Addressing the Challenge of Sustainable Development: The Need for a Global Clean Energy Treaty

If the main road to global environmental law began at Stockholm in 1972, it could be argued it came to an end at the neighbouring Scandinavian city of Copenhagen in 2009. Despite a return from the brink of collapse of the multilateral environmental agreement (MEA) negotiating system in relation to climate change, and possibly more widely, in Cancun in 2010 and Durban in 2011, only tentative, modest steps have been taken towards a post-Kyoto regime at these meetings. The negotiations seem destined to limp slowly forward for some years yet. The failure of the international negotiating process to produce a post-Kyoto regime that embodies commitments on a global scale to the effective reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reflects a deeper malaise in global environmental law and governance. Essentially, the global treaty system has failed to establish and implement the concept of sustainable development by establishing appropriate limits on the underlying drivers of unsustainability – namely, unconstrained economic growth, consumption, population growth and poverty. The 2012 Rio + 20 Conference is very much a step in the right direction in addressing this challenge by seeking to focus on two key themes – the “green economy” and global environmental governance. But, just as the original Rio Earth Summit Conference in 1992 saw the substantial diminution of a proposed, binding Earth Charter by producing instead the soft-law Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, there are strong concerns that the Rio +20 conference will fail to achieve a consensus on the kind of path-breaking change in the direction of human civilisation that is needed to avoid a major ecological crisis, or even collapse, within the next one to two generations. Whilst there is no single, simple solution to the challenge of addressing the unsustainability of humanity’s current mode of existence on Earth, there are two aspects of this existence that cry out for urgent attention and which, if effectively addressed, could greatly contribute to the goal of sustainable development, or “sustainability” as it might now be more appropriately termed. The first relates to the production and consumption of energy, which underpins most human activity and particularly represents the single, greatest source of GHG emissions. The second is food production and distribution, where the limits of the Green Revolution are being reached at the same time as current levels of food production are being threatened by the loss of fertile farmlands to urbanisation, degradation and desertification, and through the utilisation of food crops for new generation biofuels. This paper will address the first of these two areas, by exploring the option of developing a new, global treaty on renewable (or “clean”) energy. The proposed treaty would be based on firm commitments by States, in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibility, to achieve a transition from dependence on fossil fuels to a decarbonised, clean energy economy. It would thereby contribute to both of the key goals of Rio + 20 – by enhancing a shift by States to a green economy based firmly on renewable energy and also by providing significant, fresh impetus to the stalled global effort to reduce GHG emissions substantially over the next 10-20 years (thereby restoring or reinforcing confidence in global environmental governance). In proposing a global clean energy treaty, the paper will seek to identify and address the obstacles that quite obviously need to be overcome. These include technical and economic constraints that it is often suggested prevent the uptake of renewable energy on the scale required to replace fossil fuels and to meet ongoing energy demand. It will also address the common excuse of “treaty fatigue” as a reason for not pursuing new MEA’s and focussing instead on enhancing the “synergies” between existing MEA’s. Its conclusion is that these obstacles are surmountable, particularly if the concept of a global clean energy treaty is presented as an opportunity for a positive step forward towards a new, visionary future for humanity, in contrast to the unfortunate depiction of the currently proposed climate change regime, involving targets and timetables for GHG reductions, as a negative and uneconomic constraint on human activity. Environmental psychology is a critical tool in this context. If it were to be adopted, a global clean energy treaty might represent possibly the most promising and feasible pathway to avoiding extreme climate change and achieving the elusive goal of sustainability

Comment on: Randomized controlled trial of plain English and visual abstracts for disseminating surgical research via social media

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Synergisitic role of ADP and Ca2+ in diastolic myocardial stiffness

Heart failure (HF) with diastolic dysfunction has been attributed to increased myocardial stiffness that limits proper filling of the ventricle. Altered cross-bridge interaction may significantly contribute to high diastolic stiffness, but this has not been shown thus far. Cross-bridge interactions are dependent on cytosolic [Ca2+] and the regeneration of ATP from ADP. Depletion of myocardial energy reserve is a hallmark of HF leading to ADP accumulation and disturbed Ca2+-handling. Here, we investigated if ADP elevation in concert with increased diastolic [Ca2+] promotes diastolic cross-bridge formation and force generation and thereby increases diastolic stiffness. ADP dose-dependently increased force production in the absence of Ca2+ in membrane-permeabilized cardiomyocytes from human hearts. Moreover, physiological levels of ADP increased actomyosin force generation in the presence of Ca2+ both in human and rat membrane-permeabilized cardiomyocytes. Diastolic stress measured at physiological lattice spacing and 37°C in the presence of pathologicallevels of ADP and diastolic [Ca2+] revealed a 76±1% contribution of cross-bridge interaction to total diastolic stress in rat membrane-permeabilized cardiomyocytes. Inhibition of creatine kinase (CK), which increases cytosolic ADP, in enzyme-isolated intact rat cardiomyocytes impaired diastolic re-lengthening associated with diastolic Ca2+- overload. In isolated Langendorff-perfused rat hearts, CK-inhibition increased ventricular stiffness only in the presence of diastolic [Ca2+]. We propose that elevations of intracellular ADP in specific types of cardiac disease, including those where myocardial energy reserve is limited, contribute to diastolic dysfunction by recruiting cross-bridges even at low Ca2+ and thereby increase myocardial stiffness

Historical flash floods in England:new regional chronologies and database

There is increasing interest in past occurrences of flooding from intense rainfall, commonly referred to as “flash flooding,” and the associated socioeconomic consequences. Historical information can help us to place recent events in context and to understand the effect of low frequency climate variability on changing flash flood frequencies. Previous studies have focussed on fluvial flooding to reconstruct the temporal and spatial patterns of past events. Here, we provide an online flood chronology for the north and south‐west of England for flash floods, including both surface water and fluvial flooding, with coverage from ~1700 to ~2013 (http://ceg-fepsys.ncl.ac.uk/fc). The primary source of documentary material is local newspaper reports, which often give detailed descriptions of impacts. This provides a new resource to inform communities and first responders of flood risks, especially those from rapid rise in water level whose severity may be greater than those of accompanying peak flow. Examples are provided of historical flash floods that exemplify how the chronologies can help to place recent floods in the context of the preinstrumental record for: (a) more robust estimates of event return period, (b) identification of catchment or settlement susceptibility to flash flood events, and (c) characterisation of events in ungauged catchments

An autonomic performance environment for exascale

Exascale systems will require new approaches to performance observation, analysis, and runtime decision-making to optimize for performance and efficiency. The standard first-person model, in which multiple operating system processes and threads observe themselves and record first-person performance profiles or traces for offline analysis, is not adequate to observe and capture interactions at shared resources in highly concurrent, dynamic systems. Further, it does not support mechanisms for runtime adaptation. Our approach, called APEX (Autonomic Performance Environment for eXascale), provides mechanisms for sharing information among the layers of the software stack, including hardware, operating and runtime systems, and application code, both new and legacy. The performance measurement components share information across layers, merging first-person data sets with information collected by third-person tools observing shared hardware and software states at node- and global-levels. Critically, APEX provides a policy engine designed to guide runtime adaptation mechanisms to make algorithmic changes, re-allocate resources, or change scheduling rules when appropriate conditions occur

Randomised, open-label, phase II study of Gemcitabine with and without IMM-101 for advanced pancreatic cancer

Background: Immune Modulation and Gemcitabine Evaluation-1, a randomised, open-label, phase II, first-line, proof of concept study (NCT01303172), explored safety and tolerability of IMM-101 (heat-killed Mycobacterium obuense; NCTC 13365) with gemcitabine (GEM) in advanced pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Methods: Patients were randomised (2 : 1) to IMM-101 (10 mg ml−l intradermally)+GEM (1000 mg m−2 intravenously; n=75), or GEM alone (n=35). Safety was assessed on frequency and incidence of adverse events (AEs). Overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS) and overall response rate (ORR) were collected. Results: IMM-101 was well tolerated with a similar rate of AE and serious adverse event reporting in both groups after allowance for exposure. Median OS in the intent-to-treat population was 6.7 months for IMM-101+GEM v 5.6 months for GEM; while not significant, the hazard ratio (HR) numerically favoured IMM-101+GEM (HR, 0.68 (95% CI, 0.44–1.04, P=0.074). In a pre-defined metastatic subgroup (84%), OS was significantly improved from 4.4 to 7.0 months in favour of IMM-101+GEM (HR, 0.54, 95% CI 0.33–0.87, P=0.01). Conclusions: IMM-101 with GEM was as safe and well tolerated as GEM alone, and there was a suggestion of a beneficial effect on survival in patients with metastatic disease. This warrants further evaluation in an adequately powered confirmatory study