A previously healthy man from eastern Kansas, USA, sought medical care in late spring because of a history of tick bite, fever, and fatigue. The patient had thrombocytopenia and leukopenia and was ...given doxycycline for a presumed tickborne illness. His condition did not improve. Multiorgan failure developed, and he died 11 days after illness onset from cardiopulmonary arrest. Molecular and serologic testing results for known tickborne pathogens were negative. However, testing of a specimen for antibodies against Heartland virus by using plaque reduction neutralization indicated the presence of another virus. Next-generation sequencing and phylogenetic analysis identified the virus as a novel member of the genus Thogotovirus.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
•First study to contrast five decision-making tools with game theory.•Game theory is still undergoing consideration for use in the circular economy.•Cooperation is a feature too often missing in ...waste management decision-making.•Waste management can benefit from game theory capabilities to resolve conflict.•An adapted waste management bargaining example shows the potential of game theory.
Circular economy principles aim to contribute towards sustainability and resilience through several simultaneous agendas including economic growth, social development and environmental responsibility. Stakeholders from each perspective have their own interests and priorities, which often result in conflict. There are several and varied methodologies which address the decision-making process, however in engineering spheres these techniques are usually limited to optimising resources, time or costs. Decisions that are comprehensive in scope and integrated across all affected systems are required to transition towards a circular economy, effective cross-disciplinary thinking is imperative and cooperation amongst diverse areas is essential. Game theory is a useful technique when analysing the interactions of stakeholders with multiple objectives and perspectives. This paper aims to critically review methodological approaches used in waste management practice and provide a guidance on how game theory differs from, and is complementary to, the primary decision-making tools available where cooperation is a feature too often missing. This review seeks to justify the development of game theory to complement waste management decision-making methods in civil engineering, where resource consumption and waste management is often voluminous. An application of game theory to a waste management example illustrates that this methodological approach is of complementary value. The contribution of this study to circular economy and solid waste agendas is to emphasise the capability of game theory to help facilitate conflict resolution, competition, and stakeholder consensus when capturing multiple (sometimes conflicting) values in line with circular economy principles.
Flash drought is characterized by a period of rapid drought intensification with impacts on agriculture, water resources, ecosystems, and the human environment. Addressing these challenges requires a ...fundamental understanding of flash drought occurrence. This study identifies global hotspots for flash drought from 1980-2015 via anomalies in evaporative stress and the standardized evaporative stress ratio. Flash drought hotspots exist over Brazil, the Sahel, the Great Rift Valley, and India, with notable local hotspots over the central United States, southwestern Russia, and northeastern China. Six of the fifteen study regions experienced a statistically significant increase in flash drought during 1980-2015. In contrast, three study regions witnessed a significant decline in flash drought frequency. Finally, the results illustrate that multiple pathways of research are needed to further our understanding of the regional drivers of flash drought and the complex interactions between flash drought and socioeconomic impacts.
Marketing’s evolution toward a new dominant logic requires the focus of marketing to be on the intangible, dynamic, operant resources that are at the heart of competitive advantage and performance. ...First, building on resource-advantage theory’s notion of basic resources and higher-order resources, this article proposes a hierarchy of basic, composite, and interconnected operant resources. Second, reviewing research on business strategy and marketing strategy, several resources that correspond to the proposed hierarchy are identified and discussed. Third, the notion of developing masterful operant resources is introduced. Fourth, based on the proposed hierarchy and the notion of masterful operant resources, some exemplars of potential research avenues for marketing strategy are provided. Finally, the article concludes with the discussion of implications for marketing practitioners, researchers, and educators. In sum, this article extends and elaborates the concept of operant resources in the service-dominant logic of marketing.
The COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine have impacted the global economy, including the energy sector. The pandemic caused drastic fluctuations in energy demand, oil price shocks, ...disruptions in energy supply chains, and hampered energy investments, while the war left the world with energy price hikes and energy security challenges. The long-term impacts of these crises on low-carbon energy transitions and mitigation of climate change are still uncertain but are slowly emerging. This paper analyzes the impacts throughout the energy system, including upstream fuel supply, renewable energy investments, demand for energy services, and implications for energy equity, by reviewing recent studies and consulting experts in the field. We find that both crises initially appeared as opportunities for low-carbon energy transitions: the pandemic by showing the extent of lifestyle and behavioral change in a short period and the role of science-based policy advice, and the war by highlighting the need for greater energy diversification and reliance on local, renewable energy sources. However, the early evidence suggests that policymaking worldwide is focused on short-term, seemingly quicker solutions, such as supporting the incumbent energy industry in the post-pandemic era to save the economy and looking for new fossil fuel supply routes for enhancing energy security following the war. As such, the fossil fuel industry may emerge even stronger after these energy crises creating new lock-ins. This implies that the public sentiment against dependency on fossil fuels may end as a lost opportunity to translate into actions toward climate-friendly energy transitions, without ambitious plans for phasing out such fuels altogether. We propose policy recommendations to overcome these challenges toward achieving resilient and sustainable energy systems, mostly driven by energy services.
Background and purpose
Guidelines on monogenic cerebral small‐vessel disease (cSVD) diagnosis and management are lacking. Endorsed by the Stroke and Neurogenetics Panels of the European Academy of ...Neurology, a group of experts has provided recommendations on selected monogenic cSVDs, i.e. cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL), cerebral autosomal recessive arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CARASIL), autosomal dominant High Temperature Requirement A Serine Peptidase 1 (HTRA1), cathepsin‐A‐related arteriopathy with strokes and leukoencephalopathy (CARASAL), pontine autosomal dominant microangiopathy and leukoencephalopathy (PADMAL), Fabry disease, mitochondrial encephalopathy, lactic acidosis and stroke‐like episodes (MELAS) and type IV collagen (COL4)A1/2.
Methods
We followed the Delphi methodology to provide recommendations on several unanswered questions related to monogenic cSVD, including genetic testing, clinical and neuroradiological diagnosis, and management.
Results
We have proposed ‘red‐flag’ features suggestive of a monogenic disease. General principles applying to the management of all cSVDs and specific recommendations for the individual forms of monogenic cSVD were agreed by consensus.
Conclusions
The results provide a framework for clinicians involved in the diagnosis and management of monogenic cSVD. Further multicentre observational and treatment studies are still needed to increase the level of evidence supporting our recommendations.
Seasonal mismatches between electricity supply and demand is increasing due to expanded use of wind, solar and hydropower resources, which in turn raises the interest on low-cost seasonal energy ...storage options. Seasonal pumped hydropower storage (SPHS) can provide long-term energy storage at a relatively low-cost and co-benefits in the form of freshwater storage capacity. We present the first estimate of the global assessment of SPHS potential, using a novel plant-siting methodology based on high-resolution topographical and hydrological data. Here we show that SPHS costs vary from 0.007 to 0.2 US$ m
of water stored, 1.8 to 50 US$ MWh
of energy stored and 370 to 600 US$ kW
of installed power generation. This potential is unevenly distributed with mountainous regions demonstrating significantly more potential. The estimated world energy storage capacity below a cost of 50 US$ MWh
is 17.3 PWh, approximately 79% of the world electricity consumption in 2017.
Integration of energy crops into agricultural landscapes could promote sustainability if they are placed in ways that foster multiple ecosystem services and mitigate ecosystem disservices from ...existing crops. We conducted a modeling study to investigate how replacing annual energy crops with perennial energy crops along Wisconsin waterways could affect a variety of provisioning and regulating ecosystem services. We found that a switch from continuous corn production to perennial-grass production decreased annual income provisioning by 75%, although it increased annual energy provisioning by 33%, decreased annual phosphorous loading to surface water by 29%, increased below-ground carbon sequestration by 30%, decreased annual nitrous oxide emissions by 84%, increased an index of pollinator abundance by an average of 11%, and increased an index of biocontrol potential by an average of 6%. We expressed the tradeoffs between income provisioning and other ecosystem services as benefit-cost ratios. Benefit-cost ratios averaged 12.06 GJ of additional net energy, 0.84 kg of avoided phosphorus pollution, 18.97 Mg of sequestered carbon, and 1.99 kg of avoided nitrous oxide emissions for every $1,000 reduction in income. These ratios varied spatially, from 2- to 70-fold depending on the ecosystem service. Benefit-cost ratios for different ecosystem services were generally correlated within watersheds, suggesting the presence of hotspots--watersheds where increases in multiple ecosystem services would come at lower-than-average opportunity costs. When assessing the monetary value of ecosystem services relative to existing conservation programs and environmental markets, the overall value of enhanced services associated with adoption of perennial energy crops was far lower than the opportunity cost. However, when we monitized services using estimates for the social costs of pollution, the value of enhanced services far exceeded the opportunity cost. This disparity between recoverable costs and social value represents a fundamental challenge to expansion of perennial energy crops and sustainable agricultural landscapes.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Sustainable utility placement via Multi-Utility Tunnels Hunt, D.V.L.; Nash, D.; Rogers, C.D.F.
Tunnelling and underground space technology,
January 2014, 2014, 2014-01-00, 20140101, Letnik:
39
Journal Article, Conference Proceeding
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
• Sustainability costs for open-cut construction require exploration within a DTF. • The long-term advantages of MUTs outweigh the short-term disadvantages. • Economic competitiveness of MUTs is ...possible in undeveloped & urban areas. • Pipe no. and diameter are highly influential on tipping points in undeveloped areas.
Due to the adoption of short-term planning cycles and the requirement for lowest initial construction costs, the conventional method for utility installation and maintenance in the UK is via open-cut. When taking a long-term sustainability perspective there is a growing body of evidence which indicates that this method is socially disruptive, environmentally damaging and significantly more expensive, i.e. unsustainable. One long-term solution to this problem could be the adoption of Multi-Utility Tunnels (MUTs); a tunnel that co-locates more than one utility underground facilitating their subsequent repair and renewal while eliminating the need for continuous surface excavation. Unfortunately considerably higher short-term direct costs remain a significant barrier to adoption of MUTs. However, there is a lack of research to show where the economic tipping point between the two methods occurs and how it might be influenced by utility type, pipe number (i.e. density), pipe diameter, number of excavation and reinstatement (E&R) procedures avoided, location (i.e. undeveloped, suburban and urban areas), and the choice of MUT being adopted (i.e. flush-fitting, shallow and deep).
This paper aims to fulfil this research need by investigating the effect of these influences on the economic viability of various types of MUTs. The results indicate that MUTs can provide a more economically sustainable method of utility placement in all three local contexts, with the tipping points occurring where street works are likely more frequent and/or where utility density is high.
PDF
