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Pressing sustainability challenges reinvigorate calls for scientific actors to strengthen their profile as change agents. Focusing on the urban context, we point to four forms of science-policy-society interactions as key pathways to advance the sustainability transformation in cities.Recent years have seen a considerable broadening of the ambitions in urban sustainability policy-making. With its
Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement stand as milestone diplomatic achievements. However, immense discrepancies between political commitments and governmental action remain. Combined national climate commitments fall far short of the Paris Agreement's 1.5/2°C targets. Similar political ambition gaps persist across various areas of sustainable development. Many therefore argue that
Numerous scholars have lately highlighted the importance of cities in the global response to climate change. However, we still have little systematic knowledge on the evolution of urban climate politics in the Global South. In particular, we lack empirical studies that examine how local climate actions arise in political-administrative systems of developing and emerging economies. Therefore, this
Much of the contemporary literature in the field of international studies deals with the concept of authority. Scholars concerned with global policymaking often suggest that the increasing importance of transnational actors, such as subnational networks, nonprofit organizatons, and business associations, leads to a loss of authority at the expense of state-based forms of governance. This perspecti
To improve glycemic control in insulin-dependent diabetes, estimates of the glucose- lowering effect of insulin-the insulin action (IA)-and the dynamics thereof are essential. The current practice relies on generic estimates of the dynamic shape of the IA and rules-of-thumb to assess the total glucose-lowering effect. In this paper we present individualized estimates based on home-monitored data,
South Africa’s energy sector finds itself in a gridlock situation. The sector is controlled by the state-owned utility Eskom holding the monopoly on the generation and transmission of electricity, which is almost exclusively produced from domestically extracted coal. At the same time, the constitutional mandate enables municipalities to distribute and sell electricity generated by Eskom to local c
Scholars of world politics have recently devoted growing attention to the inner workings of international organizations. While this research strand has considerably enhanced our knowledge on the impact of international bureaucracies on global policy-making, their interplay with transnational actors has not been analyzed in much detail. Against this backdrop, the present article addresses the quest
The past two decades have witnessed widespread scholarly interest in the role of cities in climate policy-making. This research has considerably improved our understanding of the local level in the global response to climate change. The present article synthesizes the literature on local climate policies with respect to the 1.5 °C target. While most studies have focused on pioneering cities and ne
Much of the literature in the field of international relations is currently concerned with the changing patterns of authority in world politics. This is particularly evident in the policy domain of climate change, where a number of authors have observed a relocation of authority in global climate governance. These scholars claim that multilateral treaty making has lost much of its spark, and they
Climate change is generally expected to have a positive effect on weathering rates, due to the strong temperature dependence of the weathering process. Important feedback mechanisms such as changes in soil moisture, tree growth and organic matter decomposition can affect the response of weathering rates to climate change. In this study, the dynamic forest ecosystem model ForSAFE, with mechanistic
Several scholars concerned with global policy-making have recently pointed to a reconfiguration of authority in the area of climate politics. They have shown that various new carbon governance arrangements have emerged, which operate simultaneously at different governmental levels. However, despite the numerous descriptions and mapping exercises of these governance arrangements, we have little sys
The past few years have witnessed the emergence of a plethora of transnational climate governance experiments. They have been developed by a broad range of actors, such as cities, non-profit organizations, and private corporations. Several scholars have lately devoted particular attention to voluntary global business initiatives in the policy domain of climate change. Their studies have provided c
Dramatic declines of some arthropod populations have recently received a lot of attention. Identified declines have mainly been attributed to changes in agriculture, climate, pathogen prevalence and light pollution, as well as cross-regional effects of, e.g., drifting pesticides. However, the overall picture is complex and debated, and there is a need for systematically collected long-term data, n
The relationship between science and policy in international environmental regimes has attracted much scholarly attention in the past decades. One of the most recognized approaches to the science–policy interaction in international environmental politics is the ‘knowledge-based’ epistemic communities approach. This approach contends that knowledge generated by scientists or other ‘knowledge-based’
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is a prominent example of the mix of public and private authority in global climate policy-making. While national governments hold the supreme authority in the CDM, the oversight and daily supervision of the project-based mechanism have been delegated via an intergovernmental body to private corporations that evaluate the environmental performance of individua
Background The prognosis for kidney survival is poor in patients presenting with circulating anti–glomerular basement membrane (GBM) antibodies and severe kidney injury. It is unknown if treatment with an endopeptidase that cleaves circulating and kidney bound IgG can alter the prognosis. Methods An investigator-driven phase 2a one-arm study (EudraCT 2016–004082–39) was performed in 17 hospitals i
The aerobic CO dehydrogenase from Oligotropha carboxidovorans is an environmentally crucial bacterial enzyme for maintenance of subtoxic concentration of CO in the lower atmosphere, as it allows for the oxidation of CO to CO2 which takes place at its Mo−Cu heterobimetallic active site. Despite extensive experimental and theoretical efforts, significant uncertainties still concern the reaction mech
A number of intersecting crises are currently ongoing at multiple scales, including increasing inequality, environmental degradation, and climate destabilization, as well as new surges of populism and mounting public health threats. These emergencies question our economic model of past decades and provoke a rethinking of the general approach to economic policy from a multi-scalar perspective. In t
Background In vivo studies of airway pathology in obstructive lung disease are limited by poor quality of specimens obtained with forceps. Obtainment of cryobiopsies has increased diagnostic yield in cancer and interstitial lung disease but has not been used in patients with asthma. In a recent pilot study, we found mucosal cryobiopsies to be larger and more intact than conventional forceps biopsi
