Evaluation Of Mitigation Strategies Research Articles

Evaluating mitigation strategies for building stocks against absolute climate targets

With the growing urgency of addressing climate change it is increasingly important that decision makers at all levels are equipped to take efficient mitigation actions. This research evaluates the potential of four mitigation strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the building stock based on a case study, and these are further evaluated in terms of alignment with the remaining global emission budget and the planetary boundary for global warming. The results cover annual emissions from 2023 to 2050 across 18 impact categories, thus highlighting possible impact burden-shifting that may occur as a result of the mitigation strategies. The results show that decarbonisation of the electricity grid delivers a substantial reduction across impact categories. However, in absolute terms, this is counteracted by the increase in building stock. The results also show that current estimates for mitigation potentials are insufficient to comply with the remaining global emission budget. Thus, mitigation strategies should be even more ambitious: constructing 80% fewer new buildings and reducing operational energy demand by 80%. These findings highlight the urgency of taking multiple actions. The increase in demand for new buildings needs to be challenged. Practice relevance Present urban mitigation strategies are inadequate for meeting the stated GHG targets. To enable informed decisions it is important to quantify the effects of different strategies. Traditional life cycle assessments have static inventories and impacts can therefore not be temporarily differentiated and transparency cannot be provided on long-term potentials. This study suggests combining material flow analysis and life cycle assessment to enable integration of dynamic parameters into the life cycle inventory. This shows how the long-term effectiveness of different mitigation strategies can be evaluated. To ensure unintended burden-shifting does not occur, results cover annual emissions from 2023 to 2050 across 18 impact categories. Furthermore, this study showcases how strategies can be designed to align with global commitments such as those set by the Paris Agreement.

A QUANTITATIVE APPROACH TO ASSESSING AND MANAGING CYBERSECURITY RISKS

Effective cybersecurity risk management requires moving beyond traditional qualitative approaches toward quantitative methods that provide greater precision and objectivity. This article explores the benefits of cyber risk quantification (CRQ), which allows organizations to numerically estimate the likelihood of potential cyber threats and calculate their financial or operational impacts. By translating risks into quantifiable terms, cyber risk quantification (CRQ) provides a standardized framework to prioritize risks based on impacts, evaluate mitigation strategies through cost-benefit analysis, and align cybersecurity practices with business objectives. The quantitative, risk-based approach elevates cybersecurity as an integral part of enterprise risk management focused on protecting critical assets. Despite its analytical rigor, the quantification process leverages proven techniques to simplify risk data into clear metrics. This enables more informed decision-making by eliminating ambiguity, reducing subjective bias, and communicating risks transparently across stakeholders using a common language of risk values.

False Electrical Capture in Prehospital Transcutaneous Pacing by Paramedics: A Case Series

Introduction The use of transcutaneous pacing (TCP) for unstable bradycardia has a class 2B recommendation from the American Heart Association. Prior studies have not adequately described the frequency or possible causes of treatment failure. EMS clinicians and leaders have reported false electrical capture as a potential cause. In this study, we aimed to describe the frequency of true electrical capture, documented verification of mechanical capture, and its association with systolic blood pressure (SBP) and survival. Methods This was a retrospective study of patients treated by an urban, hospital-based EMS network comprising two EMS agencies between March 2021 and March 2023. Inclusion criteria were adults with a heart rate of <60 bpm and attempted TCP. Variables included: initial electrocardiogram rhythm, SBP, current applied, neurological status at discharge, and diagnosis. The primary outcome was true electrical capture, defined as the presence of a visible wide QRS and T wave. This enabled calculation of false electrical capture. Additional outcomes included change in SBP and neurological status at discharge. Results 19 of the 23 (82.6%) patients who underwent TCP had false electrical capture despite all 23 having documented mechanical capture by palpated pulse. For patients with true electrical capture, the median change in SBP was +40 mmHg (IQR = 24.25, range= −12 to +49 mmHg). For patients with false electrical capture, the median change in SBP was −1 mmHg (IQR = 58.50, range= −90 to +23 mmHg). Median current for patients with true electrical capture was 95 mA (IQR = 13.75, range = 85–110) versus 70 mA (IQR = 30, range = 55–160) in those with false electrical capture. 16 (69.6%) had outcome data available. Patients with true electrical capture and outcome data (n = 2) survived to admission but only one survived to discharge with good functional capacity. Of 14 with false electrical capture and outcome data, 10 (71.4%) survived to admission; none survived to discharge with functional capacity. Conclusions These findings suggest a high proportion of patients undergoing TCP are at risk of false electrical capture despite a recorded palpable pulse. While our analysis is limited to a single EMS network, these data raise concerns regarding the incidence of prehospital false electrical capture. Further research is warranted to calculate the incidence of false electrical capture and evaluate mitigation strategies.

Resampling reduces bias amplification in experimental social networks.

Large-scale social networks are thought to contribute to polarization by amplifying people's biases. However, the complexity of these technologies makes it difficult to identify the mechanisms responsible and evaluate mitigation strategies. Here we show under controlled laboratory conditions that transmission through social networks amplifies motivational biases on a simple artificial decision-making task. Participants in a large behavioural experiment showed increased rates of biased decision-making when part of a social network relative to asocial participants in 40 independently evolving populations. Drawing on ideas from Bayesian statistics, we identify a simple adjustment to content-selection algorithms that is predicted to mitigate bias amplification by generating samples of perspectives from within an individual's network that are more representative of the wider population. In two large experiments, this strategy was effective at reducing bias amplification while maintaining the benefits of information sharing. Simulations show that this algorithm can also be effective in more complex networks.

The persistence of smoke VOCs indoors: Partitioning, surface cleaning, and air cleaning in a smoke-contaminated house.

Wildfires are increasing in frequency, raising concerns that smoke can permeate indoor environments and expose people to chemical air contaminants. To study smoke transformations in indoor environments and evaluate mitigation strategies, we added smoke to a test house. Many volatile organic compounds (VOCs) persisted days following the smoke injection, providing a longer-term exposure pathway for humans. Two time scales control smoke VOC partitioning: a faster one (1.0 to 5.2 hours) that describes the time to reach equilibrium between adsorption and desorption processes and a slower one (4.8 to 21.2 hours) that describes the time for indoor ventilation to overtake adsorption-desorption equilibria in controlling the air concentration. These rates imply that vapor pressure controls partitioning behavior and that house ventilation plays a minor role in removing smoke VOCs. However, surface cleaning activities (vacuuming, mopping, and dusting) physically removed surface reservoirs and thus reduced indoor smoke VOC concentrations more effectively than portable air cleaners and more persistently than window opening.

Norway's Climate Odyssey: Assessing Impacts, Mitigation Strategies, and Policy Responses in a Warming Arctic

Norway, a nation renowned for its dramatic landscapes, stands at the forefront of confronting the global climate crisis, particularly within the unique context of a warming Arctic. This article embarks on a comprehensive exploration of Norway's responses to the climate challenge, offering a nuanced assessment of climate change impacts, evaluation of mitigation strategies, and analysis of policy responses. The Arctic, with its iconic glaciers, fjords, and delicate ecosystems, bears witness to the unfolding narrative of climate transformation. Our assessment of climate change impacts reveals a landscape in flux, marked by melting glaciers, altered precipitation patterns, and shifting ecosystems. The article delves into the multifaceted implications of these changes, from their ecological consequences to their socio-economic effects on key sectors such as agriculture, fisheries, tourism, and infrastructure. Norway's proactive stance in mitigating climate change emerges through a rich tapestry of strategies. From the development of renewable energy sources to groundbreaking carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, the nation has harnessed innovation and sustainability to navigate the path toward a low-carbon future. Emissions reduction targets, legislative frameworks, and international collaborations align Norway's climate policies with global agreements like the Paris Agreement.

Norway's Climate Odyssey: Assessing Impacts, Mitigation Strategies, and Policy Responses in a Warming Arctic

Norway, a nation renowned for its dramatic landscapes, stands at the forefront of confronting the global climate crisis, particularly within the unique context of a warming Arctic. This article embarks on a comprehensive exploration of Norway's responses to the climate challenge, offering a nuanced assessment of climate change impacts, evaluation of mitigation strategies, and analysis of policy responses. The Arctic, with its iconic glaciers, fjords, and delicate ecosystems, bears witness to the unfolding narrative of climate transformation. Our assessment of climate change impacts reveals a landscape in flux, marked by melting glaciers, altered precipitation patterns, and shifting ecosystems. The article delves into the multifaceted implications of these changes, from their ecological consequences to their socio-economic effects on key sectors such as agriculture, fisheries, tourism, and infrastructure. Norway's proactive stance in mitigating climate change emerges through a rich tapestry of strategies. From the development of renewable energy sources to groundbreaking carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, the nation has harnessed innovation and sustainability to navigate the path toward a low-carbon future. Emissions reduction targets, legislative frameworks, and international collaborations align Norway's climate policies with global agreements like the Paris Agreement.

Decision Support Systems Based on Gaseous Emissions and Their Impact on the Sustainability Assessment at the Livestock Farm Level: An Evaluation from the User’s Side

To achieve national and global air quality and climate change objectives, the agricultural sector increasingly requires dependable decision support tools for gaseous emissions at the farm level. We evaluated thirteen greenhouse gas (GHG)-based decision support systems (DSS), considering criteria such as not only the accessibility, user-friendliness, stakeholder involvement, sustainability methodology, and modeling aspects, but also the input parameters and outputs provided, all crucial for decision making. While most DSSs provide information for facilitating their use, only four are suitable for inexperienced users, and stakeholder participation in DSS development is infrequent. The dominant methodology for farm-level GHG estimation is IPCC 2006, with quantitative models primarily used for indicators’ assessment. Scenario and contribution analyses are the prevailing decision support approaches. Soil, crop, and fertilizer types are the most implemented non-livestock-related inputs, while climate- and feed-related costs are the least required. All DSSs assess farm-level mitigation measures, but less than half offer sustainability consultation. These tools promote environmental sustainability by evaluating mitigation strategies, disseminating farm sustainability information, and guiding sustainable farm management. Yet, challenges such as disparate estimation methods, result variations, comparison difficulties, usability concerns, steep learning curves, the lack of automation, the necessity for multiple tools, the limited integration of the results, and changing regulations hinder their wider adoption.

Evaluating a Salmonella Typhimurium, Eimeria maxima, and Clostridium perfringens coinfection necrotic enteritis model in broiler chickens: repeatability, dosing, and immune outcomes

Coccidiosis and necrotic enteritis negatively impact poultry production, making challenge model repeatability important for evaluating mitigation strategies. Study objectives were: 1) evaluate Salmonella Typhimurium-Eimeria maxima-Clostridium perfringens necrotic enteritis coinfection model repeatability and 2) investigate E. maxima dose and early S. Typhimurium challenge on immune responses. Three trials using Ross 308 chicks assigned to 12 cages/trial (7 chicks/cage) in wire-floor brooders were completed. Trials 1 and 2 determined E. maxima dose for necrotic enteritis challenge in trial 3. Chicks in trials 1 and 2 were inoculated with 0 (control), 5, 15, or 25,000 sporulated E. maxima M6 oocysts on d 14 and jejunal lesion scores evaluated on d 20. In trial 3, chicks were assigned to control or necrotic enteritis challenge (42 chicks/group). Necrotic enteritis challenge chicks were inoculated with 1×105 colony forming units (CFU) S. Typhimurium on d 1, 15,000 E. maxima oocysts on d 14, and 1×108 CFU C. perfringens on d 19 and 20 with lesion scoring on d 22. Bird and feeder weights were recorded throughout each trial. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) were isolated from 1 chick/cage at baseline (all trials), 4 chicks/dose (trials 1 and 2) or 8 chicks/challenge (trial 3) 24 h post-inoculation (pi) with E. maxima for immunometabolic assays and immune cell profiling. Data were analyzed by mixed procedure (SAS 9.4) with challenge and timepoint fixed effects (P ≤ 0.05, trends 0.05 ≤ P ≤ 0.01). Inoculating chicks with 15,000 E. maxima oocysts increased d 14 to 20 FCR 79 points (trials 1 and 2; P=0.009) vs. unchallenged chicks and achieved a target lesion score of 2. While C. perfringens challenge reduced trial 3 performance, average lesion scores were <1. Salmonella inoculation on d 1 tended to increase PBMC ATP production 41.6% 24 hpi with E. maxima vs. chicks challenged with E. maxima only (P=0.06). These results provide insight for future model optimization and considerations regarding S. Typhimurium's effect on E. maxima immune response timelines.

Estimating the effectiveness of control actions on African swine fever transmission in commercial swine populations in the United States.

Given the proximity of African swine fever (ASF) to the U.S., there is an urgent need to better understand the possible dissemination pathways of the virus within the U.S. swine industry and to evaluate mitigation strategies. Here, we extended PigSpread, a farm-level spatially-explicit stochastic compartmental transmission model incorporating six transmission routes including between-farm swine movements, vehicle movements, and local spread, to model the dissemination of ASF. We then examined the effectiveness of control actions similar to the ASF national response plan. The average number of secondary infections during the first 60 days of the outbreak was 49 finisher farms, 17 nursery farms, 5 sow farms, and less than one farm in other production types. The between-farm movements of swine were the predominant route of ASF transmission with an average contribution of 71.1%, while local spread and movement of vehicles were less critical with average contributions of 14.6% and 14.4%. We demonstrated that the combination of quarantine, depopulation, movement restrictions, contact tracing, and enhanced surveillance, was the most effective mitigation strategy, resulting in an average reduction of 79.0% of secondary cases by day 140 of the outbreak. Implementing these control actions led to a median of 495,619 depopulated animals, 357,789 diagnostic tests, and 54,522 movement permits. Our results suggest that the successful elimination of an ASF outbreak is likely to require the deployment of all control actions listed in the ASF national response plan for more than 140 days, as well as estimating the resources needed for depopulation, testing, and movement permits under these controls.

An evaluation on large language model outputs: Discourse and memorization

We present an empirical evaluation of various outputs generated by nine of the most widely-available large language models (LLMs). Our analysis is done with off-the-shelf, readily-available tools. We find a correlation between percentage of memorized text, percentage of unique text, and overall output quality, when measured with respect to output pathologies such as counterfactual and logically-flawed statements, and general failures like not staying on topic. Overall, 80.0% of the outputs evaluated contained memorized data, but outputs containing the most memorized content were also more likely to be considered of high quality. We discuss and evaluate mitigation strategies, showing that, in the models evaluated, the rate of memorized text being output is reduced.

Multiscale numerical assessment of urban overheating under climate projections: A review

Climate change and urbanization have exacerbated concerns about urban overheating, affecting thermal comfort, heat-related mortality, and urban energy consumption, especially during heat waves. Developing climate projections that reliably describe the state of the urban climate, a complex system containing microclimate phenomena on a regional and global scale, is essential for assessing overheating impacts and evaluating mitigation strategies in current and future climates. Using four essential steps for advancing our understanding of overheating and informing future studies, we review climate model projections for urban overheating impact assessments: (1) Acquisition of raw future climate data at the mesoscale through GCM-RCMs; (2) Bias correction and local reference year data generation; (3) Simulations at microscale indoors and outdoors using building performance or CFD models; (4) Evaluation of overheating based on various criteria. A methodology for selecting review articles is presented. The study highlights key future research gaps related to climate data generation, improving data reliability, and addressing climate simulation complexities indoors and outdoors. In addition, a comprehensive overheating assessment also depends upon incorporating social-economic factors into evaluations. Although we focus on urban overheating assessment, the general methodologies of future climate projections may also apply to other building performance simulations considering climate change impacts.

Pack Rust Mitigation Strategies for Flange Splice Connections in Steel Bridges

One of the main causes of infrastructure deterioration is corrosion. Different types of corrosion such as surface and pitting corrosion have been researched and addressed by industry. However, pack rust is another type of corrosion that requires attention because of its complexity and lack of research. Pack rust occurs between overlapping plates, which makes it difficult to remove and treat. A previous survey in the State of Indiana highlighted that a significant number of steel bridges exhibit some level of pack rust in the bottom flange of splice connections. Consequently, this study focuses on evaluating mitigation strategies that can delay further development of pack rust at the interface between the connected elements in a typical tension splice. Additionally, this study also examines the effects of pack rust on the tensile strength of a flange splice connection. The ultimate goal is to develop a series of guidelines that can be implemented in the field to address pack rust. To accomplish this, specimens were created to model the bottom splice connection. These specimens were exposed to a corrosive environment for different periods, and later tested under tension to evaluate any strength reduction. The level of pack rust developed in this study, which correlates to an exposure in the field of 20 to 40 years, increased the slip resistance of the specimens tested and did not decrease the ultimate strength. Finally, out of the three mitigation products tested, two had satisfactory results that merit further research and field testing.

A comprehensive environmental assessment of beef production and consumption in the United States

Life cycle assessments of have been completed documenting the environmental sustainability of beef, but these studies have often focused on specific cattle production systems with an emphasis on global warming potential. A need exists for a national-scale full life cycle assessment of beef production through consumption in the United States. Process level simulation of archetypical cattle production systems throughout the nation were combined with information gathered for harvest, processing, retail, and consumption of beef to provide inventory data for a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment. A set of 18 environmental impact categories were quantified, and important sources of each were identified. In 13 of the categories, the major sources of impact were related to cattle production, and for 10 of these categories, cattle production and related upstream sources contributed more than half of the total impact. These categories were fine particulate matter, global warming, land use, mineral resource scarcity, ozone formation, stratospheric ozone depletion, terrestrial acidification, and water consumption. Categories where most of the impact occurred post farmgate were fossil resource scarcity, freshwater ecotoxicity, freshwater eutrophication, human carcinogenic toxicity, human non-carcinogenic toxicity, ionizing radiation, marine ecotoxicity, and terrestrial ecotoxicity. Mitigation strategies for reducing these environmental impacts are normally specific to the impact category. Because electricity use is an important contributor to many of the potential impacts throughout the full chain, reducing electricity use is an important mitigation strategy. We evaluated the sensitivity associated with greening of the electric grid in which the Northeast US power grid, which has a larger percentage of renewables, was used as the source of electricity for all systems. The impact remained constant or were reduced in 15 of the 18 impact categories including a 6% reduction in global warming and 22% reduction in particulate matter formation. Another major contributor to all impact categories was food loss and waste. A 50% reduction in food waste, primarily by the consumer, resulted in an across-the-board reduction of approximately 11% in each of the impact categories, which makes food waste reduction one of the most important strategies for improving the environmental sustainability of beef. This assessment provides a current baseline for evaluating mitigation strategies and measuring future improvements in sustainability for the U.S. beef industry.

T-CAST: An optimized CAST-Seq pipeline for TALEN confirms superior safety and efficacy of obligate-heterodimeric scaffolds.

Transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) are programmable nucleases that have entered the clinical stage. Each subunit of the dimer consists of a DNA-binding domain composed of an array of TALE repeats fused to the catalytically active portion of the FokI endonuclease. Upon DNA-binding of both TALEN arms in close proximity, the FokI domains dimerize and induce a staggered-end DNA double strand break. In this present study, we describe the implementation and validation of TALEN-specific CAST-Seq (T-CAST), a pipeline based on CAST-Seq that identifies TALEN-mediated off-target effects, nominates off-target sites with high fidelity, and predicts the TALEN pairing conformation leading to off-target cleavage. We validated T-CAST by assessing off-target effects of two promiscuous TALENs designed to target the CCR5 and TRAC loci. Expression of these TALENs caused high levels of translocations between the target sites and various off-target sites in primary T cells. Introduction of amino acid substitutions to the FokI domains, which render TALENs obligate-heterodimeric (OH-TALEN), mitigated the aforementioned off-target effects without loss of on-target activity. Our findings highlight the significance of T-CAST to assess off-target effects of TALEN designer nucleases and to evaluate mitigation strategies, and advocate the use of obligate-heterodimeric TALEN scaffolds for therapeutic genome editing.

Statistical Analysis of Remote Health Monitoring Based IoT Security Models &amp; Deployments From a Pragmatic Perspective

Remote health monitoring-based Internet of Things (IoT) network security is a multi-domain task, that involves identification of network attack, evaluation of mitigation strategies, design of performance aware data security models, integration of privacy models, and modeling of device-level security methods. Internal designs for each of these models is highly complex, and varies in terms of quantitative & qualitative performance measures. This is due to their variation in terms of design nuances, functional advantages, context-based limitations, and possible deployment-specific future scopes. Due to this variation, it is highly ambiguous to select these models for performance-specific IoT deployments. Moreover, these models also vary in terms of security level, Quality of Service (QoS) parameters, scalability performance, computational complexity, deployment costs, and other performance metrics. Thus, to identify optimum models, researchers & network designers are required to test & validate multiple security models for their deployments. Due to which, the cost & time to market for IoT devices is increased, thereby affecting viability of IoT products. To overcome these selection issues, an empirical survey of different IoT security models including block-chains, encryption techniques, hashing models, privacy preservation techniques, machine learning based security methods, etc. are discussed in this text. This text also discusses various attack mitigation models that provide node-level security, network-level security, physical security, & route-level security. This discussion will assist in initially evaluating different operating characteristics of these models, which will allow readers to identify most suited models for their application-specific use cases. This article also assesses the models’ performance in terms of computational latency, energy consumption, security levels, deployment complexity, and scalability measures. These metrics are compared between different security models, which will further assist readers to identify optimum models for their performance-specific use cases. To further assist in model selection, this text proposes evaluation of a novel IoT Security Performance Rank (ISRP), that combines various performance metrics to form a singular rank which can be used to describe overall performance of these models. Readers will be able to consider optimal security approaches for new and current IoT installations based on this ranking.

Smartphone locations reveal patterns of cooling center use as a heat mitigation strategy

The increasing frequency and duration of extreme heat events prompts questions regarding mitigation proposals and evaluation of current strategies such as cooling centers. Cooling centers may be formally designated or informally used spaces such as indoor shopping centers that the public use as a refuge from heat. Smartphone location data show how a sample of the population moves during the day, what behavioral adjustments they apply in response to heat events, if cooling centers are being used, what factors correlate with use, and whether centers are serving vulnerable populations. We compared spatial patterns of smartphone locations in Los Angeles County between paired extreme heat days and control days (n = 12) in summer 2017. Cooling centers were used 1.1–1.7 times longer during heat events, depending on type, with formal cooling centers used longer. Informal centers, however, were used more (90% of visits). Distance to nearest public transit stop was inversely related to the number of center visits. Vulnerable communities, as measured by the Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI), used centers located in neighborhoods with higher vulnerability scores more. Use of smartphone data to assess activity space of individuals has substantial potential for evaluating mitigation strategies in the face of increasing extreme heat events.

Understanding the role of rheology in the plastic settlement and shrinkage cracking of early age concrete

Understanding the plastic (settlement/shrinkage) cracking phenomena of early-age concrete is important in-order to establish a holistic approach to minimise its occurrence. One of the factors associated with early-age concrete is the rheo-related behaviour which occur simultaneously within the timeframe known for plastic cracking. It is therefore useful to establish their links to broaden the knowledge of plastic cracking. This study is a novel evaluation of the influence of rheo-physical and rheo-viscoelastic behaviour on the plastic cracking behaviour by systematically altering these behaviours of formulated concrete mixes and extensively characterising them. The theory and frameworks for linking the behaviours were presented and established via statistical and analytical approaches. Significant rheo-related parameters found to influence plastic cracking phenomena include yield stress, structuration, creep and stress relaxation. The rheo-mechanics modelling suggests that the plastic cracking initiation tends to be a ductile failure that is pressure insensitive and sufficiently represented by von Mises criteria. This study opens up a consciousness to start evaluating mitigation strategies directed towards the materials optimisation of concrete mixtures to minimise the occurrence of plastic cracking in early-age concrete.

Modeling nation-wide U.S. swine movement networks at the resolution of the individual premises

The spread of infectious livestock diseases is a major cause for concern in modern agricultural systems. In the dynamics of the transmission of such diseases, movements of livestock between herds play an important role. When constructing mathematical models used for activities such as forecasting epidemic development, evaluating mitigation strategies, or determining important targets for disease surveillance, including between-premises shipments is often a necessity. In the United States (U.S.), livestock shipment data is not routinely collected, and when it is, it is not readily available and mostly concerned with between-state shipments. To bridge this gap in knowledge and provide insight into the complete livestock shipment network structure, we have developed the U.S. Animal Movement Model (USAMM). Previously, USAMM has only existed for cattle shipments, but here we present a version for domestic swine. This new version of USAMM consists of a Bayesian model fit to premises demography, county-level livestock industry variables, and two limited data sets of between-state swine movements. The model scales up the data to simulate nation-wide networks of both within- and between-state shipments at the level of individual premises. Here we describe this shipment model in detail and subsequently explore its usefulness with a rudimentary predictive model of the prevalence of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDv) across the U.S. Additionally, in order to promote further research on livestock disease and other topics involving the movements of swine in the U.S., we also make 250 synthetic premises-level swine shipment networks with complete coverage of the entire conterminous U.S. freely available to the research community as a useful surrogate for the absent shipment data.

Climate change mitigation potential of transitioning from open dumpsters in Peru: Evaluation of mitigation strategies in critical dumpsites

Waste management is a critical policy towards the reduction of environmental impacts to air, soil and water. Many Latin American countries, however, lack a correct waste management system in many cities and rural areas, leading to the accumulation of unmanaged waste in illegal or unregulated dumpsites. The case of Peru is of interest, as it hosts 5 of the 50 largest dumpsites in the world. An erratic waste management compromises climate actions for Peru to commit with the Paris Agreement, as no correct closure systems are established for these dumpsites. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to assess the contribution of the past and present biodegradable waste produced and disposed of in the most critical open dumpsters to the overall annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of Peru using the IPCC model. Thereafter, the climate change mitigation potential of possible dumpsite closure strategies based on a selection of technologies, including economic feasibility, were estimated. Results show that cumulative GHG emissions in 2018 for the 24 critical dumpsites evaluated added up to 704 kt CO2 eq. and a cumulative value of 4.4 Mt CO2 eq. in the period 2019–2028, representing over 40 % of solid waste emissions expected by 2030. Mitigation potentials for these emissions tanged from 91 to 970 kt CO2 eq. in the ten-year period depending on the mitigation strategies adopted. The costs of these strategies are also discussed and are expected to be of utility to complement Peru's waste management commitments in the frame of the Paris Agreement.