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Autonomous instruments, powered using solar panels and batteries, are a vital tool for long-term scientific observation of the polar regions. However, winter conditions, with low temperatures and prolonged lack of sunlight, make power system design for these regions challenging. Minimising winter power consumption is vital to successful operation, but power consumption data supplied by equipment manufacturers can be confusing or misleading. We measured the night consumption (power consumption in the absence of sunlight) of 16 commercially available solar regulators and compared the results to the manufacturers' reported values. We developed a simple model to predict the maximum depth of discharge of a battery bank, for given values of regulator and instrument power consumption, solar panel size, location, and battery capacity. We use this model to suggest the minimum battery capacity required to continuously power a typical scientific installation in a polar environment, consisting of a single data logger (12 mW power consumption) powered by a 12 V battery bank and 20 W solar panel, for eight different types of solar regulator. Most of the tested solar regulators consumed power at or below the manufacturer's reported values, although two significantly exceeded them. For our modelled scenario, our results suggest that current consumption may be reduced by two orders of magnitude (from 23 to 0.1 mA) through careful choice of solar regulator, and the mass of the battery required for year-round operation may thus be reduced from 45 to 1.5 kg, a factor of 26×. These results demonstrate that choice of solar regulator can significantly increase the chances of successful year-round data collection from a polar environment, eases deployment and reduces costs.

Radio-echo sounding is a standard technique for imaging the englacial stratigraphy of glaciers and ice sheets. In most cases, internal reflection horizons (IRHs) represent former glacier surfaces, comprise information about past accumulation and ice deformation, and enable the linking of ice core chronologies. IRHs in the lower third of the ice column are often difficult to detect or coherently trace. In the polar ice sheets, progress in IRH detection has been made by using multistatic, phase-coherent radars, enabling focused synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processing. However, these radar systems are often not suitable for deployment on mountain glaciers. We present a proof-of-concept study for a lightweight, phase-coherent and ground-based radar system, based on the phase-sensitive radio-echo sounder (pRES). To improve the detectability of IRHs we additionally adapted a layer-optimized SAR processing scheme to this setup. We showcase the system capability at Colle Gnifetti, Switzerland and Italy, where specular reflections are now apparent down to the base of the glacier. Compared to previously deployed impulse radar systems, with the mobile pRES the age of the oldest continuously traceable IRH could be increased from 78±12 to 288±35 a. Corresponding reflection mechanisms for this glacier are linked to stratified acidic impurities which in the upper part were deposited at a higher rate due to increased industrial activity in the area. Possible improvements to the system are discussed. If successfully implemented, these may provide a new way to map the deep internal structure of Colle Gnifetti and other mountain glaciers more extensively in future deployments.

Three codes are reported for storing written information in DNA. We refer to these codes as the Huffman code, the comma code and the alternating code. The Huffman code was devised using Huffman's algorithm for constructing economical codes. The comma code uses a single base to punctuate the message, creating an automatic reading frame and DNA which is obviously artificial. The alternating code comprises an alternating sequence of purines and pyrimidines, again creating DNA that is clearly artificial. The Huffman code would be useful for routine, short-term storage purposes, supposing--not unrealistically--that very fast methods for assembling and sequencing large pieces of DNA can be developed. The other two codes would be better suited to archiving data over long periods of time (hundreds to thousands of years).

Governments use a wide variety of policy instruments to achieve their goals, including price signals, constraints on firms’ behavior, and direct action. The consequences of such policies depend on how they interact with the underlying economic system. Measuring the impact of an intervention can be difficult, especially when the policy was not designed or implemented with evaluation in mind. Moreover, it is often ex ante prediction of a policy’s costs and benefits, rather than ex post evaluation, which is relevant for decision making. This dissertation examines issues related to both evaluating and predicting the effects of regulations in two important contexts: financial inclusion and industrial carbon emissions.Mandates requiring banks to open a minimum share of their new branches in un- banked villages have been a pillar of the Indian government’s rural financial inclusion strategy for decades. By explicitly linking branch licenses in banked municipalities to rural branch expansion, these mandates increase the costs of entry in banked markets and may reduce access there. In the first two chapters of this dissertation, I study the impact of a 25% unbanked share mandate implemented in July 2011 on the size, geographic distribution, and profitability of the national branch network.In the first chapter, I describe the context of the reform and use novel, comprehensive records of branch licenses, to document the scope of the post-reform rural branch expansion. Over 11,000 unbanked villages, home to more than 40 million people, were entered in the five years post-reform. These villages are substantially smaller, poorer, and more remote than those entered prior to the reform. In the second chapter, I use an economic model of branch entry to estimate banks’ profits, compute their regulatory compliance costs, and simulate equilibrium entry and profits under counterfactual policies. Compared to a free-entry counterfactual, the mandate reduces total profits from new branches by about 26% and shifts entry from banked to un- banked markets roughly one-for-one, with disproportionate losses in smaller banked markets. These costs increase rapidly in the mandatory unbanked share. Allowing banks to comply by trading permits in a competitive market modestly increases profits but does not result in net new entry.In the final chapter, co-authored with Katherine Wagner, we study the implications of low energy prices today for industrial energy efficiency and climate policy in the future. If adjustment costs mediate manufacturing plants’ responses to increases in energy prices, incumbents may be limited in their ability to re-optimize energy-inefficient production technologies chosen based on past market incentives. Using U.S. Census data and quasi-experimental variation in state energy prices, we first show that the initial electricity prices that manufacturing plants pay in their first year of operations are important determinants of long-run energy intensity. Plants that open when the prices of electricity and fossil fuel inputs into electricity are low consume more energy throughout their lifetime, regardless of current electricity prices. We then measure the relative contributions of initial productivity and capital adjustment frictions to creating this “technology lock-in” by estimating a model of plant input choices. We find that lock-in can be largely explained by persistent differences in the relative productivity of energy inputs chosen at entry. We discuss how these long-run effects of low entry-year energy prices increase the emissions costs of delayed action on carbon policy.Cost-benefit analysis of existing and proposed regulations is central to the policymaking process. This dissertation aims to provide useful insights on how recent advances in industrial organization can inform these analyses.

The bankruptcy court found that the facts underlying the debtor's breach-of-contract judgment showed that he caused a willful and malicious injury, and the Eighth Circuit affirmed.19 The debtor, an engineer, had signed an employment contract prohibiting solicitation of business from the employer's customers or competing within 100 miles for three years if he was fired or resigned. \"28 Looking to Missouri law on conversion and breach of fiduciary duty, the bankruptcy court found that the debtor's conduct \"echoe[d] of conversion or some other tort. \"29 The debtor appealed to the district court, which affirmed the bankruptcy court. Among other things, the debtor argued that the bankruptcy court had improperly interpreted 523(a)(6)'s exception to discharge by construing it broadly enough to cover what the bankruptcy court described as conduct that \"echoes of conversion or some other tort.

Sustainability is a framework for exploring a community within its broadest possible context, and looking at hazards and disasters as integral parts of the much larger environment in which it exists. Community represents an integrated paradigm of social, cultural, economic, and environmental spheres in which people participate simultaneously. As a result, physical and mental disaster health impacts are inseparable. To build surge capacity, hospitals need to move from theory to practice suggesting a resource-based, community participatory model. By partnering with community resources, the hospital becomes more resilient and, in the case of mental health and psychosocial impacts, the hospital facility and the continuation of its services become a fundamental part of the resiliency of the community. A disaster mental health pedagogical intervention was piloted by the Center for Integrated Disaster Preparedness and the Colorado Hospital Association and an evaluation of the intervention was conducted to determine strengths and gaps in resources that remain. The results suggest that resources in the community represent the most readily available opportunities for capacity building and for bridging many gaps. The dynamics of supporting relationships will be explored and two case studies, a community hospital and teaching hospital, will be presented as examples of success.

In In re World Imports,1 the creditors sold goods \"FOB\" from the port of origin, raising the question as to whether the debtor had \"received\" the goods within 20 days of filing the bankruptcy petition. Because \"received\" is not defined in the Bankruptcy Code, courts handling this issue in the interstate - as opposed to the international - context have looked to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC)8 as being applicable in the state where the bankruptcy court is located to provide guidance on the meaning of \"received.