• Energy Research
• 3. Good health close
• 1. No poverty close
• DE close
• RU close

The adoption of solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies has expanded rapidly in recent years, leading to suggestions that this growth, which occurred mostly in high-latitude countries with often low levels of sunshine, may have come at an unnecessarily high price. However, the factors influencing the cost of solar PV, and the subsidies required to sustain its uptake, include more than just the level of sunshine. While cross-country differences in technology costs are hard to ascertain, it is possible to account for the cost of capital on a country-by-country basis. In this paper, we therefore map the cost of solar PV globally, accounting for differences in both the solar resource and the financing cost in order to calculate the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) from solar PV systems in 143 countries. In contrast to the work of other researchers who typically treat financing costs as uniform across countries, our results suggest that the LCOE of solar PV systems in northern countries may in fact be lower than in equatorial countries, and high latitude countries may thus not have been an unwise location to subsidize the adoption of solar PV technologies in the past. Our results further suggest that efforts to expand PV installation in equatorial developing countries may benefit greatly from policies designed to make low cost finance more widely available, which underlines on-going efforts to “de-risk” low carbon investments.

The heterologous expression of proteins in Escherichia coli is of great relevance for their functional and structural characterization and applications. However, the formation of insoluble inclusion bodies is observed in approximately 70% of all cases, and the subsequent effects can range from reduced soluble protein yields to a complete failure of the expression system. Here, we present an efficient methodology for the production and analysis of a thermostable, aggregation-prone trehalose transferase (TreT) from Pyrobaculum yellowstonensis via its fusion with mCherry as a thermostable fluorescent protein tag. This fusion strategy allowed for increased enzyme stability and solubility and could be applied to other (thermostable) proteins, allowing rapid visualization and quantification of the mCherry-fused protein of interest. Finally, we have demonstrated that the enzymatic synthesis of trehalose from glucose and a nucleotide sugar is reversible by approaching the thermodynamic equilibrium in both the synthesis and hydrolysis directions. Our results show that uridine establishes an equilibrium constant which is more in favor of the product trehalose than when adenosine is employed as the nucleotide under identical conditions. The influence of different nucleotides on the reaction can be generalized for all LeLoir glycosyltransferases under thermodynamic control as the position of the equilibrium depends solely on the reaction conditions and is not affected by the nature of the catalyst.

Abstract The drive toward the attainment of sustainable environment globally through clean energy development or energy efficiency is not more desirable than in the 21st century, thus the existential policy moderations of economic, trade and security mechanisms. On this premise, and foremost in the literature, the current study examined the country-specific (for the United States) and the driving impacts of economic policy uncertainty, trade policy and national security on the development of cleaner energy sources by using quarterly frequency time series data for period 1990:Q1-2018:Q2. By employing economic expansion as additional factor, the study implemented the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Bounds Testing approach to reveal interesting results: (1) there is a significant evidence that economic expansion, economic policy uncertainty (EU), trade policy (TP), and national security (NS) exhibits long term properties in common, (2) the increase in economic expansion and NS effectiveness significantly yields more cleaner energy development, and (3) a more tightened TP and high EU are statistically significant and detrimental to the development of clean energy. The Granger causality evidence substantiates the role economic expansion, TP, EU and national security in renewable energy development. Generally, the study posits cleaner and energy efficiency policy directive for policymakers in the United States and other countries of interest from the framework of climate action and sustainable development.

We study the impact of global climate change on the prevalence of tropical diseases using a heterogeneous agent dynamic general equilibrium model. In our framework, households can take actions (e.g., purchasing bednets or other goods) that provide partial protection from disease. However, these actions are costly and households face borrowing constraints. Parameterizing the model, we explore the impact of a worldwide temperature increase of 3°C. We find that the impact on disease prevalence and especially output should be modest and can be mitigated by improvements in protection efficacy.

Abstract Indonesia is among the countries with the largest planned coal power capacity additions worldwide, thereby posing a substantial challenge for global climate change mitigation goals. To understand the underlying political drivers, we carry out expert interviews and examine how individual actors and their objectives, as well as the country context influence energy policy formulation. We find that under President Joko Widodo, energy policy formulation has been driven by the development of public infrastructure, while securing popularity for the presidential election in 2019. State-owned enterprises represent a source of political patronage and are employed to achieve those goals. Diminishing export markets have incentivized the politically well-connected and highly concentrated Indonesian coal industry to lobby for the construction of coal-fired power plants in order to raise domestic demand. There is also a strong incentive to sustain coal mining as a key economic activity, as associated royalties significantly contribute to local and national public budgets. Local pollution and climate change mitigation are of low priority. Despite the government’s documented awareness of the energy sector as the biggest contributor to future emissions, climate protection is narrowly framed as a forestry and land-use issue.

Whereas oral or intraduodenal ethanol causes a moderate stimulation of pancreatic bicahonate and enzyme output, intravenous ethanol inhibits basal and hormonally stimulated pancreatic exocrine secretion in humans, dogs, cats, pigs, rabbits, and rats. This inhibition could be mediated by inhibitory cholinergic mechanisms or be the result of a direct cellular effect of ethanol. In vitro investigations have specified several signaling molecules that may be involved in the action of ethanol on stimulus‐secretion coupling in the exocrine pancreas, including cyclic adenosine monophosphate, intracellular calcium, and cholecystokinin and somatostatin receptors. In difference to pure ethanol solutions and distilled spirits, beer strongly stimulates pancreatic enzyme output, probably by nonalcoholic fermentation products. During chronic alcoholism, the ethanol‐induced inhibition is replaced by an enhanced enzyme output that causes intraductal protein precipitation. In vitro investigations suggest that this increase is reversible after alcohol withdrawal. The occurrence of protein precipitates is considered to be a crucial step in the development of chronic alcoholic pancreatitis in humans. Other ethanol‐induced secretory alterations that may contribute to the development of alcoholic pancreatitis are a decreased secretion of trypsin inhibitor, an increased cholinergic tone, and changes in the concentration of lithostathine.

Densely ionizing radiation has always been a main topic in radiobiology. In fact, α-particles and neutrons are sources of radiation exposure for the general population and workers in nuclear power plants. More recently, high-energy protons and heavy ions attracted a large interest for two applications: hadrontherapy in oncology and space radiation protection in manned space missions. For many years, studies concentrated on measurements of the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of the energetic particles for different end points, especially cell killing (for radiotherapy) and carcinogenesis (for late effects). Although more recently, it has been shown that densely ionizing radiation elicits signalling pathways quite distinct from those involved in the cell and tissue response to photons. The response of the microenvironment to charged particles is therefore under scrutiny, and both the damage in the target and non-target tissues are relevant. The role of individual susceptibility in therapy and risk is obviously a major topic in radiation research in general, and for ion radiobiology as well. Particle radiobiology is therefore now entering into a new phase, where beyond RBE, the tissue response is considered. These results may open new applications for both cancer therapy and protection in deep space.