scholarly journals The rise of compound warm-season droughts in Europe

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. eabb9668
Author(s):  
Yannis Markonis ◽  
Rohini Kumar ◽  
Martin Hanel ◽  
Oldrich Rakovec ◽  
Petr Máca ◽  
...  

Drought is one of the main threats to food security and ecosystem productivity. During the past decades, Europe has experienced a series of droughts that caused substantial socioeconomic losses and environmental impacts. A key question is whether there are some similar characteristics in these droughts, especially when compared to the droughts that occurred further in the past. Answering this question is impossible with traditional single-index approaches and also short-term and often spatially inconsistent records. Here, using a multidimensional machine learning–based clustering algorithm and the hydrologic reconstruction of European drought, we determine the dominant drought types and investigate the changes in drought typology. We report a substantial increase in shorter warm-season droughts that are concurrent with an increase in potential evapotranspiration. If shifts reported here persist, then we will need new adaptive water management policies and, in the long run, we may observe considerable alterations in vegetation regimes and ecosystem functioning.

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana P. Goldman ◽  
Darius N. Lakdawalla ◽  
James R. Baumgardner ◽  
Mark T. Linthicum

AbstractMedical innovation has generated significant gains in health over the past decades, but these advances have been accompanied by rapid growth in healthcare spending. Faced with a growing number of high-cost but high-impact innovations, some have argued to constrain prices for new therapies – especially through global caps on pharmaceutical spending and limits on prices for individual drugs. We show that applying this threshold to past innovations would have limited access to many highly valuable drugs such as statins and anti-retrovirals. We also argue that budget caps violate several important principles of health policy. First, budget caps treat healthcare spending as a consumption good, like going to a movie or buying a meal. However, healthcare spending should be viewed as an investment, whose benefits accrue over many years – much like spending on education. Second, budgetary cost is a poor indicator of value, thereby distorting coverage decisions. Third, affordability arguments often use a short-term horizon, thereby missing that long-term health is society’s ultimate goal. Fourth, assessments of benefit should incorporate not just the immediate clinical benefit to patients, but also long-term health improvements, cost savings, and increased productivity. Fifth, global budget caps arbitrarily anchor spending on the status quo, thereby setting too stringent a threshold for socially-desirable innovation. In sum, a solitary focus on short-term costs can be detrimental to population health in the long-run. When medical treatment decisions are properly viewed as investments, budget caps are not the answer; rather, we need to find mechanisms to encourage spending decisions based on long-term value. Only then can we generate health returns to societal investments, while also encouraging the new research and development necessary to extend the gains of recent decades.


2020 ◽  
Vol 134 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-401
Author(s):  
Carla El-Mallah ◽  
Omar Obeid

Abstract Obesity and increased body adiposity have been alarmingly increasing over the past decades and have been linked to a rise in food intake. Many dietary restrictive approaches aiming at reducing weight have resulted in contradictory results. Additionally, some policies to reduce sugar or fat intake were not able to decrease the surge of obesity. This suggests that food intake is controlled by a physiological mechanism and that any behavioural change only leads to a short-term success. Several hypotheses have been postulated, and many of them have been rejected due to some limitations and exceptions. The present review aims at presenting a new theory behind the regulation of energy intake, therefore providing an eye-opening field for energy balance and a potential strategy for obesity management.


Author(s):  
Mauricio Drelichman ◽  
Hans-Joachim Voth

This chapter addresses the sustainability of debt. A systematic analysis based on the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) methodology to evaluate fiscal sustainability shows that Castile was able to service its debts in the long run. While liquidity was scarce during periods of intense warfare, years of relative peace brought large surpluses. The data collected from Castile's annual fiscal accounts produced new yearly series of revenue, military expenditure, short-term debt issues, and short-term debt service. The resulting database spans a full 31-year period—enough to employ modern quantitative techniques. This analysis provides strong evidence that Castile's fiscal position in the second half of the sixteenth century was on a solid footing. The chapter then assesses whether the events that led to major downturns in Castile's financial fortunes could have been anticipated.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-22
Author(s):  
Towaf Totok Irawan

Until now the government and private sector have not been able to address the backlog of 13.5 million housing units for ownership status and 7.6 million units for residential status. The high price of land has led to the high price of the house so that low-income communities (MBR) is not able to reach out to make a home purchase. In addition to the high price of land, tax factors also contribute to the high price of the house. The government plans to issue a policy for the provision of tax incentives, ie abolish VAT on home-forming material transaction. This policy is expected to house prices become cheaper, so the demand for housing increases, and encourage the relevant sectors to intensify its role in the construction of houses. It is expected to replace the lost tax potential and increase incomes. Analysis of the impact of tax incentives housing to potential state revenue and an increase in people's income, especially in Papua province is using the table IO because in addition to looking at the role each sector can also see the impact on taxes (income tax 21 Pph 25 Pph, VAT), and incomes (wage). Although in the short-term impact is still small, but very rewarding in the long run. Keywords: Backlog, Gross Input, Primary Input, Intermediate Input


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dr. Kamlesh Kumar Shukla

FIIs are companies registered outside India. In the past four years there has been more than $41 trillion worth of FII funds invested in India. This has been one of the major reasons on the bull market witnessing unprecedented growth with the BSE Sensex rising 221% in absolute terms in this span. The present downfall of the market too is influenced as these FIIs are taking out some of their invested money. Though there is a lot of value in this market and fundamentally there is a lot of upside in it. For long-term value investors, there’s little because for worry but short term traders are adversely getting affected by the role of FIIs are playing at the present. Investors should not panic and should remain invested in sectors where underlying earnings growth has little to do with financial markets or global economy.


Author(s):  
Brad Partridge ◽  
Wayne Hall

Concussion management policies have become a major priority worldwide for sports that involve frequent collisions between participants because repeated head trauma has been associated with long-term cognitive impairments, mental health problems, and some forms of neurological degeneration. A number of concussion management policies have been developed by professional bodies and subsequently adopted by various sporting leagues. These have offered little guidance on how to navigate ethical issues in identifying and managing concussion. This chapter discusses ethical issues that arise in the diagnosis of concussion, debates about the longer-term consequences of repeated concussion injuries, and the design and implementation of policies that aim to prevent and manage concussion injuries in sporting matches.


Author(s):  
Carrie Figdor

Chapter 9 presents the idea that Literalism undermines current social and moral boundaries for moral status. Possession of psychological capacities, moral standing, and respectful treatment are a standard package deal. So either many more beings enjoy moral status than we now think, or the relative superiority of human moral status over other beings is diminished. It introduces the role of psychological ascriptions in drawing social and moral boundaries by examining dehumanization and anthropomorphism. It argues that in the short term Literalism does not motivate us to do more than make minor adjustments to current moral boundaries. We can distinguish the kinds of psychological capacities that matter for moral status from the kinds that best divide nature at its joints. In the long run, however, Literalism prompts us to reconsider the anthropocentric standards that govern current moral boundaries.


CNS Spectrums ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 440-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Fawcett

What have you heard or read over the past 10 years that has improved you ability to assess and manage suicide risk in your patients?There has been a paucity of data. What little data there is reviewed in this month's articles.They highlight findings that you should know about. Clinicians seem to cling to the familiar, unless some intense marketing is done.For instance, are you aware that the current evidence shows that a denial of suicide thoughts, plans, or intent—even a contract for safety—means absolutely nothing in the absence of a full suicide risk assessment?Yet clinicians seem to rely on these ’reassurances“ from their patients and are shocked when the patient later commits suicide. Why should a patient who is deciding that life is too painful to live tell you the truth? Robert I. Simon, MD, and Daniel W. Shuman, JD, review these facts.Are you aware that severe psychic anxiety, panic attacks, agitation, and severe insomnia often precede suicide within hours, days, or weeks and can be rapidly modified with treatment?On the other hand, standard risk factors for suicide such as suicidal ideation, hopelessness, and past suicidal attempts are not good predictors of suicide in the short term. A suicide plan, recent high intent attempt, or refusal to contract for safety may well indicate immediate risk, but a denial of suicidal ideation or intent and a contract for no harm mean absolutely nothing without a full suicide assessment that takes current clinical status, past suicidal tendencies, social support, and willingness to accept help into account.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5024
Author(s):  
 Vítor Manuel de Sousa Gabriel ◽  
María Mar Miralles-Quirós ◽  
José Luis Miralles-Quirós

This paper analyses the links established between environmental indices and the oil price adopting a double perspective, long-term and short-term relationships. For that purpose, we employ the Bounds Test and bivariate conditional heteroscedasticity models. In the long run, the pattern of behaviour of environmental indices clearly differed from that of the oil prices, and it was not possible to identify cointegrating vectors. In the short-term, it was possible to conclude that, in contemporaneous terms, the variables studied tended to follow similar paths. When the lag of the oil price variable was considered, the impacts produced on the stock market sectors were partially of a negative nature, which allows us to suppose that this variable plays the role of a risk factor for environmental investment.


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