Large UK retailers' initiatives to reduce consumers' emissions: a systematic assessment

In the interest of climate change mitigation, policy makers, businesses and non-governmental organisations have devised initiatives designed to reduce in-use emissions whilst, at the same time, the number of energy-consuming products in homes, and household energy consumption, is increasing. Retailers are important because they are at the interface between manufacturers of products and consumers and they supply the vast majority of consumer goods in developed countries like the UK, including energy using products. Large retailers have a consistent history of corporate responsibility reporting and have included plans and actions to influence consumer emissions within them. This paper adapts two frameworks to use them for systematically assessing large retailers’ initiatives aimed at reducing consumers’ carbon emissions. The Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) is adapted and used to analyse the strategic scope and coherence of these initiatives in relation to the businesses’ sustainability strategies. The ISM ‘Individual Social Material’ framework is adapted and used to analyse how consumer behaviour change mechanisms are framed by retailers. These frameworks are used to analyse eighteen initiatives designed to reduce consumer emissions from eight of the largest UK retail businesses, identified from publicly available data. The results of the eighteen initiatives analysed show that the vast majority were not well planned nor were they strategically coherent. Secondly, most of these specific initiatives relied solely on providing information to consumers and thus deployed a rather narrow range of consumer behaviour change mechanisms. The research concludes that leaders of retail businesses and policy makers could use the FSSD to ensure processes, and measurements are comprehensive and integrated, in order to increase the materiality and impact of their initiatives to reduce consumer emissions in use. Furthermore, retailers could benefit from exploring different models of behaviour change from the ISM framework in order to access a wider set of tools for transformative system change

‘Low Income Inequality, High Wealth Inequality'

Inequality studies tend to assume a positive correlation between income and wealth inequality. We doubt whether this holds for Rhineland welfare states as they seem to combine low income inequality with high wealth inequality levels. We hypothesize that publicly funded life-time income security, which is so typical for Rhineland welfare states, enhances private debt creation, while the redistributive taxes required to finance this system are targeting income rather than wealth

Bystander responses to a violent incident in an immersive virtual environment

Under what conditions will a bystander intervene to try to stop a violent attack by one person on another? It is generally believed that the greater the size of the crowd of bystanders, the less the chance that any of them will intervene. A complementary model is that social identity is critical as an explanatory variable. For example, when the bystander shares common social identity with the victim the probability of intervention is enhanced, other things being equal. However, it is generally not possible to study such hypotheses experimentally for practical and ethical reasons. Here we show that an experiment that depicts a violent incident at life-size in immersive virtual reality lends support to the social identity explanation. 40 male supporters of Arsenal Football Club in England were recruited for a two-factor between-groups experiment: the victim was either an Arsenal supporter or not (in-group/out-group), and looked towards the participant for help or not during the confrontation. The response variables were the numbers of verbal and physical interventions by the participant during the violent argument. The number of physical interventions had a significantly greater mean in the ingroup condition compared to the out-group. The more that participants perceived that the Victim was looking to them for help the greater the number of interventions in the in-group but not in the out-group. These results are supported by standard statistical analysis of variance, with more detailed findings obtained by a symbolic regression procedure based on genetic programming. Verbal interventions made during their experience, and analysis of post-experiment interview data suggest that in-group members were more prone to confrontational intervention compared to the out-group who were more prone to make statements to try to diffuse the situation

A multicentre double-blinded randomized controlled trial on the efficacy of laser-assisted hatching in patients with repeated implantation failure undergoing IVF or ICSI

STUDY QUESTION: Does assisted hatching increase the cumulative live birth rate in subfertile couples with repeated implantation failure? SUMMARY ANSWER: This study showed no evidence of effect for assisted hatching as an add-on in subfertile couples with repeated implantation failure. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY: The efficacy of assisted hatching, with regard to the live birth rate has not been convincingly demonstrated in randomized trials nor meta-analyses. It is suggested though that especially poor prognosis women, e.g. women with repeated implantation failure, might benefit most from assisted hatching. STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION: The study was designed as a double-blinded, multicentre randomized controlled superiority trial. In order to demonstrate a statistically significant absolute increase in live birth rate of 10% after assisted hatching, 294 participants needed to be included per treatment arm, being a total of 588 subfertile couples. Participants were included and randomized from November 2012 until November 2017, 297 were allocated to the assisted hatching arm of the study and 295 to the control arm. Block randomization in blocks of 20 participants was applied and randomization was concealed from participants, treating physicians, and laboratory staff involved in the embryo transfer procedure. Ovarian hyperstimulation, oocyte retrieval, laboratory procedures, embryo selection for transfer and cryopreservation, the transfer itself, and luteal support were performed according to local protocols and were identical in both the intervention and control arm of the study with the exception of the assisted hatching procedure which was only performed in the intervention group. The laboratory staff performing the assisted hatching procedure was not involved in the embryo transfer itself. PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS: Participants were eligible for inclusion in the study after having had either at least two consecutive fresh IVF or ICSI embryo transfers, including the transfer of frozen and thawed embryos originating from those fresh cycles, and which did not result in a pregnancy or as having had at least one fresh IVF or ICSI transfer and at least two frozen embryo transfers with embryos originating from that fresh cycle which did not result in a pregnancy. The study was performed at the laboratory sites of three tertiary referral hospitals and two university medical centres in the Netherlands. MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE: The cumulative live birth rate per started cycle, including the transfer of fresh and subsequent frozen/thawed embryos if applicable, resulted in 77 live births in the assisted hatching group (n = 297, 25.9%) and 68 live births in the control group (n = 295, 23.1%). This proved to be statistically not significantly different (relative risk: 1.125, 95% CI: 0.847 to 1.494, P = 0.416). LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION: There was a small cohort of subfertile couples that after not achieving an ongoing pregnancy, still had cryopreserved embryos in storage at the endpoint of the trial, i.e. 1 year after the last randomization. It cannot be excluded that the future transfer of these frozen/thawed embryos increases the cumulative live birth rate in either or both study arms. Next, at the start of this study, there was no international consensus on the definition of repeated implantation failure. Therefore, it cannot be excluded that assisted hatching might be effective in higher order repeated implantation failures. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS: This study demonstrated no evidence of a statistically significant effect for assisted hatching by increasing live birth rates in subfertile couples with repeated implantation failure, i.e. the couples which, based on meta-analyses, are suggested to benefit most from assisted hatching. It is therefore suggested that assisted hatching should only be offered if information on the absence of evidence of effect is provided, at no extra costs and preferably only in the setting of a clinical trial taking cost-effectiveness into account.None. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: Netherlands Trial Register (NTR 3387, NL 3235, https://www.clinicaltrialregister.nl/nl/trial/26138). TRIAL REGISTRATION DATE: 6 April 2012. DATE OF FIRST PATIENT’S ENROLMENT: 28 November 2012.</p

National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic

Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-May 2020). Respondents who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies. Results were similar for representative and non-representative national samples. Study 2 (N = 42 countries) conceptually replicated the central finding using aggregate indices of national identity (obtained using the World Values Survey) and a measure of actual behaviour change during the pandemic (obtained from Google mobility reports). Higher levels of national identification prior to the pandemic predicted lower mobility during the early stage of the pandemic (r = −0.40). We discuss the potential implications of links between national identity, leadership, and public health for managing COVID-19 and future pandemics

Quantifying methane vibrational and rotational temperature with Raman scattering

This work describes the theoretical basis and implementation of the measurement of vibrational (T vib) and rotational (T rot) temperatures in CH4 by fitting spontaneous Raman scattering spectra in the Pentad region. This method could be applied for thermal equilibrium temperature measurements applications, e.g. in combustion, or vibrational-rotational non-equilibrium applications, such as in plasma chemistry. The method of calculating these temperatures is validated against known temperature thermal equilibrium spectra up to 860 K from published data, giving an estimated relative error of 10%. This demonstrates that both the calculated stick spectrum and the algorithm to determine T vib and T rot for CH4 is robust to 860 K, but we expect it is valid to 1500 K. Additionally, a number of non-equilibrium spectra generated with a pulsed microwave plasma are fitted to find T vib and T rot, further demonstrating the applicability of this method in fitting non-equilibrium spectra.</p