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Abstract In 2005, Israel began using desalination to augment limited natural water supplies. While desalination has helped Israel overcome chronic water shortages, high-population growth may test this approach. We examine how three population growth scenarios (low, medium, high) could affect water demand and supply by 2065. Our projections show that Israel will need to desalinate as much as 3.7 billion m3 annually, compared to 0.5 billion m3 in 2020. Meeting this demand could require the construction of 30 new desalination units. The effects of population growth on Israel’s water supply are likely to dwarf those of climate change. Increased desalination would, however, increase electricity demand, requiring over 11 TWh electricity annually. Population growth is also likely to challenge Israel’s wastewater management policies, producing more effluent than farmers will have the capacity to consume. The Israeli experience will provide important lessons for regions facing similar pressures.

Sustainable fashion refers to efforts to minimize the fashion industry’s adverse environmental and social impacts. This entry describes the industry’s entire production chain: from polyester production, cotton growth and wasteful fashion consumption patterns to landfilling, where so many clothes end up. The entry characterizes the drivers behind the industry’s poor record regarding sustainability and employee exploitation, as well as new policies around the world designed to improve the industry’s performance These include the Australian Modern Slavery law, the French law prohibiting the destruction of textile surpluses and the New York Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act.

The "common agency" model, introduced by Bernheim and Whinston in 1986 combines the fundamental challenge of the principal–agent model with the challenges of coordinating multiple principals. In "Incomplete information VCG contracts for common agency," Alon, Talgam-Cohen, Lavi, and Shamash show that the class of common agency settings for which there exists a contract that guarantees truthfulness of all principals, welfare maximization, and the two standard properties from contract theory—limited liability for the agent and individual rationality for the principals—is identifiable by a polynomial-time algorithm. Furthermore, for these settings, the authors design a polynomial-time computable contract: given valuation reports from the principals, it returns, if possible for the setting, a payment scheme for the agent that constitutes a contract with all desired properties. We study contract design for welfare maximization in the well-known "common agency" model introduced in 1986 by Bernheim and Whinston. This model combines the challenges of coordinating multiple principals with the fundamental challenge of contract design: that principals have incomplete information of the agent's choice of action. Our goal is to design contracts that satisfy truthfulness of the principals, welfare maximization by the agent, and two fundamental properties of individual rationality (IR) for the principals and limited liability (LL) for the agent. Our results reveal an inherent impossibility. Whereas for every common agency setting there exists a truthful and welfare-maximizing contract, which we refer to as "incomplete information Vickrey–Clarke–Groves contracts," there is no such contract that also satisfies IR and LL for all settings. As our main results, we show that the class of settings for which there exists a contract that satisfies truthfulness, welfare maximization, LL, and IR is identifiable by a polynomial-time algorithm. Furthermore, for these settings, we design a polynomial-time computable contract: given valuation reports from the principals, it returns, if possible for the setting, a payment scheme for the agent that constitutes a contract with all desired properties. We also give a sufficient graph-theoretic condition on the population of principals that ensures the existence of such a contract and two truthful and welfare-maximizing contracts, in which one satisfies LL and the other one satisfies IR. Funding: Funding is by the European Union (ERC, ALGOCONTRACT) [Grant 101077862]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cold EI improves all of the central GC-MS performance aspects, but even though it is known for providing enhanced molecular ions, it is important to realize that Cold EI mass spectra also include all of the standard EI fragment ions. Thus, Cold EI mass spectra are fully compatible with mass spectral libraries, such as NIST for sample identification. As a result, Cold EI mass spectra (unlike any other soft ionization method) provide highly effective identifications that are often better than those obtained with standard EI for a few reasons: 1). Cold EI mass spectra with enhanced molecular ions typically provide higher identification probabilities than standard EI, even though scoring lower matching factors (false alternatives scores are lowered much more). 2). The visually observed molecular ions further serve to confirm or reject the NIST library identifications. 3). Molecular ions provide isotope abundances that serve with our TAMI software for automatic confirmation or rejection of the NIST library identification and provide an elemental formula in case the compound is not in the library. 4). The Cold EI identification probability can be even higher than that of a mass spectrum with a perfect match of 999 that can be obtained by NIST library searching its own mass spectrum. 5). The clear Cold EI molecular ion enables the use of the NIST library option of constraints search with the molecular ion that further significantly increases the identification probability. Our findings are demonstrated with mass spectra of hexadecane (n-C16H34), n-C40H82, pyrene, nitrobenzene, chlorpromazine, di-n-octyl phthalate, and deltamethrin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]