Measuring marginal values of noise disturbance from air traffic: Does the time of the day matter?

This paper analyzes the marginal willingness to pay for changes in noise levels related to changes in the volume of flight movements at a city airport in Stockholm, Sweden,by using a choice experiment. When estimating marginal willingness to pay for different times of the day and days of the week, we find that these vary with the temporal dimensions: mornings and evenings have higher marginal values. Interestingly, a substantial proportion of the respondents prefer no changes in the current noise level. The paper concludes with a policy discussion related to incentivebased pricing.Choice experiment; discrete choice; noise; airport

The Effect of Power Outages and Cheap Talk on Willingness to Pay to Reduce Outages

Using an open-ended contingent valuation survey, we analyze how (i) experience of a power outage due to one of the worst storms ever to hit Sweden and (ii) a cheap talk script affect respondents' WTP to avoid power outages. Experience significantly increases and a cheap talk script decreases the proportion of respondents with zero WTP. There is no significant effect in either case on stated WTP conditional on a positive WTP. The paper concludes with a discussion on the use of valuation studies shortly after the occurrence of an undesirable event.contingent valuation, cheap talk, experience, power outages

Household Decision Making and the Influence of Spouses' Income, Education, and Communist Party Membership: A Field Experiment in Rural China

We study household decision making in a high-stakes experiment with a random sample of households in rural China. Spouses have to choose between risky lotteries, first separately and then jointly. We find that spouses' individual risk preferences are more similar the richer the household and the higher the wife's relative income contribution. A couple's joint decision is typically determined by the husband, but women who contribute relatively more to the household income, women in high-income households, women with more education than their husbands, and women with communist party membership have a stronger influence on the joint decision.household decision making, risk, field experiment, China

Household Decision Making in Rural China: Using Experiments to Estimate the Influences of Spouses

Many economic decisions are made jointly within households. This raises the question about spouses' relative influence on joint decisions and the determinants of relative influence. Using a controlled experiment (on inter-temporal choice), we let each spouse first make individual decisions and then make joint decisions with the other spouse. We use a random parameter probit model to measure the relative influence of spouses on joint decisions. In general, husbands have a stronger influence than wives. However, in richer households and when the wife is older than the husband, we find a significantly stronger influence of the wife on joint decisions.household decision making, spouses, relative influence, random parameter model, field experiment, time preferences

modeling building energy demand profiles and district heating networks for low carbon urban areas

Abstract Urban energy consumptions growth has become an urgent topic that requires solutions for significantly reduce carbon emission in the next decades. This paper aims in exploring the integration of building performance improvement and low carbon district heat technological choices by considering the upgrade of conversion technologies, efficiency and the exploitation of local resources. The paper is based on a GIS-based model that spatially characterize the space heating demand of urban buildings. Starting from clustering buildings with similar thermo-physical characteristics, the total energy use of buildings can be depicted and compared with the energy balance data of the city in order to scale the bottom-up results for matching the total load. Reasonable energy efficiency measures are further proposed by considering three different scenarios up to 2050. Long-term building scenarios are applied to a district heating simulation model for investigating how the reduction of building heat demand will impact the district heating production and operations. In particular, the combination of the building model and the district heating model aims at exploring the effects of district network expansion or new low carbon investments from an economic and environmental perspective. The model has been successfully applied to the city of Turin, Italy and the city of Stockholm, Sweden. The flexibility of the approach may allow it to be easily adjusted to different urban areas for providing indications on cost-effective strategies for efficient, low-carbon heat solutions in integrated energy systems. Results highlight that finding synergies between the demand and supply sector will lead to environmental and economic benefits, in particular for district-heated cities

S Gene (Corneodesmosin) Diversity and its Relationship to Psoriasis; High Content of cSNP in the HLA-Linked S Gene

Psoriasis is a heterogeneous disease in which several reports suggest the presence of a susceptibility gene in or in the proximity of the human leukocyte antigen complex in chromosome 6p. There is an association between HLA-Cw6 and young onset of the disease. The S gene (corneodesmosin), located 160 kb telomeric of HLA-C, is a strong candidate for psoriasis due to its reportedly exclusive expression in differentiating keratinocytes. We have studied this gene in a large Swedish psoriasis population and we report a strikingly high degree of polymorphism in the coding parts of the gene, 1 every 100 base pairs. We used a stratified approach to compare the polymorphic variants in patients and controls. A single nucleotide polymorphism in the coding region leading to an amino acid exchange (Ser→Phe) that differed significantly between patients and controls was identified (position 619). Owing to a high allele frequency in a larger control group, however, and an insignificant influence of the variant on the age at onset distribution curve based on a large psoriasis population, we could not confirm that this coding single nucleotide polymorphism was involved in disease etiology. We also examined the single nucleotide polymorphism in position 1243, recently proposed to have an influence on the pathogenesis of the disease. This polymorphism showed less association to the disease as compared with the single nucleotide polymorphism at positions 619 and 722. Such a high degree of variation present also in an HLA gene which is not involved in immune response indicates the difficulty involved in assessing the role of a specific allele in the pathogenesis of a complex disease in this region. A strong association effect due to linkage disequilibrium in an extended region in the HLA complex is also a complicating factor

Modeling grooved rolls with moving 2D porous media

Rolls are widely used in paper machines to heat, press and support paper webs and fabrics in order to facilitate rapid drying and transport of the paper web through the machine. In modern high speed paper machines, however, the interaction of boundary layer flows on the rolls, fabrics and the paper web often results in an undesirable pressure development at nip regions, ultimately causing an uncontrolled motion of the paper web. This runnability issue can be mitigated by using a so-called suction roll construction, which forces the required pressure profile over the paper web. Its operational costs are high, however. One result of the study is that the topology and the material of the roll surfaces, in particular the introduction of grooves on the smooth roll surfaces, can have a tremendous impact on the overall runnability potential of the paper web.The complexity of solving the governing Navier-Stokes equations and the sheer variability of paper machine constructions makes a comprehensive analytical study of the roll-grooving effect difficult. To the authors' knowledge, analytical solutions for nip pressures only exist for two-dimensional geometries and for smooth roll's. Moreover, numerical 3D simulations of grooved rolls in large paper machine sections are not feasible with today's computational or modeling resources.In this article, we propose a computational 2D model for a grooved roll. The model reproduces three-dimensional wall friction effects and minor losses in 2D by treating a grooved roll surface as a moving porous medium. The nip pressures are calculated and compared for:a grooved roll interacting with a rigid impermeable horizontal wall at a tangent point (symmetric 3D)a grooved roll interacting with a rigid impermeable horizontal wall at a tangent point where the groove geometry is described in 2D with moving porous media.The roll models describe the roll as infinitely wide, thus capturing friction effects between the roll and the surrounding air. The simulations are conducted with the RANS-method of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) on a commercial solver.The results show that the proposed computational 2D model for a grooved roll yields similar pressure profiles at nip regions as the more computationally expensive full-scale 3D models. The significance of this observation is that the 2D model now facilitates the study of grooved rolls in large sections of paper machines

2D FSI model for paper webs and fabrics moving close to each other in complex geometries

In the present article we develop a two-dimensional computational fluid-structure interaction (FSI) model for small transverse deflections of a moving paper web, supported on one side by a fabric, both moving in an arbitrary geometry containing boundaries and nips (e.g. as in the drying section of a paper machine). In our FSI model, the transverse deflections of the paper web and those of the fabric are individually assumed to satisfy an equation of motion for axially moving membranes

Transient 2D paper web drying model based on CFD

In the present article, a model combining the benefits of the small scale and large scale approaches towards modeling paper drying in a paper machine dryer section environment is described. The model is transient and two-dimensional, taking into account the MD and the thickness directions but neglecting the phenomena in the CD direction.The combined model consists of two parts:1. A large scale CFD model of the surroundings of the paper web solving the RANS equations2. A specific-purpose small scale model for heat and moisture transport phenomena inside the paper web.The model is aimed at predicting the drying process in a paper production environment. The present model can be combined with a separate paper web deflection model in order to simulate the drying process and the paper web runnability simultaneously