Diagnostic systems in DEMO: engineering design issues

The diagnostic systems of DEMO that are mounted on or near the torus, whether intended for the monitoring and control functions of the engineering aspects or the physics behaviour of the machine, will have to be designed to suit the hostile nuclear environment. This will be necessary not just for their survival and correct functioning but also to satisfy the pertinent regulatory bodies, especially where any of them relate to machine protection or the prevention or mitigation of accidents foreseen in the safety case. This paper aims to indicate the more important of the reactor design considerations that are likely to apply to diagnostics for DEMO, drawn from experience on JET, the provisions in hand for ITER and modelling results for the wall erosion and neutron damage effects in DEMO.Comment: 8 page

The Complexity Dilemma in Policy Market Design

Regulators are increasingly pursuing their policy objectives by creating markets. To create a policy market, regulators require firms to procure a product that is socially useful but that confers little direct private benefit to the acquiring party. Examples of policy markets include pollutant emissions trading programs, renewable energy credit markets, and electricity capacity markets. Existing scholarship has tended to analyze policy markets simply as market-based regulation. Although not inaccurate, such inquiries are necessarily incomplete because they do not focus on the distinctive traits of policy markets. Policy markets are neither typical regulations nor typical markets. Concentrating on policy markets as a distinctive type of market brings to light common characteristics of such markets, which in turn generates insights into how they can be used more effectively to implement policy. In particular, this Article focuses on a recurring fundamental challenge in policy market design: managing complexity. Typical markets manage complexity through market forces. As a regulatory creation, however, policy markets require regulators to manage their complexity. This poses what we call the complexity dilemma, which requires regulators to balance strong pressures both toward and away from complexity. The central argument of this Article is that although policy markets are an important part of a regulator’s toolkit, they are also subject to complexity that limits their usefulness. Understanding the complexity dilemma and its crucial role in policy market design forms an essential step toward progress in improving the design and function of these markets

Impact of antiretroviral therapy on adult HIV prevalence in a low-income rural setting in Uganda: a longitudinal population-based study.

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the contribution to HIV prevalence of lives saved due to the introduction of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in rural Uganda in 2004. DESIGN: Open population-based cohort study. METHODS: An open general population cohort with annual demographic and HIV serostatus data is used to estimate annual HIV prevalence, HIV incidence, and mortality from 2000 to 2010. We calculated standardized mortality rates among HIV-positive adults and the expected number of deaths in the cohort if ART had not been available during 2004-2010, based on the average mortality rate in the 4 years (2000-2003) before ART introduction. RESULTS: During 2004-2010, the estimated prevalence increased by 29% from 6.9% to 8.9%. HIV incidence was 5.6 cases per 1000 person-years in 2004, falling to 3.9 cases per 1000 person-years in 2006, and slightly rising to 5.1 in 2010. There was an increase of 182 in the number of HIV-positive participants during that period, cumulatively 228 lives were saved due to ART. Expected lives saved due to ART accounted for an increasing proportion of the estimated HIV prevalence from 4.0% in 2004 to 29.4% in 2010. CONCLUSIONS: Expected lives saved due to ART largely accounted for the increased estimated HIV prevalence from 2004 to 2010. Because HIV prevalence survey results are important for planning, programming, and policy, their interpretation requires consideration of the increasing impact of ART in decreasing mortality

The Decline in Consumer Use of Food Nutrition Labels, 1995-2006

This report examines changes in consumers’ use of nutrition labels on food packages between 1995-96 and 2005-06. The analysis finds that, although a majority of consumers report using nutrition labels when buying food, use has declined for most label components, including the Nutrition Facts panel and information about calories, fats, cholesterol, and sodium. By contrast, use of fiber information has increased. The decline in label use is particularly marked for the cohort of adults less than 30 years old.Nutrition Facts panel, Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, nutrition label use, Diet and Health Knowledge Survey, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, Agricultural and Food Policy, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Marketing,

TRADEOFF BETWEEN ECONOMIES OF SIZE IN TREATMENT AND DISECONOMIES OF DISTRIBUTION FOR RURAL WATER SYSTEMS

This paper outlines a method to determine the tradeoff between economies of size in water treatment and diseconomies of distribution. Cost equations are estimated for several treatment technologies and distribution extensions. Empirical results are used to identify optimal system size where average total costs are minimized. Regardless of treatment, most costs are due to distribution. As water systems expand service territories, only in the most densely populated areas would remaining economies of size in treatment outweigh the diseconomies in distribution.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,