soil moisture variability. We use independent gravimetric and modelled soil moisture estimates collected across both space and time to validate rover soil moisture products. Measurements revealed that temporal patterns in soil moisture were preserved through time and regression modelling approaches were utilised to produce time series of property-scale soil moisture which may also have applications in calibration and validation studies or local farm management. Intensive-scale rover surveys produced reliable soil moisture estimates at 1 km resolution while broad-scale surveys produced soil moisture estimates at 9 km resolution. We conclude that the multiscale soil moisture products produced in this study are well suited to future analysis of satellite soil moisture retrievals and finer-scale soil moisture models

Soil-Transmitted Helminthiases: Implications of Climate Change and Human Behavior

Soil-transmitted helminthiases (STHs) collectively cause the highest global burden of parasitic disease after malaria and are most prevalent in the poorest communities, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Climate change is predicted to alter the physical environment through cumulative impacts of warming and extreme fluctuations in temperature and precipitation, with cascading effects on human health and wellbeing, food security and socioeconomic infrastructure. Understanding how the spectrum of climate change effects will influence STHs is therefore of critical importance to the control of the global burden of human parasitic disease. Realistic progress in the global control of STH in a changing climate requires a multidisciplinary approach that includes the sciences (e.g. thermal thresholds for parasite development and resilience) and social sciences (e.g. behavior and implementation of education and sanitation programs)

Freeze-thaw effect on selected fecal indicator bacteria : Escherichia coli and Enterococcus faecalis / by Nicole A. Hawdon.

The survival of two selected fecal indicator organisms, two strains of Escherichia coli, a Gram-negative bacterium, and two strains of Enterococcus faecalis, a Gram-positive bacterium, after freezing and thawing successively for five cycles was determined using a drop plating method. It was found that all bacterial strains, when an initial concentration of 1.0 x E +08 was used, showed significant decreases in their ability to be cultured (p 0.05). The differences in cell inactivation between the two strains of each species of bacteria tested at all temperatures was not significantly different after five freeze-thaw cycles; while the difference between species was shown to be significant, depending on the temperature and condition tested (p < 0.05). When comparing small sample volume sizes (100l) to larger sample volume sizes (100ml) the observed differences were that Escherichia coli strains showed a decrease in cell culturability at both -7C and -15C when cycled in the larger volume; whereas, Enterococcus faecalis strains showed a decrease in cell culturability at -7C and an increase in cell culturability at -15C when cycled at the larger volume. Additional studies investigating culturability, cell wall integrity, and membrane damage of the bacterial strains were conducted using 100ml samples, cycled at -7, -15, and -30°C, and evaluated by three microbiological methods: drop plating, epi-fluorescent microscopy, and flow cytometry, respectively. In all instances, the plate counting method indicated that there was a decrease in cells that were culturable. Results from flow cytometry indicated a smaller decrease in cell culturability, followed, lastly, by results using the epi-fluorescent microscope. Thus, these studies would suggest that the most damage that occurs to frozen and thawed cells, when cycled five times at -7,-15 or -30°C, would be due to damages occurring at the cellular level, rather than damages occurring on the cell envelope, since less cells were able to uptake nutrients from the culture plates