The aridity of a terrestrial climate is often quantified using the dimensionless ratio P/PET of annual precipitation (P) to annual potential evapotranspiration (PET). In this study, the climatological patterns and greenhouse warming responses of terrestrial P, Penman–Monteith PET, and P/PET are compared among 16 modern global climate models. The large-scale climatological values and implied bio...

Food provides energy and nutrients, but its acquisition requires energy expenditure. In post-hunter-gatherer societies, extra-somatic energy has greatly expanded and intensified the catching, gathering, and production of food. Modern relations between energy, food, and health are very complex, raising serious, high-level policy challenges. Together with persistent widespread under-nutrition, ov...

Much of the macroeconomics literature dealing with wealth distribution has become abstracted from modeling housing explicitly. This paper investigates the properties of the wealth distribution and the portfolio composition regarding housing and equity holdings and their relationship to macroeconomic shocks. To this end, I construct a business cycle model in which agents differ in age, income, a...

Miller (1977) emphasized that optimal corporate financial policy depends on the tax rates facing the firm as well as the tax treatment accorded bondand stock-holders. In equilibrium, firms will issue claims that are held by the full spectrum of investors, from tax-exempt institutional investors to heavily taxed individuals. However, dealers are tax neutral institutions that can buy corporate se...

In this paper the efficiency of the electricity generation portfolio of BKW, a major Swiss utility, is analyzed. By applying mean-variance portfolio theory to the current and to possible future generation mixes, efficient frontiers are derived. The analysis based on relative changes in generation costs is complemented by an actual costs analysis. Moreover, a method that takes into account physi...

Global warming from the increase in greenhouse gases has become a major scientific and political issue during the past decade. That infrared radiation is trapped by greenhouse gases and particles in a planetary atmosphere and that the atmospheric CO2 level has increased by some 25 percent since 1850 because of fossil fuel combustion and land use (largely deforestation) are not controversial; le...

Food provides energy and nutrients, but its acquisition requires energy expenditure. In post-hunter-gatherer societies, extra-somatic energy has greatly expanded and intensifi ed the catching, gathering, and production of food. Modern relations between energy, food, and health are very complex, raising serious, high-level policy challenges. Together with persistent widespread under-nutrition, o...

The coupling of renewable energy and hydrogen technologies represents in the mid-term a very interesting way to match the tasks of increasing the reliable exploitation of wind and sea wave energy and introducing clean technologies in the transportation sector. This paper presents two different feasibility studies: the first proposes two plants based on wind and sea wave resource for the product...

Increasing water use efficiency and reducing nitrogen pollutant discharge are important tasks for modern agriculture. To evaluate the effect of alternate partial root-zone irrigation (APRI) on tomato plant growth, water use efficiency and nitrate-15N uptake, an experiment was conducted from June to December in 2014 under greenhouse condition in northern China. The experiment contained two irrig...

Hydrogen produced by renewable sources represents an interesting way to reduce the energetic dependence on fossil fuels in the transportation sector. This paper shows a feasibility study for the production, storage and distribution of hydrogen in the western Sicilian context, using three different renewable sources: wind, biomass and sea wave. The objective of this study is the evaluation of th...