Effort sharing in ambitious,global climate change mitigation scenarios

The post-2012 climate policy framework needs a global commitment to deep greenhouse gas emission cuts. This paper analyzes reaching ambitious emission targets up to 2050, either ‐10%$‐10\%$ or ‐50%$‐50\%$ from 1990 levels, and how the economic burden from mitigation efforts could be equitably shared between countries. The scenarios indicate a large low-cost mitigation potential in electricity and industry, while reaching low emission levels in international transportation and agricultural emissions might prove difficult. The two effort sharing approaches, Triptych and Multistage, were compared in terms of equitability and coherence. Both approaches produced an equitable cost distribution between countries, with least developed countries having negative or low costs and more developed countries having higher costs. There is, however, no definitive solution on how the costs should be balanced equitably between countries. Triptych seems to be yet more coherent than other approaches, as it can better accommodate national circumstances. Last, challenges and possible hindrances to effective mitigation and equitable effort sharing are presented. The findings underline the significance of assumptions behind effort sharing on mitigation potentials and current emissions, the challenge of sharing the effort with uncertain future allowance prices and how inefficient markets might undermine the efficiency of a cap-and-trade system.     

Virtual Memory Behavior of Some Sorting Algorithms

Experimnental results are given about the performance of six sorting algorithms in a virtual memory based on the working set principle. With one exception, the algorithms are general internal sorting algorithms and not especially tuned for virtual memory. Algorithms are compared in terms of their time requirements, space requirements, and space-time integrals. The relative performances of the algorithms vary from one measure to the other. Especially in terms of a space-time integral, quicksort turns out to be the best algorithm, also in a working set virtual memory environment.     

Carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of poly(ethy1ene glycol)

Catalytic thermometric titration is used for the determination of the phenol and resorcinol components of resins formed by the sodium hydroxide- and ammonia-catalysed condensations of phenol, resorcinol and mixtures of phenol and resorcinol, with formaldehyde.     

Mental causal models of incidents communicated in licensee event reports in a process industry

The present investigation describes some mental causal models used in incident reports. Some of the models (e.g., single-cause models) are simpler than others (e.g., causal-tree models). The models are also associated with different ways of explaining an incident or accident and with different recommendations for increasing the safety of a system. In study 1, incident reports from Swedish nuclear power plants known to use human or organisational factors were analysed. The analysis showed that the most frequent model was a simple single-cause model. Two-step models and more complex models were less frequent. Study 2 analysed all licensee event reports (including those reports not related to human organisational factors) from four reactors assessed by regulators during the year. The results showed that single-cause and two-step accident models were more frequent than more complex models. The analyses also revealed that different detection modes were related to different models.     

Using natural class hierarchies in multi-class visual classification

We address the problem of computationally efficient visual classification of objects, and propose a system for solving multi-class problems in domains that have inherent hierarchic structure, such as subclass-superclass-relationships based on visual similarity. Class relationships are used at runtime to select the computationally simplest feature space that allows classification at high level of confidence for each example view. Classification accuracies can then be further improved using rank-order voting over multiple views. Our experimental results show that our system compares favorably to previously published results using a demanding benchmark. The results support the hypothesis that class hierarchies based on visual similarities are feasible and useful in controlling the accuracy vs. speed tradeoffs in classification.     

Pipeline materials modify the effectiveness of disinfectants in drinking water distribution systems

We studied how pipe material can modify the effectiveness of UV- and chlorine disinfection in drinking water and biofilms. This study was done with two pipe materials: copper and composite plastic (polyethylene, PE) in a pilot scale water distribution network. UV-disinfection decreased viable bacterial numbers in the pilot waterworks and outlet water of pipes on average by 79%, but in biofilms its disinfecting effect was minor. Chlorine decreased effectively the microbial numbers in water and biofilms of PE pipes. In outlet water from copper pipes, the effect of chlorination was weaker; microbial numbers increased back to the level before chlorination within a few days. In the biofilms present in the copper pipes, chlorine decreased microbial numbers only in front of the pipeline. One reason for weaker efficiency of chlorine in copper pipes was that its concentration declined more rapidly in the copper pipes than in the PE pipes. These results means that copper pipes may require a higher chlorine dosage than plastic pipes to achieve effective disinfection of the pipes.     

Primary Fermentation with Immobilized Yeast: Some Effects of Carrier Materials on the Flavour of the Beer

Three carrier materials (porous glass beads, DEAE‐cellulose, diatomaceous earth) for immobilized primary fermentation of beer were tested on a 1.6 litre scale. The influence of the carrier materials on flavour compounds in the green beer was analysed. The nature of the carrier affected the concentrations of some flavour compounds in a yeast strain specific manner. The findings suggest that the most appropriate material for immobilized primary fermentation of beer depends on the yeast strain used and the beer characteristics desired.     

UbiComp 2006 Workshops, Part 2

This article presents summaries of five of the UbiComp 2006 Workshops: System Support for Ubiquitous Computing, Pervasive Image Capture and Sharing, Usable Ubiquitous Computing in Next-Generation Conference Rooms, Nurturing Technologies in the Domestic Environment, and UbiHealth. The other summaries appeared in the January--March 2007 issue.     

Tankyrase Inhibition Attenuates Cardiac Dilatation and Dysfunction in Ischemic Heart Failure

Hyperactive poly(ADP-ribose) polymerases (PARP) promote ischemic heart failure (IHF) after myocardial infarction (MI). However, the role of tankyrases (TNKSs), members of the PARP family, in pathogenesis of IHF remains unknown. We investigated the expression and activation of TNKSs in myocardium of IHF patients and MI rats. We explored the cardioprotective effect of TNKS inhibition in an isoproterenol-induced zebrafish HF model. In IHF patients, we observed elevated TNKS2 and DICER and concomitant upregulation of miR-34a-5p and miR-21-5p in non-infarcted myocardium. In a rat MI model, we found augmented TNKS2 and DICER in the border and infarct areas at the early stage of post-MI. We also observed consistently increased TNKS1 in the border and infarct areas and destabilized AXIN in the infarct area from 4 weeks onward, which in turn triggered Wnt/β-catenin signaling. In an isoproterenol-induced HF zebrafish model, inhibition of TNKS activity with XAV939, a TNKSs-specific inhibitor, protected against ventricular dilatation and cardiac dysfunction and abrogated overactivation of Wnt/β-catenin signaling and dysregulation of miR-34a-5p induced by isoproterenol. Our study unravels a potential role of TNKSs in the pathogenesis of IHF by regulating Wnt/β-catenin signaling and possibly modulating miRNAs and highlights the pharmacotherapeutic potential of TNKS inhibition for prevention of IHF.     

The SPICA-SAFARI TES Bolometer Readout: Developments Towards a Flight System

SAFARI is an imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer for 35–200 μm under development for flight on the Japanese IR-satellite SPICA (2018). The 3.25?m diameter actively cooled telescope (<6K) will provide a sky background limited signal, which implies that detectors will need to have an NEP of $3.5 \cdot10^{-19}\ \mbox{W/}\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$ in order not to be limiting the sensitivity. The instrument will utilize three TES-based detector arrays, covering the 2×2 arcmin field-of-view in three octaves of wave length. This contribution will present an overview of the detector sub-system, i.e.: the detector arrays and radiation coupling, the focal plane assembly, the amplification chain and the frequency-domain- multiplexed electronics. The focus will be on the implications on the system design of the readout under the stringent power dissipation, heat load, and weight limitations.