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Since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis many have opinionated on how it may affect society’s response to climate change. Two key questions here are how COVID-19 is expected to influence climate action by citizens and by the government. We answer these by applying topic modelling to textual responses from a survey of Spanish citizens. The identified topics tend to be more negative than positive, and more optimistic concerning future climate action by citizens. Positive views involve increasing pro-environmental behavior and are more common among younger, higher educated and male respondents as well as among those who perceive climate change as a serious threat or positively assessed COVID-19 confinement. Negative topics express concern that financial resources for climate action will be limited due to a focus on healthcare and economic recovery. In addition, they mention government mismanagement and waste due to use of protective measures like masks and gloves as impediments to effective climate action.

Alcohol has potential deleterious effects on donor heart function. This study was conducted in rats to determine whether long-term alcohol ingestion produces impaired hemodynamic performance while maintaining a normal left ventricular ejection fraction in donor hearts before transplantation and whether donor cardiac function is affected after heart transplantation.Rats fed 30% alcohol in their drinking water for 12 weeks were compared with rats fed a normal diet. Left ventricular ejection fraction was measured by echocardiography with Simpson and single plane Dodge formulas in living sedated rats after 10 and 12 weeks of alcohol feeding. Explanted heart function was assessed before and 3 days after heterotopic heart transplantation (no immunosuppression) with a Langendorff preparation.Blood ethanol levels at 4 and 8 weeks were 0.08 +/- 0.04 and 0.08 +/- 0.09 gm/dl. Left ventricular ejection fraction was similar in the group fed an alcohol diet for 12 weeks when compared with the control group (65.4% +/- 1.6% vs. 66.5% +/- 2.9%, p = 0.33). Explanted alcohol-fed hearts before transplantation had significantly lower maximum and developed pressures and had a blunted response to 0.1 ml 10(-9) mol/L isoproterenol. After transplantation alcohol-fed hearts had significantly lower maximum and developed pressures and decreased maximum rates of pressure rise and pressure decline. Allografts (ACI to Lewis) exhibited decreased function in comparison with isografts (ACI to ACI).Alcohol feeding for 12 weeks in rats does not affect pretransplantation left ventricular ejection fraction, but it impairs explanted heart function, both before and after transplantation, resulting in a subclinical cardiomyopathy that is worsened by the presence of allograft rejection. Long-term alcohol exposure and rejection have independent, additive detrimental effects on left ventricular performance of the transplanted heart. Alcohol-exposed hearts may not be suitable donors.

Abstract Background In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the production and use of woodfuel remains an important socio-economic activity with more than 70% of the population relying on woodfuel as their primary household energy source. Despite their socio-economic significance, woodfuel value chains are often viewed negatively due to their association with detrimental health and environmental impacts. However, the lack of sound evidence and limited understanding of the role of contextual factors in influencing the various impacts of woodfuel value chains have prevented the formulation of properly guided policy interventions. Thus the objective of this systematic map is to provide a comprehensive review of the environmental, socio-economic, and health impacts of woodfuel value chains across SSA. Methods The search strategy for this review map was defined in a peer-reviewed protocol and refined by iterative testing. Search strings were composed of population, intervention, and location terms and combined using Boolean operators. The bibliographic databases Web of Science, Scopus, and CAB Abstracts were used as the main sources of literature for this review, and a total of 4728 results were initially retrieved. Following title and abstract screening, 659 entered full text screening. Critical appraisal of 219 articles led to the exclusion of studies that did not set meet quality criteria for this map, resulting in a final total of 131 articles for inclusion in data extraction and analysis. Results From the 131 included articles, 152 individual studies were identified during data extraction. Studies came from 26 of the 49 Sub Saharan African countries, with a particular preponderance of articles published in the last 10 years. Critical appraisal found significant weaknesses in the experimental design of woodfuel value chain studies with the exception of health impact studies, which frequently utilized controls or other relevant comparators. Findings suggest that woodfuel value chains have environmental, socioeconomic and health consequences with the frequent presence of trade-offs. The reporting of contextual factors in the studies challenge the widespread perception of deforestation as being directly caused by bush fires, overgrazing and woodcutting. Instead, agricultural expansion (which often includes forest clearing) and pre-existing biophysical factors were the most frequently cited factors in shaping environmental outcomes. Conclusions This systematic map suggests that there are environmental, socioeconomic and health consequences associated with woodfuel value chains in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the literature also shows a weak and geographically limited evidence base to justify the above claims. We argue that policy formulation processes targeting woodfuels in SSA require more solid, coherent and broad body of knowledge, especially for such a vital sector in rural economies. Thus, there is an urgent need to design and undertake research using robust methodologies, at appropriate scales that further takes into account the interrelationships between environmental and socio-economic outcomes in order to generate substantial and reliable evidence for informed policy formulation.

The provision of basic services suffers from a multitude of sustainability challenges in many cities of low-income countries. Sanitation provision faces particular challenges in the form of environmental contamination, high costs, and large inequalities among urban residents. In recent years an increasing number of innovations in on-site systems have been developed, which have not yet evolved into fully functional alternatives to the existing regimes. We study three prominent recent on-site sanitation initiatives in informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya that aimed at developing entire “sanitation value chains”, which we conceptualize as an emerging Technological Innovation System (TIS). The analysis leads us to propose alternative governance modes for the TIS to overcome system failures such as capability, coordination and institutional barriers. Conceptually, the paper extends conventional TIS analyses towards entire value chains, enabling a wide range of transition processes to be addressed beyond informal settlements and low-income countries.

Bioavailability has been used as a key indicator in chemical risk assessment yet poorly quantified risk factor. Worldwide, the framework used to assess potentially contaminated sites is similar, and the decisions are based on threshold contaminant concentration. The uncertainty in the definition and measurement of bioavailability had limited its application to environment risk assessment and remediation. Last ten years have seen major developments in bioavailability research and acceptance. The use of bioavailability in the decision making process as one of the key variables has led to a gradual shift towards a more sophisticated risk-based approach. Now a days, many decision makers and regulatory organisations 'more readily accept' this concept. Bioavailability should be the underlying basis for risk assessment and setting remediation goals of those contaminated sites that pose risk to environmental and human health. This paper summarises the potential application of contaminant bioavailability and bioaccessibility to the assessment of sites affected by different contaminants, and the potential for this to be the underlying basis for sustainable risk assessment and remediation in Europe, North America and Australia over the coming decade.

The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of corporate social responsibility on firm performance using a longitudinal design in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The reported study was conducted in a Sub-Saharan African developing country, Zambia. Data were collected from 153 entrepreneurs in two surveys and changes in CSR and firm performance measures were analysed over a 12-month period using SmartPLS structural equation modelling. The findings show that the relationship between CSR and financial performance is significant. Further, the association between CSR and the two measures of firm performance (corporate reputation and employee commitment) was only partially significant over time. We discuss the relevance of these results for entrepreneurs, researchers and policy makers in understanding the outcomes of sustainability practices in SMEs in developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.