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Abstract There has recently been an upsurge of interest in the deployment of behavioural economics techniques in the information security and privacy domain. In this paper, we consider the nature of one particular intervention, the nudge, and the way it exercises its influence. We contemplate the ethical ramifications of nudging, in its broadest sense, deriving general principles for ethical nudging from the literature. We extrapolate these principles to the deployment of nudging in information security and privacy. Furthermore, we explain how researchers can use these guidelines to ensure that they satisfy the ethical requirements during nudge trials in information security and privacy. Our guidelines also provide guidance to ethics review boards that are required to evaluate nudge-related research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Climate/competitive coevolution are drivers of cultural shifts in Holocene Australia. • Little/no evidence of Late Holocene increase in population size or per capita outputs. • As high ranked prey declined, foragers targeted resource hotspots or low ranked foods. • Targeting low ranked foods increased labor demands but slowed population declines. • Diet breadth, foraging patterns, and alliance formation were all transformed. • Archaeological evidence fits Red Queen evolutionary dynamics, not Intensification. Change in Holocene Australia is typically depicted as establishing greater control over the environment, with heightened prosperity, growth of social complexity, status competition, intergroup congregation, and population. Endogenous social processes altered Australian forager life yielding, on average, increased per capita output. Those claims were named Intensification. We critique that concept, re-evaluate evidence, and conclude there is no evidence for release from environmental constraint or heightened prosperity. Our model is more capable of explaining change in Holocene Australia. This Red Queen model claims cultural changes reflect unfavourable alterations in economic opportunity, driven by coevolution with dingos during worsening environmental conditions. Restructured environments with fewer high ranked foods led to greater diet breadth, expansion into marginal landscapes, and focus on atypical resource rich spots. By increasing their labour groups sought to maintain population size, this strategy reducing the likelihood of neighbouring groups seizing resource hot spots. Foragers responded to tensions with neighbours over resource access by magnifying social defence, offering limited use of resources in return for maintenance of territorial control. Those political negotiations constructed moderately stable alliances. We test the Red Queen model and show it, not Intensification, explains the emergence of ethnographically identified social interactions, economy and settlement systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heavy metals (HMs) are indestructible and non-biodegradable. Phytoremediation presents an opportunity to transfer HMs from environmental matrices into plants, making it easy to translocate from one place to another. The ornate features of HMs' phytoremediation are biophilia and carbon neutrality, compared to the physical and chemical remediation methods. Some recent studies related to LCA also support that phytoremediation is technically more sustainable than competing technologies. However, one major post-application challenge associated with HMs phytoremediation is properly managing HMs contaminated biomass generated. Such a yield presents the problem of reintroducing HMs into the environment due to natural decomposition and release of plant sap from the harvested biomass. The transportation of high yields can also make phytoremediation economically inviable. This review presents the design of a sustainable phytoremediation strategy using an ever-evolving life cycle assessment tool. This review also discusses possible post-phytoremediation biomass management strategies for the HMs contaminated biomass management. These strategies include composting, leachate compaction, gasification, pyrolysis, torrefaction, and metal recovery. Further, the commercial outlook for properly utilizing HMs contaminated biomass was presented. [Display omitted] • Strict regulations can be applied to contaminated biomass phytoremediation. • Improper disposal of polluted biomass reduces phytoremediation biophilic appeal. • Economic advantages are attainable for HMs contaminated biomass management. • Heavy metals contaminated biomass can be used to produce for value added products. • Life cycle assessment can assist as a decision tool for HMs phytoremediation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the automation of jobs has shaped spatial patterns of intergenerational income mobility in the United States over the past three decades. Using data on the spread of industrial robots across 722 local labor markets, we find significantly lower rates of upward mobility in areas more exposed to automation. The erosion of mobility chances is rooted in childhood environments and is particularly evident among males growing up in low-income households. These findings reveal how recent technological advances have contributed to the unequal patterns of economic opportunity in the United States today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grain growers face many future challenges requiring them to adapt their land uses to changing economic, social and environmental conditions. To understand where to make on ground changes without significant negative financial repercussions, high resolution information on income generation over time is required. We propose a methodology which utilises high resolution yield data collected with precision agriculture (PA) technology, gross margin financial analysis and a temporal standardisation technique to highlight the spatial and temporal consistency of farm income. On three neighbouring farms in Western Australia, we found non-linear relationships between income and area. Spatio-temporal analysis on one farm over varying seasons found that between 37 and 49% (1082–1433 ha) of cropping area consistently produced above the selected income thresholds and 43–32% (936–1257 ha) regularly produced below selected thresholds. Around 20% of area showed inconsistent temporal variation in income generation. Income estimated from these areas represents the income forgone if a land use change is undertaken (the economic opportunity cost) and the average costs varied spatially from $190 ± 114/ha to $560 ± 108/ha depending on what scenario was chosen. The interaction over space and time showed the clustering of areas with similar values at a resolution where growers make input decisions. This new evidence suggests that farm area could be managed with two strategies: (a) one that maximises grain output using PA management in temporally stable areas which generate moderate to high income returns and (b) one that proposes land use change in low and inconsistent income returning areas where the financial returns from an alternative land use may be comparable. The adoption of these strategies can help growers meet the demand for agricultural output and offer income diversity and adaptive capacity to deal with the future challenges to agricultural production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition from a fossil-based linear economy to a circular bioeconomy is no longer an option but rather imperative, given worldwide concerns about the depletion of fossil resources and the demand for innovative products that are ecocompatible. As a critical component of sustainable development, this discourse has attracted wide attention at the regional and international levels. Biorefinery is an indispensable technology to implement the blueprint of the circular bioeconomy. As a low-cost, non-waste innovative concept, the biorefinery concept will spur a myriad of new economic opportunities across a wide range of sectors. Consequently, scaling up biorefinery processes is of the essence. Despite several decades of research and development channeled into upscaling biorefinery processes, the commercialization of biorefinery technology appears unrealizable. In this review, challenges limiting the commercialization of biorefinery technologies are discussed, with a particular focus on biofuels, biochemicals, and biomaterials. To counteract these challenges, various process intensification strategies such as consolidated bioprocessing, integrated biorefinery configurations, the use of highly efficient bioreactors, simultaneous saccharification and fermentation, have been explored. This study also includes an overview of biomass pretreatment-generated inhibitory compounds as platform chemicals to produce other essential biocommodities. There is a detailed examination of the technological, economic, and environmental considerations of a sustainable biorefinery. Finally, the prospects for establishing a viable circular bioeconomy in Nigeria are briefly discussed. [Display omitted] • Integrated biorefinery is cheaper and more ecofriendly than petroleum refinery. • Integrated biorefinery enhances value-added products chain from LCB utilization. • LCB-derived inhibitory byproducts could serve as platform chemicals. • Integrated biorefinery supports circular bioeconomy via the zero-waste concept. • LCB and biowastes in Nigeria have prospects in biofuel and biochemical production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consequences of protected areas for proximal human communities are diverse. Protected areas can alleviate poverty by providing a range of economic opportunities for people that live and work within them. Equally, however, they may also disempower and disposes local communities. For communities adapting to systemic environmental change, proximity to protected areas can act to limit potential adaptive pathways. Here, we employ social science methods to explore the impact of an internationally significant protected area on adjacent communities in the Tonle Sap Lake basin, Cambodia. Semi-structured interviews, informed by a scenario framework, reveal an awareness of declining fish yields and a perceived lack of economic alternatives. Vulnerability to hydroclimatic extremes, particularly storms, flood, drought and – increasingly – fire, are exacerbated as a result of proximity to the protected area. We conclude that the impact of protected areas on local communities is heterogenous, and that the development of adaptive and effective management policies requires sensitivity to local conditions and impacts. • The proximity of resource-dependent communities to protected areas may restrict their adaptive capacity. • Fishing communities adjacent to Ramsar wetlands are vulnerable to environmental change. • Options for alternative livelihoods are perceived to be limited. • Fire is an ascendant natural hazard in seasonal tropical wetlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We consider the optimality of liquidated damages contracts in a setting of contractual ambiguity and potential for disputes. We show that when parties are ambiguity averse enough, they will optimally choose liquidated damages contracts and sacrifice risk sharing opportunities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In a credence goods game with an expert and a consumer, we study experimentally the impact of two devices that are predicted to induce consumer-friendly behavior if the expert has a propensity to feel guilty when he believes that he violates the consumerʼs payoff expectations: (i) an opportunity for the expert to make a non-binding promise; and (ii) an opportunity for the consumer to burn money. In belief-based guilt aversion theory the first opportunity shapes an expertʼs behavior if an appropriate promise is made and if it is expected to be believed by the consumer; by contrast, the second opportunity might change behavior even though this option is never used along the predicted path. Experimental results confirm the behavioral relevance of (i) but fail to confirm (ii). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Financial, managerial, and medical decisions often involve alternatives whose possible outcomes have uncertain probabilities. In contrast to alternatives whose probabilities are known, these uncertain alternatives offer the benefits of learning. In repeat-choice situations, such learning brings value. If probabilities appear favorable (unfavorable), a choice can be repeated (avoided). In a series of experiments involving bets on the colors of poker chips drawn from bags, decision makers often prove to be blind to the learning opportunities offered by uncertain probabilities. They forgo significant expected payoffs when they shun uncertain alternatives in favor of known ones. Worse, when information is revealed, many make choices contrary to learning. Priming with optimal strategies offers little improvement. Such decision makers violate identified requirements for making rational decisions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: developed a theoretical model that proposed two pathways through which economic activity – as indexed by the aggregate unemployment rate – could affect the rate of criminal activity. The first is by increasing levels of criminal motivation within the population as deteriorating economic conditions affect social strain and social control; the second is by influencing the availability and vulnerability of criminal targets and thus the number of criminal opportunities. Although much empirical research has applied this theoretical model, few analyses have done so at disaggregated units of analysis. We present the most comprehensive analysis to date by empirically evaluating this model with data on 400 of the largest US counties – and examine the effects of aggregation on results as these county data are combined to the state and national levels – for the years 1978–2005. For seven Index crimes at each of the three levels of analysis, and with or without controls for structural covariates at each level, the directional effects hypothesized by Cantor and Land are found for 78 out of 84 estimated relationships. Even after taking into account the lack of statistical independence of these estimates by drawing on recently developed statistical theory, this is a very unlikely outcome. In accordance with expectations based on theory and prior research, (a) some of these relationships are weak and not statistically significant, and (b) the strongest and most consistent patterns of relationships for both the crime opportunity and crime motivation effects are found for three property crimes: burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. Suggestions for further research on this topic are given. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Since long ago, pelagic Sargassum mats have been known to be abundant in the Sargasso Sea, where they provide habitat to diverse organisms. However, over the last few years, massive amounts of pelagic Sargassum have reached the coast of several countries in the Caribbean and West Africa, causing economic and environmental problems. Aiming for lessening the impacts of the blooms, governments and private companies remove the seaweeds from the shore, but this process results expensive. The valorization of this abundant biomass can render Sargassum tides into an economic opportunity and concurrently solve their associated environmental problems. Despite the diverse fields where algae have found applications and the relevance of this recurrent situation, Sargassum biomass remains without large scale applications. Therefore, this review aims to present the potential uses of these algae, identifying the limitations that must be assessed to effectively valorize this bioresource. Due to the constraints identified for each of the presented applications, it is concluded that a biorefinery approach should be developed to effectively valorize this abundant biomass. However, there is an urgent need for investigations focusing on holopelagic Sargassum to be able to truly valorize this seaweed. Image 1 • Sargassum blooms produce several environmental and economic problems. • Seaweeds are a source of different valuable compounds with broad applications. • Food, health, agriculture, bioremediation, and biofuels are the main applications. • Composition variations are a major challenge for bioprocess development. • Biorefinery concept is the new trend for Sargassum biomass valorization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite research linking education to values, our understanding of the effects of academic learning on gender attitudes is still limited. Using sibling data collected over time, we investigate how learning in school, measured by achievement test scores, affects adolescents' views on gender issues both with and without direct implications for women's economic mobility. With fixed-effects models accounting for unobserved heterogeneity between high and low achievers, we show that the relationship between academic achievement and gender ideology is not spurious, but learning does not enlighten adolescents on all gender-related beliefs, either. Rather, school learning socializes both boys and girls into more liberal views on issues clearly related to women's economic opportunities. For views concerning dating practices or boy-girl interactions, which are irrelevant to the meritocracy-based mainstream values, academic performance has less consistent effects, with higher achievement scores sometimes associated with more conservative views among boys. Our results generally support the socialization and reproduction model of the role of school learning, although self-interest also explains high and low achievers' different attitudes on dating and other personal-realm gender practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research suggests that individual-level factors such as socio-economic disadvantage and discrimination account for lower levels of generalized social trust of immigrants when compared to natives. This study examines how individual and contextual economic conditions impact such trust gaps. We argue that—beyond objective economic circumstances—evaluations of economic opportunities matter for immigrants' integration, and for their social trust. Using data from the European Social Survey 2012, 2016, merged with regional economic conditions, results from two-way fixed effects multilevel models show that gaps in social trust are wider in regions where the state of the economy is predominantly evaluated as being prosperous. Additional tests show that, in those regions, immigrants report higher levels of discrimination and lower levels of satisfaction with social life. This study adds the important finding to the literature on social inequality and immigrant integration that favorable economic conditions may, paradoxically, increase native-immigrant trust asymmetries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]