The importance of health co-benefits in macroeconomic assessments of UK Greenhouse Gas emission reduction strategies

We employ a single-country dynamically-recursive Computable General Equilibrium model to make health-focussed macroeconomic assessments of three contingent UK Greenhouse Gas (GHG) mitigation strategies, designed to achieve 2030 emission targets as suggested by the UK Committee on Climate Change. In contrast to previous assessment studies, our main focus is on health co-benefits additional to those from reduced local air pollution. We employ a conservative cost-effectiveness methodology with a zero net cost threshold. Our urban transport strategy (with cleaner vehicles and increased active travel) brings important health co-benefits and is likely to be strongly cost-effective; our food and agriculture strategy (based on abatement technologies and reduction in livestock production) brings worthwhile health co-benefits, but is unlikely to eliminate net costs unless new technological measures are included; our household energy efficiency strategy is likely to breakeven only over the long term after the investment programme has ceased (beyond our 20 year time horizon). We conclude that UK policy makers will, most likely, have to adopt elements which involve initial net societal costs in order to achieve future emission targets and longer-term benefits from GHG reduction. Cost-effectiveness of GHG strategies is likely to require technological mitigation interventions and/or demand-constraining interventions with important health co-benefits and other efficiency-enhancing policies that promote internalization of externalities. Health co-benefits can play a crucial role in bringing down net costs, but our results also suggest the need for adopting holistic assessment methodologies which give proper consideration to welfare-improving health co-benefits with potentially negative economic repercussions (such as increased longevity).     

Fishing dynamics associated with periodically harvested marine closures

Periodically-harvested fisheries closures are emerging as a socially acceptable and locally implementable way to balance concerns about conserving ecosystem function and sustaining livelihoods. Across the Indo-Pacific periodically-harvested closures are commonly employed, yet their contribution towards more sustainable fisheries remains largely untested in the social and ecological context of tropical small-scale fisheries. To address this, we use an interdisciplinary approach to examine harvesting dynamics that would affect sustainability, namely, fishing effort, yield, gear and method use, periodicity of harvesting, controls placed on harvesting and resource owners’ decisions to open and close four fishing grounds in Solomon Islands. We compare these fishing patterns with those on surrounding, continuously open fishing grounds. Our study shows that total effort and total catch from periodically-harvested reef closures are low to moderate compared to reefs open to continuous fishing. When periodically-harvested closures were opened, effort in the closures was relatively intense, however, in most cases yield did not exceed annual benchmarks of sustainability described by previous studies. In some cases, harvesting during openings was restricted to a single taxon and single fishing gear and method, while in others there was unrestricted multi-species and multi-method harvesting. The duration and frequency of openings were highly variable, with open periods ranging from a single night to one month in duration, and occurring between one and 15 times per year. Fishing during openings was permitted for entire fishing communities in some cases, and only for specific rights-holding families in others. Decisions to open periodically-harvested closures tended to be based on immediate social or economic needs, and the openings provided a small boost to fish catch landed in communities. While periodically-harvested closures may alleviate fishing pressure in a small area of fishing grounds by reducing the opportunity to fish, openings of long duration or high frequency, combined with heavy or destructive exploitation, may lead to unsustainable harvesting within the area.     

Low velocity impacts into dust: results from the COLLIDE-2 microgravity experiment

We present the results of the second flight of the Collisions Into Dust Experiment (COLLIDE-2), a space shuttle payload that performs six impact experiments into simulated planetary regolith at speeds between 1 and 100 cm/s. COLLIDE-2 flew on the STS-108 mission in December 2001 following an initial flight in April 1998. The experiment was modified since the first flight to provide higher quality data, and the impact parameters were varied. Spherical quartz projectiles of 1-cm radius were launched into quartz sand and JSC-1 lunar regolith simulant targets 2-cm deep. At impact speeds below ∼20 cm/s the projectile embedded itself in the target material and did not rebound. Some ejecta were produced at ∼10 cm/s. At speeds >25 cm/s the projectile rebounded and significant ejecta was produced. We present coefficients of restitution, ejecta velocities, and limits on ejecta masses. Ejecta velocities are typically less than 10% of the impact velocity, and the fraction of impact kinetic energy partitioned into ejecta kinetic energy is also less than 10%. Taken together with a proposed aerodynamic planetesimal growth mechanism, these results support planetesimal growth at impact speeds above the nominal observed threshold of about 20 cm/s.     

Evaluation of the snow‐covered area data product from MODIS

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), flown on board the Terra Earth Observing System (EOS) platform launched in December 1999, produces a snow‐covered area (SCA) product. This product is expected to be of better quality than SCA products based on operational satellites (notably GOES and AVHRR), due both to improved spectral resolution and higher spatial resolution of the MODIS instrument. The gridded MODIS SCA product was compared with the SCA product produced and distributed by the National Weather Service National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center (NOHRSC) for 46 selected days over the Columbia River basin and 32 days over the Missouri River basin during winter and spring of 2000–01. Snow presence or absence was inferred from ground observations of snow depth at 1330 stations in the Missouri River basin and 762 stations in the Columbia River basin, and was compared with the presence/absence classification for the corresponding pixels in the MODIS and NOHRSC SCA products. On average, the MODIS SCA images classified fewer pixels as cloud than NOHRSC, the effect of which was that 15% more of the Columbia basin area could be classified as to presence–absence of snow, while overall there was a statistically insignificant difference over the Missouri basin. Of the pixels classified as cloud free, MODIS misclassified 4% and 5% fewer overall (for the Columbia and Missouri basins respectively) than did the NOHRSC product. When segregated by vegetation cover, forested areas had the greatest differences in fraction of cloud cover reported by the two SCA products, with MODIS classifying 13% and 17% less of the images as cloud for the Missouri and Columbia basins respectively. These differences are particularly important in the Columbia River basin, 39% of which is forested. The ability of MODIS to classify significantly greater amounts of snow in the presence of cloud in more topographically complex, forested, and snow‐dominated areas of these two basins provides valuable information for hydrologic prediction. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is the pre-WMAP CMB data self-consistent?

Although individual observational groups vigorously test their datasets for systematic errors, the pre-WMAP CMB observational dataset has not yet been collectively tested. Under the assumption that the concordance model is the correct model, we have explored residuals of the observational data with respect to this model to see if any patterns emerge that can be identified with systematic errors. We found no significant trends associated with frequency, frequency channels, calibration source, pointing uncertainty, instrument type, platform and altitude. We did find some evidence at the 1 to 2σ level for trends associated with angular scale (ℓ range) and absolute galactic latitude. The slope of the trend in galactic latitude is consistent with low level galactic contamination. The residuals with respect to ℓ may indicate that the concordance model used here needs slight modification. See Griffiths and Lineweaver (astro-ph/0301490) for more detail.     

Core Density Profile Survival in Dissipationless Mergers

We use N-body experiments to study the survival of power-law density cusps in mergers of spherical galaxy models. Steep cusps (e.g. ρ∝r ^-2) are preserved during mergers of equal-mass models; this may be viewed as a general consequence of the incomplete violent relaxation observed in such mergers. Progenitor profile has a strong effect on remnant shape; steep cusps produce oblate remnants. If bright ellipticals form by hierarchical mergers of faint ones, the lack of steep cusps in these galaxies is somewhat surprising. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Elasto-plastic analyses of deep foundations in cohesive soil

The bearing capacity of deep foundations has been analysed using finite elements in conjunction with elasto-viscoplasticity. The influence of elastic parameters, mesh size and strain conditions on computed collapse loads was observed. Axisymmetric problems in particular were of interst, because it was found that good numerical solutions could be obtained through to collapse provided reduced integration was used.