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Purpose The main aim of the study is to assess the environmental and economic impacts of the lodging sector located in the Himalayan region of Nepal, from a life cycle perspective. The assessment should support decision making in technology and material selection for minimal environmental and economic burden in future construction projects.Methods The study consists of the life cycle assessment and life cycle costing of lodging in three building types: traditional, semi-modern and modern. The life cycle stages under analysis include raw material acquisition, manufacturing, construction, use, maintenance and material replacement. The study includes a sensitivity analysis focusing on the lifespan of buildings, occupancy rate and discount and inflation rates. The functional unit was formulated as the ‘Lodging of one additional guest per night’, and the time horizon is 50 years of building lifespan. Both primary and secondary data were used in the life cycle inventory.Results and discussion The modern building has the highest global warming potential (kg CO2-eq) as well as higher costs over 50 years of building lifespan. The results show that the use stage is responsible for the largest share of environmental impacts and costs, which are related to energy use for different household activities. The use of commercial materials in the modern building, which have to be transported mostly from the capital in the buildings, makes the higher GWP in the construction and replacement stages. Furthermore, a breakdown of the building components shows that the roof and wall of the building are the largest contributors to the production-related environmental impact.Conclusions The findings suggest that the main improvement opportunities in the lodging sector lie in the reduction of impacts on the use stage and in the choice of materials for wall and roof.

This paper aims at testing the incitative role of past structural funds on the achievement of targets of Europe 2020 strategy. The methodology used is a quantitative analysis aiming at explaining a dependant variable “difference to target” for each dimension of Europe 2020 (employment rate, R&D expenditures, greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy, early leaving from education, tertiary education, people at risk of poverty) by several independent variables, namely structural funds consumption (inputs), structural funds outputs over the period 2007-2013, cumulated structural funds for the previous period 2000- 2006. These independent variables will be used among other variables classically considered by scholars and/or by the European Commission. info:eu-repo/semantics/published

In this paper, special Blatz—Ko nonlinear elastic materials are considered, which are characterized by a constitutive constant and a constitutive function. We here deal with the propagation of finite-amplitude waves in such materials subjected to an arbitrary static homogeneous deformation. In a previous paper, it was shown that linearly polarized transverse damped inhomogeneous plane waves may propagate. The orthogonal propagation and polarization directions are arbitrary. The special Blatz—Ko materials are compressible so that homogeneous longitudinal waves may also propagate. Here it is shown that the superposition of a transverse damped inhomogeneous wave and of a longitudinal wave is also a solution, in the case when the propagation direction of the longitudinal wave is orthogonal to the polarization direction of the transverse wave. Also, results are obtained for the energy density and the energy flux of the superposition of these waves.

In the Multi-Commodity two-echelon Distribution Problem (MC2DP), multiple commodities are distributed in a two-echelon distribution system involving suppliers, distribution centres and customers. Each supplier may provide different commodities and each customer may request several commodities as well. In the first echelon, capacitated vehicles perform direct trips to transport the commodities from the suppliers to the distribution centres for consolidation purposes. In the second echelon, each distribution centre owns a fleet of capacitated vehicles to deliver the commodities to the customers through multi-stop routes. Commodities are compatible, i.e., they can be mixed in the vehicles. Finally, customer requests can be split by commodities, that is, a customer can be visited by several vehicles, but the total amount of each commodity has to be delivered by a single vehicle. The aim of the MC2DP is to minimize the total transportation cost to satisfy customer demands.We propose a set covering formulation for the MC2DP where the exponential number of variables relates to the routes in the delivery echelon. We develop a Branch-Price-and-Cut algorithm (BPC) to solve the problem. The pricing problem results in solving an Elementary Shortest Path Problem with Resource Constraints (ESPPRC) per distribution centre. We tackle the ESPPRC with a label setting dynamic programming algorithm which incorporates ng-path relaxation and a bidirectional labelling search. Pricing heuristics are invoked to speed up the procedure. In addition, the formulation is strengthened by integrating capacity cuts and two families of valid inequalities specific for the multiple commodities aspect of the problem.Our approach solves to optimality 439 over the 736 benchmark instances from the literature. The optimality gap of the unsolved instances is 2.1%, on average.

The mainstream view in economics has been a key factor in designing climate policies. Given that the controversy over the “efficiency paradox” has shown that mainstream economics is not neutral in the way it deals with climate change, the purpose of this paper is to investigate what insights could come out of analysing this crucial issue through an alternative economic framework. The choice of an evolutionary line of thought is then quite straightforward. It stems from both its departure from the perfect rationality hypothesis and its shift of focus towards a better understanding of innovation, system change and economic dynamics. All together this renders evolutionary economics a suitable complementary framework for designing climate policies and for managing the needed transition towards a low carbon economy. Most notably, the evolutionary framework allows us to depict the presence of two sources of inertia (i.e at the levels of individuals through “habits” and at the level of socio-technical systems) that mutually reinforce each other in a path-dependent manner. Accordingly, decision-makers should design measures (e.g. commitment strategies, niche management, etc.) that specifically target those change-resisting factors as they tend to reduce the efficiency of traditional instruments.

SCOPUS: ch.b ; iiTSE ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Understanding how climate change will affect species interactions is a challenge for all branches of ecology. We have only limited understanding of how increasing temperature and atmospheric CO2 and O3 levels will affect pheromone-mediated communication among insects. Based on the existing literature, we suggest that the entire process of pheromonal communication, from production to behavioural response, is likely to be impacted by increases in temperature and modifications to atmospheric CO2 and O3 levels. We argue that insect species relying on long-range chemical signals will be most impacted, because these signals will likely suffer from longer exposure to oxidative gases during dispersal. We provide future directions for research programmes investigating the consequences of climate change on insect pheromonal communication.

Mobile in situ concentration and meteorology data were collected for the Chino Dairy Complex in the Los Angeles Basin by AMOG (AutoMObile trace Gas) Surveyor on 25 June 2015 to characterize husbandry emissions in the near and far field in convoy mode with MISTIR (Mobile Infrared Sensor for Tactical Incident Response), a mobile upwards-looking, column remote sensing spectrometer. MISTIR reference flux validated AMOG plume inversions at different information levels including multiple gases, GoogleEarth imagery, and airborne trace gas remote sensing data. Long-term (9-yr.) Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer satellite data provided spatial and trace gas temporal context. For the Chino dairies, MISTIR-AMOG ammonia (NH3) agreement was within 5% (15.7 versus 14.9 Gg yr-1, respectively) using all information. Methane (CH4) emissions were 30 Gg yr-1 for a 45,200 herd size, indicating that Chino emission factors are greater than previously reported. Single dairy inversions were much less successful. AMOG-MISTIR agreement was 57% due to wind heterogeneity from downwind structures in these near-field measurements and emissions unsteadiness. AMOG CH4, NH3, and CO2 emissions were 91, 209, and 8200 Mg yr-1, implying 2480, 1870, and 1720 head using published emission factors. Plumes fingerprinting identified likely sources including manure storage, cowsheds, and a structure with likely natural gas combustion. NH3 downwind of Chino showed a seasonal variation of a factor of ten, three times larger than literature suggests. Chino husbandry practices and trends in herd size and production were reviewed and unlikely to add seasonality. Higher emission seasonality was proposed as legacy soil emissions, the results of a century of husbandry, supported by airborne remote sensing data showing widespread emissions from neighborhoods that were dairies 15 years prior, and AMOG and MISTIR observations. Seasonal variations provide insights into the implications of global climate change and must be considered when comparing surveys from different seasons.