•Critically evaluates the role of STI for achieving the SDGs within the context of current economic theory.•Questions whether current available technology is suitable for assisting transformations to ...the SDGs.•Proposes an argument for re-orientating STI more specifically towards the SDGs.•We address the implications of our analysis for the UN global Technology Facilitation Mechanism (TFM).
The transition path to inclusive and environmentally sustainable economic development must be Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) intensive. As such, we outline an economic framework that demonstrates the need to transform the nature of STI and reorient it towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) together with the various public policy options that can reorient investment patterns in STIs towards achieving the SDGs. In addition, the Means of Implementation (MoIs) of the UN 2030 agenda will need to be blended to create new modalities of finance, governance and public policy at all levels if STI is to be reoriented and transformative changes in economic, social, environmental and political systems are to be achieved for the SDGs. After laying out a framework, the paper also addresses the implications of our analysis for the UN global Technology Facilitation Mechanism (TFM) which aims to promote STI access, transfer and capacities across nations to achieve the SDGs.
Thermal regimes in rivers and streams are fundamentally important to aquatic ecosystems and are expected to change in response to climate forcing as the Earth’s temperature warms. Description and ...attribution of stream temperature changes are key to understanding how these ecosystems may be affected by climate change, but difficult given the rarity of long-term monitoring data. We assembled 18 temperature time-series from sites on regulated and unregulated streams in the northwest U.S. to describe historical trends from 1980–2009 and assess thermal consistency between these stream categories. Statistically significant temperature trends were detected across seven sites on unregulated streams during all seasons of the year, with a cooling trend apparent during the spring and warming trends during the summer, fall, and winter. The amount of warming more than compensated for spring cooling to cause a net temperature increase, and rates of warming were highest during the summer (raw trend = 0.17°C/decade; reconstructed trend = 0.22°C/decade). Air temperature was the dominant factor explaining long-term stream temperature trends (82–94% of trends) and inter-annual variability (48–86% of variability), except during the summer when discharge accounted for approximately half (52%) of the inter-annual variation in stream temperatures. Seasonal temperature trends at eleven sites on regulated streams were qualitatively similar to those at unregulated sites if two sites managed to reduce summer and fall temperatures were excluded from the analysis. However, these trends were never statistically significant due to greater variation among sites that resulted from local water management policies and effects of upstream reservoirs. Despite serious deficiencies in the stream temperature monitoring record, our results suggest many streams in the northwest U.S. are exhibiting a regionally coherent response to climate forcing. More extensive monitoring efforts are needed as are techniques for short-term sensitivity analysis and reconstructing historical temperature trends so that spatial and temporal patterns of warming can be better understood. Continuation of warming trends this century will increasingly stress important regional salmon and trout resources and hamper efforts to recover these species, so comprehensive vulnerability assessments are needed to provide strategic frameworks for prioritizing conservation efforts.
Many ecosystems appear subject to regime shifts--abrupt changes from one state to another after crossing a threshold or tipping point. Thresholds and their associated stability landscapes are ...determined within a coupled socioeconomic-ecological system (SES) where human choices, including those of managers, are feedback responses. Prior work has made one of two assumptions about managers: that they face no institutional constraints, in which case the SES may be managed to be fairly robust to shocks and tipping points are of little importance, or that managers are rigidly constrained with no flexibility to adapt, in which case the inferred thresholds may poorly reflect actual managerial flexibility. We model a multidimensional SES to investigate how alternative institutions affect SES stability landscapes and alter tipping points. With institutionally dependent human feedbacks, the stability landscape depends on institutional arrangements. Strong institutions that account for feedback responses create the possibility for desirable states of the world and can cause undesirable states to cease to exist. Intermediate institutions interact with ecological relationships to determine the existence and nature of tipping points. Finally, weak institutions can eliminate tipping points so that only undesirable states of the world remain.
We present a detailed analysis of week-long simultaneous observations of the blazar Mrk 421 at 2-60 keV X-rays (RXTE) and TeV -rays (Whipple and HEGRA) in 2001. Accompanying optical monitoring was ...performed with the Mt. Hopkins 48 inch telescope. The unprecedented quality of this data set enables us to establish the existence of the correlation between the TeV and X-ray luminosities, and also to start unveiling some of its characteristics, in particular its energy dependence and time variability. The source shows strong variations in both X-ray and -ray bands, which are highly correlated. No evidence of an X-ray/-ray interband lag tau is found on the full week data set, with tau image 3 ks. A detailed analysis of the March 19 flare, however, reveals that data are not consistent with the peak of the outburst in the 2-4 keV X-ray and TeV band being simultaneous. We estimate a image ks TeV lag. The amplitudes of the X-ray and -ray variations are also highly correlated, and the TeV luminosity increases more than linearly with respect to the X-ray one. The high degree of correlation lends further support to the standard model in which a unique electron population produces the X-rays by synchrotron radiation and the -ray component by inverse Compton scattering. However, the finding that for the individual best observed flares the -ray flux scales approximately quadratically with respect to the X-ray flux poses a serious challenge to emission models for TeV blazars, as it requires rather special conditions and/or fine tuning of the temporal evolution of the physical parameters of the emission region. We briefly discuss the astrophysical consequences of these new findings in the context of the competing models for the jet emission in blazars.
Abstract
Flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) are the most luminous blazars at GeV energies but only rarely emit detectable fluxes of TeV gamma rays, typically during bright GeV flares. We explore the ...gamma-ray variability and spectral characteristics of three FSRQs that have been observed at GeV and TeV energies by Fermi-LAT and VERITAS, making use of almost 100 hr of VERITAS observations spread over 10 yr: 3C 279, PKS 1222+216, and Ton 599. We explain the GeV flux distributions of the sources in terms of a model derived from a stochastic differential equation describing fluctuations in the magnetic field in the accretion disk and estimate the timescales of magnetic flux accumulation and stochastic instabilities in their accretion disks. We identify distinct flares using a procedure based on Bayesian blocks and analyze their daily and subdaily variability and gamma-ray energy spectra. Using observations from VERITAS, as well as Fermi, Swift, and the Steward Observatory, we model the broadband spectral energy distributions of PKS 1222+216 and Ton 599 during very high energy (VHE)–detected flares in 2014 and 2017, respectively, strongly constraining the jet Doppler factors and gamma-ray emission region locations during these events. Finally, we place theoretical constraints on the potential production of PeV-scale neutrinos during these VHE flares.
Although Galactic cosmic rays (protons and nuclei) are widely believed to be mainly accelerated by the winds and supernovae of massive stars, definitive evidence of this origin remains elusive nearly ...a century after their discovery. The active regions of starburst galaxies have exceptionally high rates of star formation, and their large size—more than 50 times the diameter of similar Galactic regions—uniquely enables reliable calorimetric measurements of their potentially high cosmic-ray density. The cosmic rays produced in the formation, life and death of massive stars in these regions are expected to produce diffuse -ray emission through interactions with interstellar gas and radiation. M82, the prototype small starburst galaxy, is predicted to be the brightest starburst galaxy in terms of -ray emission. Here we report the detection of >700-GeV -rays from M82. From these data we determine a cosmic-ray density of 250 eV cm-3 in the starburst core, which is about 500 times the average Galactic density. This links cosmic-ray acceleration to star formation activity, and suggests that supernovae and massive-star winds are the dominant accelerators.
Mathematical epidemiology, one of the oldest and richest areas in mathematical biology, has significantly enhanced our understanding of how pathogens emerge, evolve, and spread. Classical ...epidemiological models, the standard for predicting and managing the spread of infectious disease, assume that contacts between susceptible and infectious individuals depend on their relative frequency in the population. The behavioral factors that underpin contact rates are not generally addressed. There is, however, an emerging a class of models that addresses the feedbacks between infectious disease dynamics and the behavioral decisions driving host contact. Referred to as “economic epidemiology” or “epidemiological economics,” the approach explores the determinants of decisions about the number and type of contacts made by individuals, using insights and methods from economics. We show how the approach has the potential both to improve predictions of the course of infectious disease, and to support development of novel approaches to infectious disease management.
Pulmonary alveolar proteinosis McElvaney, O J; Horan, D; Franciosi, A N ...
QJM : An International Journal of Medicine,
03/2018, Letnik:
111, Številka:
3
Journal Article
PDF
