The European steel industry must achieve deep greenhouse gas emission reductions to become climate neutral by 2050. New business models are often proposed as one of the key solutions but are mostly ...addressed in general terms, without elaborating on or systematically analyzing how these new business models are actually linked to specific mitigation measures or strategies. In this paper, we assess when and to what extent different emission reduction strategies in the EU steel industry have implications for business model innovation. Through a review of 42 recent publications on industrial decarbonization, we identify 9 types of decarbonization strategies for steelmaking and their emission reduction potential. The strategies achieve emission reductions through material efficiency, emission efficiency, or a combination of both. For each strategy, we analyze the need for incremental or radical changes in business models on the basis of a thorough reading of the business model literature. Our findings show that EU steel firms can pursue several strategies to decarbonize without having to radically innovate their business models. Importantly, material efficiency strategies, arguably key to decarbonization, imply more radical changes to business models than emission efficiency strategies. Our study is a first contribution to the systematic assessment of industrial decarbonization strategies from a business model perspective. It is also an attempt to bring more rigor to the understanding of the role of business models in industrial decarbonization.
Summary
The supply of carbon (C) from tree photosynthesis to ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi is known to decrease with increasing plant nitrogen (N) supply, but how this affects fungal nutrition and ...growth remains to be clarified.
We placed mesh‐bags with quartz sand, with or without an organic N (15N‐, 13C‐labeled) source, in the soil along a natural N supply gradient in boreal forest, to measure growth and use of N and C by ECM extramatrical mycelia.
Mycelial C : N declined with increasing N supply. Addition of N increased mycelial growth at the low‐N end of the gradient. We found an inverse relationship between uptake of added N and C; the use of added N was high when ambient N was low, whereas use of added C was high when C from photosynthesis was low.
We propose that growth of ECM fungi is N‐limited when soil N is scarce and tree belowground C allocation to ECM fungi is high, but is C‐limited when N supply is high and tree belowground C allocation is low. This suggests that ECM fungi have a major role in soil N retention in nutrient‐poor, but less so in nutrient‐rich boreal forests.
Early detection of amyloid-β (Aβ) aggregates is a critical step to improve the treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD) because neuronal damage by the Aβ aggregates occurs before clinical symptoms are ...apparent. We have previously shown that luminescent conjugated oligothiophenes (LCOs), which are highly specific towards protein aggregates of Aβ, can be used to fluorescently label amyloid plaque in living rodents.
We hypothesize that the LCO can be used to target gadolinium to the amyloid plaque and hence make the plaque detectable by T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
A novel LCO-gadolinium construct was synthesized to selectively bind to Aβ plaques and give contrast in conventional T1-weighted MR images after intravenous injection in Tg-APPSwe mice.
We found that mice with high plaque-burden could be identified using the LCO-Gd constructs by conventional MRI.
Our study shows that MR imaging of amyloid plaques is challenging but feasible, and hence contrast-mediated MR imaging could be a valuable tool for early AD detection.
The production of commodities by energy-intensive industry is responsible for 1/3 of annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The climate goal of the Paris Agreement, to hold the increase in the ...global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C, requires global GHG emissions reach net-zero and probably negative by 2055–2080. Given the average economic lifetime of industrial facilities is 20 years or more, this indicates all new investment must be net-zero emitting by 2035–2060 or be compensated by negative emissions to guarantee GHG-neutrality. We argue, based on a sample portfolio of emerging and near-commercial technologies for each sector (largely based on zero carbon electricity & heat sources, biomass and carbon capture, and catalogued in an accompanying database), that reducing energy-intensive industrial GHG emissions to Paris Agreement compatible levels may not only be technically possible, but can be achieved with sufficient prioritization and policy effort. We then review policy options to drive innovation and investment in these technologies. From this we synthesize a preliminary integrated strategy for a managed transition with minimum stranded assets, unemployment, and social trauma that recognizes the competitive and globally traded nature of commodity production. The strategy includes: an initial policy commitment followed by a national and sectoral stakeholder driven pathway process to build commitment and identify opportunities based on local zero carbon resources; penetration of near-commercial technologies through increasing valuation of GHG material intensity through GHG pricing or tradable performance based regulations with protection for competitiveness and against carbon leakage; research and demand support for the output of pilot plants, including some combination of guaranteed above-market prices that decline with output and an increasing requirement for low carbon inputs in government procurement; and finally, key supporting institutions.
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•Global climate goals require industry be zero or negative GHG emitting by 2055-’80.•Industry is hard to decarbonize due to cost, trade sensitivity, and long facility life.•Immature technologies exist to decarbonize all industrial commodity production.•Knowledge of industry mitigation options is low, leading to skewed policy & effort.•Policies combining R&D, commercialization support and GHG pricing are needed.
Abstract Age-related changes in the default-mode network (DMN) have been identified in prior cross-sectional functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. Here, we investigated longitudinal change ...in DMN activity and connectivity. Cognitively intact participants (aged 49–79 years at baseline) were scanned twice, with a 6-year interval, while performing an episodic memory task interleaved with a passive control condition. Longitudinal analyses showed that the DMN (control condition > memory task) could be reliably identified at both baseline and follow-up. Differences in the magnitude of task-induced deactivation in posterior DMN regions were observed between baseline and follow-up indicating reduced deactivation in these regions with increasing age. Although no overall longitudinal changes in within-network connectivity were found across the whole sample, individual differences in memory change correlated with change in connectivity. Thus, our results show stability of whole-brain DMN topology and functional connectivity over time in healthy older adults, whereas within-region DMN analyses show reduced deactivation between baseline and follow-up. The current findings provide novel insights into DMN functioning that may assist in identifying brain changes in patient populations, as well as characterizing factors that distinguish between normal and pathologic aging.
Abstract Background Previous studies have suggested a link between herpes simplex virus (HSV) type 1 and the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Methods The present analysis included 3432 ...persons (53.9% women, mean age at inclusion 62.7 ± 14.4 years) with a mean follow-up time of 11.3 years. The number of incident AD cases was 245. Serum samples were analyzed for anti-HSV antibodies (immunoglobulin (Ig)G and IgM) by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. Results The presence of anti-HSV IgG antibodies was not associated with an increased risk for AD, controlled for age and sex (hazard ratio, HR, 0.993, P = .979). However, the presence of anti-HSV IgM at baseline was associated with an increased risk of developing AD (HR 1.959, P = .012). Conclusion Positivity for anti-HSV IgM, a sign of reactivated infection, was found to almost double the risk for AD, whereas the presence of anti-HSV IgG antibodies did not affect the risk.
Triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 (TREM2) is an innate immune receptor expressed by microglia. Its cleaved fragments, soluble TREM2 (sTREM2), can be measured in the cerebrospinal fluid ...(CSF). Previous studies indicate higher CSF sTREM2 in symptomatic AD; however most of these studies have included biomarker positive AD cases and biomarker negative controls. The aim of the study was to explore potential differences in the CSF level of sTREM2 and factors associated with an increased sTREM2 level in patients diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia due to AD compared with cognitively unimpaired controls as judged by clinical symptoms and biomarker category (AT). We included 299 memory clinic patients, 62 (20.7%) with AD-MCI and 237 (79.3%) with AD dementia, and 113 cognitively unimpaired controls. CSF measures of the core biomarkers were applied to determine AT status. CSF sTREM2 was analyzed by ELISA. Patients presented with comparable CSF sTREM2 levels as the cognitively unimpaired (9.6 ng/ml SD 4.7 versus 8.8 ng/ml SD 3.6, p = 0.27). We found that CSF sTREM2 associated with age-related neuroinflammation and tauopathy irrespectively of amyloid β, APOE ε4 status or gender. The findings were similar in both symptomatic and non-symptomatic individuals.
Some elderly appear to resist age-related decline in cognitive functions, but the neural correlates of successful cognitive aging are not well known. Here, older human participants from a ...longitudinal study were classified as successful or average relative to the mean attrition-corrected cognitive development across 15-20 years in a population-based sample (n = 1561). Fifty-one successful elderly and 51 age-matched average elderly (mean age: 68.8 years) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing an episodic memory face-name paired-associates task. Successful older participants had higher BOLD signal during encoding than average participants, notably in the bilateral PFC and the left hippocampus (HC). The HC activation of the average, but not the successful, older group was lower than that of a young reference group (n = 45, mean age: 35.3 years). HC activation was correlated with task performance, thus likely contributing to the superior memory performance of successful older participants. The frontal BOLD response pattern might reflect individual differences present from young age. Additional analyses confirmed that both the initial cognitive level and the slope of cognitive change across the longitudinal measurement period contributed to the observed group differences in BOLD signal. Further, the differences between the older groups could not be accounted for by differences in brain structure. The current results suggest that one mechanism behind successful cognitive aging might be preservation of HC function combined with a high frontal responsivity. These findings highlight sources for heterogeneity in cognitive aging and may hold useful information for cognitive intervention studies.
In the attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from steel production, several large industry decarbonization projects have emerged in Europe. The commercialization of low-emission steel ...technology, however, faces systemic barriers such as a lack of infrastructure and unclear demand for greener steel. As part of its new commitment to climate-neutrality, the European Commission has announced plans to more actively create and reshape markets for green basic materials. The approach is inspired by the recent success story of renewable energy, where market interventionist policy has successfully led to cost reductions and supported the diffusion of wind and photovoltaics. However, the applicability of this type of policy to decarbonize basic materials has so far not been investigated. In this study, we evaluate the effectiveness, feasibility, efficiency and fairness of early commercialization policy support for the decarbonization transition of steel. We compare two approaches: demand side market creation and direct production subsidies through carbon contracts for difference. We find that the subsidy approach can more effectively enable the realization of primary green steel production. A complementary use of market creation policy instruments can reduce the production subsidy volumes needed and aid the global diffusion of new production methods. Although effective, we find that production subsidies will distribute the costs and benefits of the transition unequally. In order to improve effectiveness and fairness of the policy, parallel programmes such as electricity price guarantees and transitional assistance policies for disadvantaged regions are needed.
Key policy insights
Carbon contracts for difference are the most promising policy instrument to commercialize low-emission primary steel but are likely to lead to unequal distribution of transition costs.
Market creation policies can support the global diffusion of low-emission primary steelmaking.
Material efficiency and demand reduction can reduce the need for primary steel production by more than 50%.
Regions without access to large amounts of renewable electricity are especially disadvantaged.
Unclear EU ETS benchmarks currently create a perverse incentive that keeps firms from investing in breakthrough technologies.
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