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What commonalities are there in sustainable or unsustainable heating practices in five high-income, high-emitting western European countries? What preferences do a nationally representative sample of the public in these countries hold towards low-carbon options? It is imperative that climate policy researchers and practitioners grapple with the difficulty of decarbonizing heat, which remains the largest single end-use service worldwide and which accounts about half of total final energy consumption. Based on a comparative assessment of five representative national surveys in Germany (N = 2009), Italy (N = 2039), Spain (N = 2038), Sweden (N = 2023), and the United Kingdom (N = 2000), this study explores the demographics and geography of household heat decarbonisation in Europe. By analyzing our country level data as well as our combined sample of 10,109 respondents, it investigates how people conceive of the purposes of low-carbon heat, their preferences for particular forms of heat supply, and their (at times odd) practices of heat consumption and temperature settings. Grounded in its original data, the study organizes its findings inductively across the five themes of literacy (heating knowledge, awareness and control), sustainability (heating practices, dynamics and conflicts), temperature (heating satisfaction and preferences), desirability of change (low-carbon heating priorities, business models and trust), and culture (country and national variation). The study also explores intersections between these dimensions, using multivariate analysis, as well as how preferences differ according to varying types of actors as well as geography and space. The authors gratefully acknowledge support from UK Research and Innovation through the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS), grant reference number EP/R035288/1. This paper has also received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 764025.

Although future climate is predicted to have more extreme heat conditions, the available evidence on the impact of these conditions on pregnancy length is very scarce and inconclusive.We investigated the impact of maternal short-term exposure to extreme ambient heat on the length of pregnancy.This study was based on a cohort of births that occurred in a major university hospital in Barcelona during 2001-2005. Three indicators of extreme heat conditions based on 1-day exposure to an unusually high heat-humidity index were applied. Each mother was assigned the measures made by the meteorological station closest to maternal residential postcodes. A two-stage analysis was developed to quantify the change in pregnancy length after maternal exposure to extreme heat conditions adjusted for a range of covariates. The second step was repeated for lags 0 (delivery date) to 6 days.We included data from 7,585 pregnant women in our analysis. We estimated a 5-day reduction in average gestational age at delivery after an unusually high heat-humidity index on the day before delivery.Extreme heat was associated with a reduction in the average gestational age of children delivered the next day, suggesting an immediate effect of this exposure on pregnant women. Further studies are required to confirm our findings in different settings.

The environmental profile of a dielectric-based 3D Building-Integrated Concentrating Photovoltaic(BICPV) device is investigated. Several scenarios and life-cycle impact assessment methods are adopted,including the newly-developed method ReCiPe. Multiple environmental indicators are evaluated fordifferent cities: Barcelona, Seville, Paris, Marseille, London and Aberdeen. The results from the mate-rial manufacturing phase demonstrate that the PV cells and the concentrator are the components withthe highest contribution to the total impact of the BICPV, based on ReCiPe, Eco-indicator 99, USEtox,CED (cumulative energy demand), GWP (global warming potential) according to different time hori-zons (20a, 100a, 500a) and Ecological footprint. Among the studied cities, Barcelona, Marseille andSeville present the lowest GWP and CED: less than 142 g CO2.eq/kWh and less than 2.9 MJprim/kWh,based on all the studied scenarios. Moreover, by considering 30-years lifespan, Barcelona, Marseille andSeville show 0.0107–0.0111 ReCiPe Pts/kWh while London, Paris and Aberdeen present 0.0161-0.0173ReCiPe Pts/kWh. Results about greenhouse-gas-, energy-, ReCiPe-payback times and energy-return-on-investment are also presented and critically discussed. In addition, comparisons with the literature andissues for the improvement of the environmental profile of the proposed system are included. The authors would like to thank “Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad” of Spain for the funding (grant reference ENE2013-48325-R).

I formulate and estimate a model of externalities within countriesand technological interdependence across countries. I find that externalreturns to scale to physical capital within countries are 8 percent; thata 10 percent increase of total factor productivity of a country's neighborsraises its total factor productivity by 6 percent; and that a 2 percentannual growth rate of labor productivity can be explained as an endogenousresponse to an exogenous 0.2 percent annual growth rate of total factorproductivity in the steady--state.

The neutron sensitivity of the C$_6$D$_6$ detector setup used at n_TOF for capture measurements has been studied by means of detailed GEANT4 simulations. A realistic software replica of the entire n_TOF experimental hall, including the neutron beam line, sample, detector supports and the walls of the experimental area has been implemented in the simulations. The simulations have been analyzed in the same manner as experimental data, in particular by applying the Pulse Height Weighting Technique. The simulations have been validated against a measurement of the neutron background performed with a $^\mathrm{nat}$C sample, showing an excellent agreement above 1 keV. At lower energies, an additional component in the measured $^\mathrm{nat}$C yield has been discovered, which prevents the use of $^\mathrm{nat}$C data for neutron background estimates at neutron energies below a few hundred eV. The origin and time structure of the neutron background have been derived from the simulations. Examples of the neutron background for two different samples are demonstrating the important role of accurate simulations of the neutron background in capture cross section measurements.