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Governments are catching up with economic theory and practice by increasingly integrating ecosystem service values into national planning processes, including benefitcost analyses of public policies. Such analyses require information not only about today’s benefits from ecosystem services but also on how benefits change over time. We address a key limitation of existing policy guidance, which assumes that benefits from ecosystem services remain unchanged. We provide a practical rule that is grounded in economic theory and evidence-based as a guideline for how benefits change over time: They rise as societies get richer and even more so when ecosystem services are declining. Our proposal will correct a substantial downward bias in currently used estimates of future ecosystem service values. This will help governments to reflect the importance of ecosystems more accurately in benefit-cost analyses and policy decisions they inform.

Item does not contain fulltext, BACKGROUND: Poor social connections (eg, small networks, infrequent interactions, and loneliness) are modifiable risk factors for cognitive decline. Existing meta-analyses are limited by reporting aggregate responses, a focus on global cognition, and combining social measures into single constructs. We aimed to investigate the association between social connection markers and the rate of annual change in cognition (ie, global and domain-specific), as well as sex differences, using an individual participant data meta-analysis. METHODS: We harmonised data from 13 longitudinal cohort studies of ageing in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Studies were eligible for inclusion if they had baseline data for social connection markers and at least two waves of cognitive scores. Follow-up periods ranged from 0 years to 15 years across cohorts. We included participants with cognitive data for at least two waves and social connection data for at least one wave. We then identified and excluded people with dementia at baseline. Primary outcomes were annual rates of change in global cognition and cognitive domain scores over time until final follow-up within each cohort study analysed by use of an individual participant data meta-analysis. Linear mixed models within cohorts used baseline social connection markers as predictors of the primary outcomes. Effects were pooled in two stages using random-effects meta-analyses. We assessed the primary outcomes in the main (partially adjusted) and fully adjusted models. Partially adjusted models controlled for age, sex, and education; fully adjusted models additionally controlled for diabetes, hypertension, smoking, cardiovascular risk, and depression. FINDINGS: Of the 40 006 participants in the 13 cohort studies, we excluded 1392 people with dementia at baseline. 38 614 individual participants were included in our analyses. For the main models, being in a relationship or married predicted slower global cogn

Background: In Sweden, asthma, allergy and COPD clinics are a successful model for evidence-based care. The main criteria for the clinic is that it should be led by an educated asthma, allergy and COPD-nurse. Further, allergy consultant nurses have the main task to be a bridge between health care and the family/preschool/school/work. Aim: To describe the Swedish nursing education courses of an asthma, allergy and COPD nurse and an allergy consultant nurse. Methods/results: To become specialized, the nurse need further university studies in asthma, allergy and COPD after bachelor degree, i.e. at least 15 credits. This can also be followed up by further credits and a master’s degree. The courses are designed with a person-centered approach as a mix of nursing and medicine. It includes early detection, screening and diagnosis of asthma, allergy and COPD and skills about spirometry, allergy testing, patient education, smoking cessation support and the use of a written treatment-plan as well as assessment of risk factors, comorbidities, and symptoms i.e. both non-pharmacological and pharmacological interventions. Self-management, interprofessional collaboration and how to evaluate adherence to guidelines by using the Swedish National Airway Register are highlighted in the course. The allergy consultant nurse receives deeper education in allergy and the immunological mechanisms. The consultant often has postgraduate credits in specialist nursing or a master of science with a specialisation in paediatric and adolescent healthcare. Conclusion: Advanced education after bachelor’s degree has benefits both for the patient and for the society.

This chapter assesses national and sub-national mitigation policies and their institutional settings. There has been a marked increase in national policies and legislation on climate change since the AR4 with a diversity of approaches and a multiplicity of objectives (see Section 15.2). However, Figure 1.9 of Chapter 1 suggests that these policies, taken together, have not yet achieved a substantial deviation in emissions from the past trend. Limiting concentrations to levels that would be consistent with a likely probability of maintaining temperature increases below 2 degrees C this century (scenarios generally in the range of 430-480 ppmv CO2eq) would require that emissions break from these trends and be decreased substantially. In contrast, concentrations exceed 1000 ppmv CO2eq by 2100 in many baseline scenarios (that is, scenarios without additional efforts to reduce emissions). The literature on mitigation scenarios provides a wide range of CO2 shadow price levels consistent with these goals, with estimates of less than US$50/tCO2 in 2020 in many studies and exceeding US$100/tCO2 in others, assuming a globally-efficient and immediate effort to reduce emissions. These shadow prices exhibit a strongly increasing trend thereafter. Policies and instruments are assessed in this light. Section 15.2 assesses the role of institutions and governance. Section 15.3 lays out the classification of policy instruments and packages, while 15.4 discusses the methodologies used to evaluate policies and institutions. The performance of various policy instruments and measures are individually assessed in Sections 15.5 and 15.6. The two main types of economic instruments are price instruments, that is, taxes and subsidies (including removal of subsidies on fossil fuels), and quantity instruments - emission-trading systems. These are assessed in Sections 15.5.2 and 15.5.3 respectively. An important feature of both these instruments is that they can be applied at a very broad, econo

The Working Group III (WGIII) contribution to the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) assesses literature on the scientific, technological, environmental, economic and social aspects of mitigation of climate change. It builds upon the WGIII contribution to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), the Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN) and previous reports and incorporates subsequent new findings and research. Throughout, the focus is on the implications of its findings for policy, without being prescriptive about the particular policies that governments and other important participants in the policy process should adopt. In light of the IPCC's mandate, authors in WGIII were guided by several principles when assembling this assessment: (1) to be explicit about mitigation options, (2) to be explicit about their costs and about their risks and opportunities vis-a-vis other development priorities, (3) and to be explicit about the underlying criteria, concepts, and methods for evaluating alternative policies. This summary offers the main findings of the report.

The Working Group III contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (WGIII AR5) provides a comprehensive assessment of all relevant options for mitigating climate change through limiting or preventing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as activities that remove them from the atmosphere. It draws on scientific literature accepted for publication prior to 4 October 2013. The WGIII Summary for Policymakers was approved at the Twelfth Session of Working Group III, held in Berlin, Germany, from 7 to 11 April, 2014. During the session, the IPCC plenary also accepted the underlying scientific and technical assessment, which stands at 2000 pages, including more than 700 pages of references.

Resilience to specified kinds of disasters is an active area of research and practice. However, rare or unprecedented disturbances that are unusually intense or extensive require a more broad-spectrum type of resilience. General resilience is the capacity of social-ecological systems to adapt or transform in response to unfamiliar, unexpected and extreme shocks. Conditions that enable general resilience include diversity, modularity, openness, reserves, feedbacks, nestedness, monitoring, leadership, and trust. Processes for building general resilience are an emerging and crucially important area of research.

In permit trading systems, free initial allocation is common practice. A recent example is the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading Scheme (EU-ETS). We investigate effects of different free allocation schemes on incentives and identify significant perverse effects on abatement and output employing a simple multi-period model. Firms have incentives for strategic action if allocation in one period depends on their actions in previous ones and thus can be influenced by them. These findings play a major role where trading schemes become increasingly popular as environmental or resource use policy instruments. This is of particular relevance in the EU-ETS where the current period is a trial-period before the first commitment period of the Kyoto protocol. Finally, this paper fills a gap in the literature by establishing a consistent terminology for initial allocation.

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In this paper, we discuss the effect of refunding environmental charges. Taxes are often resisted by polluters because they imply both abatement and tax costs. When charges are refunded, the incentives for abatement are essentially the same as for a tax as long as there are many producers. The incidence and distribution of costs is however different. Lower net tax payments reduce resistance from the polluters and make refunded emissions payments politically easier to implement at a sufficiently high charge level to have significant abatement effects. We describe and examine the refunded emissions payment scheme as a policy instrument and compare it with taxes and permits with regard to allocative properties, distribution of costs, property rights, and, consequently, the politics of implementation. As an empirical example, the Swedish charge on nitrogen oxides is analyzed.

A demonstration of the Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon Criteria Working Group (TPHCWG) approach for assessing human health risk at weathered petroleum release sites was performed at a former underground storage tank (UST) release site at Elmendorf Air Force Base (EAFB), Alaska. The site, ST702/8, Military Airlift Command (MAC) Chalet (Building 31562), a recreational cabin, is impacted by diesel fuel. A total of ten soil samples were obtained at depths to 12 feet below the ground surface (bgs). The soil samples were analyzed for total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) as TPH gasoline range organics (GRO) and TPH diesel range organics (DRO), benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes (BTEX), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and petroleum fractions. Six of the ten primary soil samples contained TPH DRO concentrations above the Alaska Method Two cleanup standard for petroleum migration to groundwater (250 mg/kg). RBSLs were calculated for a recreational and a commercial exposure scenario. For the recreational scenario, only one soil sample exceeded the Tier 1 total TPH RBSL (955 mg/kg). For the commercial exposure scenario four of the site soil samples contained TPH in concentrations that exceeded the Tier 1 total TPH RBSL for the subsurface soil indoor vapor inhalation pathway. Higher tier (Tier 2) risk evaluations are recommended for select data before any remedial actions are imposed.

Phosphorus tribromide (PBr3) has effective fire fighting properties which make it a possible replacement tor Halon 1301. Results of genotoxicity testing using bacterial Salmonella strains indicted PBr3 is not a mutagen for either frame shift or base-pair substitution tester strains in both buffered and unbuffered solutions. Acute aquatic toxicity testing determined a 96-hour LC50 value for fathead minnows at 71 mg/L (25 mg/L NOEC) and a 48-hour EC50 value for Daphnia magna at 22.6 mg/L (6.25 mg/L NOEC). Application of 10 ul neat PBr3 to intact skin of an anesthetized NZW rabbit caused edema and necrosis of the treated skin within 10 minutes of dosing. Toxicity was not observed in rats exposed for 4 hr to 0.4 mg/L in an inhalation exposure. Male rats (5/group) were exposed to PBr3 vapor, 4 hr/d for 5d, at 0, 0.06, 0.16 and 0.51 mg/L PBr3; 0.06 mg/L was the NOAEL. Rats (10/sex/group) were exposed to PBr3 vapor, 4 hr/d, 5 d/wk, for 4 wk at 0, 0.03, 0.01 and 0.3 mg/L; the NOAEL was 0.1 mg/L. Phosphorus tribromide reacts with moisture in the air to produce phosphonic acid and hydrogen bromide gas (HBr). A 10 cc cartridge of PBr3, tested as fire suppressant, would react to form an estimate 25 g of HBr. If uniformly distributed in a room 10x10x5 m in size, the maximum HBr concentration would be 0.05 mg/L (50 mg/in3); if in a 61.5x46.2x14.8 m hanger, it would be 5.9x10-4 mg/L (0.59 mg/ni3). Since the exposure limit for HBr is 10 mg/m3, the maximal hanger concentration would be below the action level, indicating that an acceptable exposure level during usage on aircraft is possible based on the physical characteristics of PBr3 and the small amount necessary for fire suppression. Dermal and eye contact with PBr3 should be avoided due to its corrosive behavior.

Human Health Risk Assessment Templates (HHRATs) are provided to aid the unfamiliar reader with the human health risk assessment (HHRA) process. The guidance follows the US EPA framework per the Superfund requirements for hazardous waste sites. The report provides an overview of the HHRA process. The appendix includes: tools assessment for fate and transport models, risk analysis and data handling; information resources; templates; and a process flowchart. The specific templates consist of: requirements; exposure scenarios; exposure assessment; chemical of concern (COC) data; dose-response evaluation; risk characterization; data gaps; and uncertainty assessment. The critical portion of the HHRA is the initial planning and coordination with various stakeholders such as regulatory agencies, public, industry, other governmental agencies and risk managers. The risk assessor should verify the "best practices" that are preferred by the stakeholders and integrate their use into the workplan. Once the risk assessment is underway, the risk assessor should assist the risk manager with communications requirements. The risk assessment can be conducted in a tiered process with each iteration providing more useful information that reduces the uncertainties.

Recent publications have drawn public attention to the growing evidence that a number of synthetic and naturally-occurring chemicals may disrupt normal function of endocrine systems. The scientific debate regarding endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) centers around the insufficient data available to determine the ecological and human risks associated with environmental contaminants. This is partially due to the complex role of the endocrine system in regulating multiple physiological functions. Currently, the majority of EDC studies are focused on a few, well-known substances: DDT/DDE, dioxins and PCBs. Research fails to provide data on the majority of chemicals in use. The U.S. Air Force is placing emphasis on proactive reviews of its materials to preclude revelations which-may impact mission readiness. The project evaluated the health effects of chemicals commonly used by the Air Force for evidence of potential endocrine disruptor activity. The chemicals selected for review were compounds not previously evaluated for endocrine disrupting activity: organic solvents (trichloroethylene, trichloroethane, dichloroethane, methyl ethyl ketone, methyl isobutyl ketone and perchloroethylene), deicing and anti-icing agents (potassium acetate, sodium acetate, ethylene glycol,urea, propylene glycol, sodium formate and calcium magnesium acetate) and jet fuels and related hydrocarbons (toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene, jet fuel and diesel).