Emissions targets and the real business cycle: Intensity targets versus caps or taxes

For reducing greenhouse gas emissions, intensity targets are attracting interest as a flexible mechanism that would better allow for economic growth than emissions caps. For the same expected emissions, however, the economic responses to unexpected productivity shocks differ. Using a real business cycle model, we find that a cap dampens the effects of productivity shocks in the economy on all variables except for the shadow value of the emissions constraint. An emissions tax leads to the same expected outcomes as a cap but with greater volatility. Certainty-equivalent intensity targets maintain higher levels of labor, capital, and output than other policies, with lower expected costs and no more volatility than with no policy.     

右旋糖酐制药废水循环流化产沼气实验

为提升生物制药废水处理效率,以某制药厂的右旋糖酐废水作为主要发酵原料,设计2种不同循环流化的水力搅拌方案,进行653.5 L规模的厌氧消化对比中试试验。1号罐为底部进水高位集中压力出水（单口）,4号罐为底部进水高位分散式压力出水（四口）。28 d连续发酵实验表明,1号罐较不搅拌的对照组（0号罐）的产气率和COD去除率分别提升了45%和20%,4号罐则分别提升了58%和24%。研究结论可为指导右旋糖酐废水产气潜能提升设计和进一步机理研究提供借鉴。     

The Robert H. MacArthur Award Lecture. Timescales, dynamics, and ecological understanding

Explicit consideration of timescales and dynamics is required for an understanding of fundamental issues in ecology. Endogenous dynamics can lead to transient states where asymptotic behavior is very different from dynamics on short timescales. The causes of these kinds of transients can be placed in one of three classes: linear systems with different timescales embedded or exhibiting reactive behavior, the potentially long times to reach synchrony across space for oscillating systems, and the complex dynamics of systems with strong density-dependent (nonlinear) interactions. It is also important to include the potentially disparate timescales inherent in ecological systems when determining the endogenous dynamics. I argue that the dynamics of ecological systems can best be understood as the response, which may include transient dynamics, to exogenous influences leading to the observed dynamics on ecologically relevant timescales. This view of ecosystem behavior as responses of ecological systems governed by endogenous dynamics to exogenous influences provides a synthetic way to unify different approaches to population dynamics, to understand mechanisms that determine the distribution and abundance of species, and to manage ecosystems on appropriate timescales. There are implications for theoretical approaches, empirical approaches, and the statistical approaches that bridge theory and observation.     

Allometric scaling predicts preferences for burned patches in a guild of East African grazers

The high herbivore diversity in savanna systems has been attributed to the inherent spatial and temporal heterogeneity related to the quantity and quality of food resources. Allometric scaling predicts that smaller-bodied grazers rely on higher quality forage than larger-bodied grazers. We replicated burns at varying scales in an East African savanna and measured visitation by an entire guild of larger grazers ranging in size from hare to elephant. We found a strong negative relationship between burn preference and body mass with foregut fermenters preferring burns to a greater degree than hindgut fermenters. Burns with higher quality forage were preferred more than burns with lower quality forage by small-bodied grazers, while the opposite was true for large-bodied grazers. Our results represent some of the first experimental evidence demonstrating the importance of body size in predicting how large herbivores respond to fire-induced changes in plant quality and quantity.     

Priority screening of toxic chemicals and industry sectors in the U.S. toxics release inventory: a comparison of the life cycle impact-based and risk-based assessment tools developed by U.S. EPA

Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) and Risk Assessment (RA) employ different approaches to evaluate toxic impact potential for their own general applications. LCIA is often used to evaluate toxicity potentials for corporate environmental management and RA is often used to evaluate a risk score for environmental policy in government. This study evaluates the cancer, non-cancer, and ecotoxicity potentials and risk scores of chemicals and industry sectors in the United States on the basis of the LCIA- and RA-based tools developed by U.S. EPA, and compares the priority screening of toxic chemicals and industry sectors identified with each method to examine whether the LCIA- and RA-based results lead to the same prioritization schemes. The Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other environmental Impacts (TRACI) is applied as an LCIA-based screening approach with a focus on air and water emissions, and the Risk-Screening Environmental Indicator (RSEI) is applied in equivalent fashion as an RA-based screening approach. The U.S. Toxic Release Inventory is used as the dataset for this analysis, because of its general applicability to a comprehensive list of chemical substances and industry sectors. Overall, the TRACI and RSEI results do not agree with each other in part due to the unavailability of characterization factors and toxic scores for select substances, but primarily because of their different evaluation approaches. Therefore, TRACI and RSEI should be used together both to support a more comprehensive and robust approach to screening of chemicals for environmental management and policy and to highlight substances that are found to be of concern from both perspectives.     

Reproductive consequences of male body mass and aggressiveness depend on females’ behavioral types

Relatively few investigations explicitly test for concordant versus conflicting selection pressures from intrasexual versus intersexual selection. Here, we examine the effects of male body mass and behavioral type (BT) on reproductive success in the spider Anelosimus studiosus, with emphasis placed on the potential interaction between intrasexual and intersexual selection influences. Female A. studiosus exhibit either an aggressive-active or docile-passive BT, both of which co-occur in multifemale colonies. Males, in contrast, exhibit a more continuous distribution of behavioral tendencies. We investigated the male traits favored by females in five trial types: one docile female, one aggressive female, four docile females, four aggressive females, and two docile and two aggressive females. Male reproductive success was estimated by the number eggs produced by females following staged mating trials. In previous work, it was established that large aggressive males are favored in male–male contests, an intrasexual effect. However, large aggressive males were not universally favored here. We failed to detect an effect of male body mass or aggressiveness on reproductive success in trials with all docile females; however, in situations involving aggressive females, large aggressive males experienced diminished reproductive success relative to small docile males. Large, aggressive males were also more likely to be attacked and killed by aggressive females in the first 20 min of staged encounters and were more likely to be found dead after 72 h of unobserved interactions. Taken together, our data suggest that the reproductive consequences of male traits differ based on (1) the aspect of sexual selection being considered (intrasexual versus intersexual) and (2) the BT of their prospective mates: large aggressive males enjoy advantages in intrasexual selection and when courting docile females and small docile males experience reduced risk of cannibalism and increased reproductive success with aggressive females.     

Generalized extreme value regression for ordinal response data

This paper introduces a flexible skewed link function for modeling ordinal response data with covariates based on the generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution. Commonly used probit, logit and complementary log-log links are prone to link misspecification because of their fixed skewness. The GEV link is flexible in fitting the skewness in the response curve with a free shape parameter. Using Bayesian methodology, it automatically detects the skewness in the response curve along with the model fitting. The flexibility of the proposed model is illustrated by its application to an ecological survey data about the coverage of Berberis thunbergii in New England. We employ the latent variable approach by Albert and Chib (J Am Stat Assoc 88:669–679, (1993) to develop computational schemes. For model selection, we employ the Deviance Information Criterion (DIC).     

Fine-scale chemical fingerprinting of an open coast crustacean for the assessment of population connectivity

Chemical fingerprinting techniques recently have been used to track larval dispersal of estuarine species that bear calcified structures, but the applicability of this important approach may be limited on the open coast where chemical signatures may be less distinctive and for the many species that do not retain calcified structures throughout development. Externally brooded embryos of the porcelain crab, Petrolisthes cinctipes, and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry were used to determine whether fine-scale variation in trace-elemental composition occurred along an open coast. Embryos were collected from 16 sites from 37.8° to 39.5° north latitude along the Pacific Coast of California, USA during late January and early February 2003. Discriminant function analysis revealed that collection sites, many separated by only a few kilometers along an open coast, could be differentiated with an overall accuracy of 73%, and combining the sites into three regions increased the accuracy to 88%. Thus, distinctive elemental signatures can be detected in open coast species even at a fine scale raising the possibility that larval tags can be developed for many more species than previously thought possible.     

Epithelial immunity in a marine invertebrate: a cytolytic activity from a cuticular secretion of the American horseshoe crab, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Limulus polyphemus</Emphasis>

The cuticle of the American horseshoe crab, Limulus polyphemus, is largely free of the macroscopic epibionts that rapidly colonize most solid surfaces exposed to sea water. Here, we describe a viscous surface secretion that coats the carapace of the horseshoe crab. We report methods for stimulating production of the substance, identify hemolytic and liposome-permeabilizing activities and provide a partial biochemical characterization. We propose that this secretion functions as an anti-fouling agent protecting the chitinized epithelium of the cuticle from colonization by deleterious epibionts.