Search results for "Scarcity"
showing 10 items of 106 documents
Special Issue: Water Management Strategies in Irrigated Areas
2016
The 2015 edition of the United Nations World Water Development Report highlighted that ‘water is at the core of sustainable development’. Water has upgraded the quality of human life, and any progress to achieve a more sustainable world will deal with the maintenance and/or the improvement of water management. Water demand has grown at more than twice the population rate in the XX century. By 2025, it is estimated that about 1.8 billion people will live in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions.
Seasonal cues to food scarcity and calorie cravings: Winter cues elicit preferences for energy-dense foods
2021
Abstract Winter cues signal a scarcity of food. Birds and mammals respond to such environmental cues by consuming more energy. They convert this surplus into body fat that serves as a buffer against impending food shortages. Similarly, humans exhibit higher obesity rates among food-insecure populations. However, to date, it has been unclear whether winter cues qualitatively affect consumers’ food preferences. Results from five studies ( N = 865), with one of them preregistered, show that watching videos depicting winter cues elicits thoughts about energy-dense foods and survival. Such cues elicit higher preferences for energy-dense than low-calorie foods, as verified by meta-analytic eviden…
Opportunity costs and efficiency of investments in mega sport events
2009
Economic analyses of mega sport events usually focus on the positive effects and legacies while ignoring opportunity costs and the efficiency of using scarce resources. Event opponents argue that decisions to invest public resources should also consider alternative uses of the money. This paper aims to clarify some of the issues surrounding the opportunity costs of mega sport events. By using the measure ‘efficiency’ (output/input) of alternative investments it will become clear that the decision to stage a mega sport event cannot be taken in isolation and that there are many factors that need to be considered. The argument put forward is based on a stakeholder’s perspective and a spatial d…
La dimensión participativa en el diseño de políticas urbanas. El caso valenciano
2018
La aparición y proliferación de iniciativas ciudadanas que tienen como objetivo gestionar de forma distinta los recursos públicos en muchas de las grandes capitales de Europa, hace plantearse en qué estado se encuentran las políticas públicas y sobre todo su gestión. Estamos hablando de una serie de iniciativas surgidas de abajo-arriba que han cambiado la forma tradicional de gestionar la ciudad basada en el tradicional enfoque administrativista de arriba-abajo. Recientemente muchos gobiernos, como consecuencia de estas iniciativas, y de la carencia de recursos y capacidades con los que poder afrontar viejos y nuevos retos, están diseñando nuevas políticas de desarrollo urbano que impliquen…
The Right to Health and Resource Allocation. Who Gets What and Why in the COVID-19 Pandemic
2020
Abstract The COVID-19 outbreak has led to a worldwide, substantial increase in the demand for pharmaceuticals, hospital beds, ventilators, and medical supplies. When needs suddenly exceed demand worldwide, resources may quickly become scarce in relation to potential demand, so that strict rationing is the only viable response. Against this backdrop, this paper scrutinizes the rationales for prioritization of scarce resources, and it questions the actual role and reach of the market with regard to resources that are essential to deliver health care, especially in times of severe shortage, such as during a global pandemic.
Modelling the frequency distribution of inter-arrival times from daily precipitation time-series in North-West Italy
2018
Abstract The discrete three-parameter Lerch distribution is used to analyse the frequency distribution of inter-arrival times derived from 26 daily precipitation time-series, collected by stations located throughout a 28,000 km2 area in North-West Italy (altitudes ranging from 113 m to 2,170 m a.s.l.). The precipitation regime of these Alpine regions is very different (latitude 44.5 to 46.5 N) from the typical Mediterranean precipitation regime of the island of Sicily (latitude 37 to 38 N), where the Lerch distribution has already been tested and whose results are compared. In order to verify the homogeneity of the precipitation time series, the Pettitt test was preliminarily performed. In …
Gender Imbalance across Subfields in Economics: When Does It Start?
2021
We investigate the marked gender imbalance across subfields in economics and connect it with the relative scarcity of female students enrolling in economics. First, tracking authorship in the Ameri...
Geospatial analysis of drought tendencies in the Carpathians as reflected in a 50-year time series
2019
Climate change is one of the most important issues of anthropogenic activities. The increasing drought conditions can cause water shortage and heat waves and can influence the agricultural production or the water supply of cities. The Carpathian region is also affected by this phenomenon; thus, we aimed at identifying the tendencies between 1960 and 2010 applying the CarpatClim (CC) database. We calculated the trends for each grid point of CC, plotted the results on maps, and applied statistical analysis on annual and seasonal level. We revealed that monthly average temperature, maximum temperature and evapotranspiration had similar patterns and had positive trends in all seasons except aut…
Intrepid or Invisible? Female Characters in Catalan Children's and Young Adult Literature
2019
This article analyses 95 children’s and young adult literature works written originally in Catalan and published between 2002 and 2006. They are representative of all age groups present in this genre. This analysis focuses on the presence or absence of female characters, and on their treatment and reception, both in terms of prominence and the transmission of stereotypes. The results of this review show a dichotomy between the scarcity of female protagonists and their extreme audacity.
The Origins of Environmental Assessment
2016
Looking back through the course of history, it is indeed possible to find many different forms of “environmental assessment” that relate to a clear, unifying philosophy: to consider the impact of such practices before they are implemented. The most important difference that is clearly prevalent in more recent instances is the consideration of the environmental component in the assessment process, which can be straightforwardly be attributed to an increasing awareness within the modern society of the ever-growing scarcity and the cost of natural resources combined with the resulting quality of life for current and future generations. Focusing on the origin of modern ecological assessment, th…