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In recent decades, many societal changes have unfolded, including population ageing, reconfigurations of household structures, labour market transformation, and a secular deceleration of economic growth. These shifts pose considerable challenges to preexisting welfare states, particularly to the efficacy of countries’ pension systems. This dissertation examines the context and trajectory of pension reforms in Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Its contribution is to ascertain the viability and political feasibility of reforms that enhance the financial sustainability of their pension systems, while maintaining adequate income and coverage levels. The dissertation builds on political economy approaches and on the institutionalist literature, which highlight how the role of interest groups and structure of institutions and political systems shape policy outcomes. The frameworks of blame avoidance and credit-claiming are also considered, to provide a comprehensive analysis of the complex dynamics surrounding pension systems and reform efforts. This dissertation uses a mixed-methods approach – including public opinion surveys of 3,000+ individuals, semi-structured elite interviews, historical document analyses, and specialized fiscal and actuarial projections of selected pension reforms in the three selected countries. It addresses three core research questions: 1) What is the current context for pension reform in Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States given their histories? 2) Is the necessary (for achieving specific minimum levels of sustainability, adequacy, and coverage) pension reform politically feasible? 3) How do the characteristics of each reform affect its political feasibility? Corollary: The modification of which channel (benefits, contributions, retirement age) is perceived as more politically feasible for diverse stakeholders? The methodology chosen provides a timely picture of the context surrounding potential pension reforms in the three case studies. In Mexico, credit-claiming and the interests of private stakeholders explain the success of recent pension reforms, and partisan politics are the key determinants for future fiscal changes. For the United Kingdom, the institutionalist literature helps explain the reasons for the relatively easier reform avenues; the most politically feasible reforms are those in the private sector, while the housing market is of key importance for pensions. In the United States, the institutionalist literature and the framework of blame avoidance also help explain the current legislative gridlock and the reasons why no major reform has been enacted for decades. For Mexico and the United Kingdom there exist politically feasible reforms, notably a modification of the retirement age channel, that can increase the system’s sustainability while maintaining income adequacy and coverage; whereas based on the current context of extreme polarisation and legislative gridlock, there do not seem to exist politically feasible pension reforms that preserve the structure of Social Security in the United States. The dissertation brings the lens of political feasibility to bear on a previously technical literature on the structure of the pension systems in the three countries, and thus on the feasibility of reform to deliver financial sustainability, adequacy of retirement incomes, and adequate coverage of the old age population. It identifies the feasible routes for reform in Mexico and the United Kingdom, but concludes that the political economy context the United States has reached rules out feasible reforms of its current pension structures.

Thermostatic loads are expected to support the transition to low-carbon systems by providing an array of ancillary services. The delivery of energy-intensive services requires the thermostatic appliances to payback the deployed thermal energy via extra power consumption at a later time. This is made available by conventional generators providing contingency reserve. Previous works acknowledged the interplay between secondary response and contingency reserve. However, the structure of the payback period was fixed and did not fully consider the capabilities of generators providing contingency reserve, e.g., modelling only spinning generators while neglecting standing units. This paper introduces a novel methodology that allows to optimally coordinate the energy recovery of thermostatic loads and the allocation of contingency reserve among spinning and standing units. To do so, the commitment times and structures of secondary response and contingency reserve can be optimally chosen depending on system needs and current availabilities at each time step. The model is applied to the Great Britain network, which is connected to the power system in Continental Europe via a high-voltage direct-current link. Results illustrate the techno-economic advantages stemming from the proposed methodology.

CRF is recognised for its actions on pituitary ACTH release, but also has direct effects within the brain which are important in mediating physiological responses to stress. Behavioral effects of CRF include increased locomotor activity and inhibition of food intake and its actions on metabolism are mediated mainly by activation of the sympathetic nervous system. CRF appears to be important in the regulation of energy balance and body weight, influencing both food intake and sympathetically-mediated thermogenesis. A defect in the synthesis or release of CRF has been implicated in the development of obesity in laboratory animals, since the condition is alleviated by adrenalectomy, hypophysectomy or exogenous CRF treatment. Recent data have revealed an additional role for CRF as a mediator of the neuroendocrine and metabolic responses to immune signals, particularly cytokines. The central actions of CRF are independent of the pituitary but may involve release of proopiomelanocortin products within the brain. CRF is thus emerging as an important integrator of the physiological responses to stress, infection and immunity, a finding which may have important implications for future therapies.

Seaweed fibre is usually discarded as biomass waste after extraction of useful ingredients from seaweed. However this seaweed fibre, a natural abundant cellulose material with uniform dimensions 10 times smaller than other plant-based fibre can be utilized as electrode material for energy storage. In this work, we converted seaweed fibre into conductive carbon electrodes by a thermal carbonisation method. The morphology, chemical composition and conductivity are highly influenced by the carbonisation temperature. In comparison to other biomass sources such as cotton pulp, seaweed fibre is finer, smoother and more conductive at low carbonisation temperature. These carbonized seaweeds were then used as a supercapacitor, giving a high supercapacitance (226.3 Fg−1) at the carbonisation temperature of 900°C, and good stability within 2400 cycles. This specific capacitance is significantly higher than values obtained from filter paper or cotton pulp.

Abstract MCM-22 zeolite samples, having different Si/Al ratios, have been studied for the fast-pyrolysis of acid-washed wheat straw at two catalytic pyrolysis temperatures aimed to the production of partially upgraded bio-oil. The best combination of bio-oil deoxygenation activity and energy yield is obtained when the catalytic bed was operated at 450 °C using the MCM-22 sample with the lowest Al content (Si/Al = 40). Interestingly, the increase in the reaction temperature results in a lower amount of coke deposited over the zeolite. On the other hand, reducing the zeolite Si/Al ratio had a negative effect as a higher concentration of acid sites promotes non-desired reactions: severe cracking of the bio-oil vapours, leading to the enhanced production of gaseous hydrocarbons, and coke formation. Coke produced over MCM-22 zeolite exhibits high oxygen content, whereas the bio-oil fraction presents a high concentration of oxygenated aromatics. These results denote the limited aromatization activity of MCM-22 zeolite for producing aromatic hydrocarbons, in particular when compared with ZSM-5, being of interest for the selective production of phenolic compounds by biomass catalytic pyrolysis.

Untangling the complex effects that different air pollution and climate change factors cause to forest ecosystems is challenging. Supersites, that is, comprehensive measurement sites where research and monitoring of the whole soil–plant–atmosphere system can be carried out, are suggested as a refinement of the current monitoring and research efforts in Europe. This chapter identifies and discusses key measurements to be carried out at such supersites, with a focus on four topical subjects: the carbon, nitrogen, ozone and water budgets. This kind of holistic approach is vital to a realistic translation of the ongoing changes in climate and air quality into research on the impacts on forest ecosystems. Such an integrated effort requires a considerable use of resources at highly instrumented measurement sites and can only be achieved by building on existing infrastructures.

Abstract Sedimentological, limnological and palynological analyses of a sediment core from a lowland site in West-Java, Indonesia, provide a detailed palaeoenvironmental record for the Late Glacial and the Holocene. The record suggests open vegetation under inferred drier climatic conditions for the Late Glacial. However, there is no unequivocal evidence for cooler conditions at this time. The onset of the Holocene coincides with a change to more humid climatic conditions, with the development of a fern-rich closed forest vegetation type. Dramatic changes in diatom community composition provide a striking record of habitat change associated with lake shallowing, but this process appears to be a result of basin in-filling rather than variations in precipitation/evaporation balance associated with climatic fluctuations. Evidence for human impact on the vegetation development is restricted to the last few hundred years.