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SARS-CoV-2 (Coronavirus) disease represents the causative agent with a potentially fatal risk which is having great global human health concern. Earlier studies suggested that air pollutants and meteorological factors were considered as the risk factors for acute respiratory infection, which carries harmful pathogens and affects the immunity. The study intended to explore the correlation between air pollutants, meteorological factors and the daily reported infection cases caused by novel coronavirus in India. The daily positive infected cases, air pollution and meteorological factors in 288 districts were collected from January 30, 2020 to April 23, 2020 in India. Speraman’s correlation and generalised additive model were applied to investigate the correlations of four air pollutants (PM2.5, PM10, NO2 and SO2) and eight meteorological factors (Temp, DTR, RH, AH, AP, RF, WS and WD) with COVID-19 infected cases. The study indicated that a 10 µg/m3 increase during (Lag0-14) in PM2.5, PM10 and NO2 was resulted in 2.21% (95%CI: 1.13 to 3.29), 2.67% (95% CI: 0.33 to 5.01) and 4.56 (95% CI: 2.22 to 6.90) increase in daily counts of COVID 19 infected cases respectively. However, only 1 unit increase in meteorological factor levels in case of daily mean temperature and DTR during (Lag0-14) associated with 3.78% (95%CI: 1.81 to 5.75) and 1.82% (95% CI: -1.74 to 5.38) rise of COVID-19 infected cases respectively. In addition, SO2 and relative humidity were negatively associated with COVID-19 infected cases at Lag0-14 with decrease of 7.23% (95% CI: -10.99 to -3.47) and 1.11% (95% CI: -3.45 to 1.23) for SO2 and for relative humidity respectively. The study recommended that there is significant relationship between air pollutants and meteorological factors with COVID-19 infected cases, which substantially explain the effect of national lockdown and suggested positive implications for control and prevention of the spread of SARS-CoV-2 disease.

This article attempts to model interdependencies between socio-economic, energy, and environmental factors with selected data characterizing the development of the hydrogen economy. The study applies Spearman’s correlation and a linear regression model to estimate the influence of gross domestic product, population, final energy consumption, renewable energy, and CO2 emission on chosen hydrogen indicators—production, patents, energy technology research, development, and demonstration budgets. The study was conducted in nine countries selected for their actions towards a hydrogen economy based on analyses of national strategies, policies, research and development programs, and roadmaps. The results confirm the statistically significant impact of the chosen indicators, which are the drivers for the development of the hydrogen economy from 2008 to 2018. Moreover, the empirical results show that different characteristics in each country contribute to the development of the hydrogen economy vision.

CONTEXT Most Western-European countries exceed the critical loads for nitrogen (N) losses. High nitrogen (N) inputs make agriculture one of the largest contributors to N pollution. There might be a potential to reduce this losses with an output tax on animal products, as they have low N use efficiency and a tax has the potential to reduce the consumption of this products. OBJECTIVE We want to assess the potential of a food tax on animal products to reduce the N surplus of Swiss agriculture. METHODS We implemented a tax on meat and a tax on milk and meat in the agent-based model SWISSland. The model combines an agent-based model with a microeconomic model at the farm scale. To better understand the low response of the food tax, we applied in a second step a robust two-step global sensitivity analysis of abatement costs of individual model agents. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS Imposing a tax led to an N surplus reduction of 2.1% where only meat was taxed and 2.3% where both milk and meat were taxed. The sensitivity analysis showed that distinct agents reacted non-uniformly to changing prices, so that the effect of the tax was sometimes even cancelled out. This calls for more differentiated policies to reduce the negative impact of N losses. SIGNIFICANCE The overall impact of the food tax was minor as the distinct agents react not uniformly to lower producer prices., Agricultural Systems, 194, ISSN:0308-521X

The strategic planning process has been implemented into the local governance environment in the Czech Republic during last two decades. But the strategic goals that are expressed in the strategic development documents on the local level are only the part of the issues that are to be fulfilled or solved by the local government. In the everyday practical governance there is always a list of projects that appear from the actual technological, technical, public or political demand. The contemporary decision-making process is based on the personal or collective political decision or on the actual technical demand. But there are also municipalities that are already implementing strategic planning and want to avoid unsystematic interventions and decision-making processes. They try to adopt some attitudes from the corporate sphere to make the decision-making process more open and clear. This paper deals with the methodology of the mid-size city and tries to discuss it and offer some improvements. The paper’s other goals are to offer comparison of typical projects that could be found on the local level and to make a model of results provided by the different methodologies used for the decision-making process, specifically weighted sum average and analytic hierarchy process.

Beekeeping is an integral part of livestock-based livelihood system in tropical and subtropical regions of Ethiopia. Despite its importance, the sub-sector is challenged by humble colony strength and honey yield due to pests including wax moths. To avert these challenges different treatments were suggested by researchers regardless of economic, social and technical efficiency analysis. This participatory study is thus intended to evaluate the efficiency of treatments on infestation level with wax moths, colony strength and honey yield in Northeast Ethiopia. Un-replicated on-farm experiment was conducted on six beekeepers comprising supplementary feeding, tobacco leaf smoking, the combination and control treatments. Economic, biological and preference data were collected periodically. Profitability was estimated in partial budget, while biological and preference data were analysed using ANOVA and weighted ranking matrix, respectively. Results revealed that tobacco smoking had the lowest infected combs (0.7 ± 0.2) followed by the combination, supplementary feeding and control groups in ascending order. Supplementary feeding provided highest mean honey yield (14.7 ± 1.2) (p

A number of areal surface texture parameters have been adopted by standards bodies, namely ISO 25178-2, in which forty-one parameters within six groups are defined. The selection of the suitable areal parameters becomes an issue for a designer. The study of correlation among parameters is one of the ways to find the most suitable parameters for a specification. This paper presents a Spearman's correlation study of areal surface texture parameters on some typical machined surfaces. Sixty surfaces, produced by nineteen machining methods, have been assessed by the use of an optical instrument; the operators adhered to ISO 25178-3; and parameters defined by ISO 25178-2. The correlation results are classified by using five correlation levels. It details the correlations between different groups of parameters, together with the correlation of parameters within the same group. The results are presented in Spearman's rank correlation coefficient matrix and charts. A three-layer parameters tree is then proposed to help engineer in the selection of parameters.

A methodology is presented for clustering financial time series according to the association in the tail of their distribution. The procedure is based on the calculation of suitable pairwise conditional Spearman's correlation coefficients extracted from the series. The performance of the method has been tested via a simulation study. As an illustration, an analysis of the components of the Italian FTSE---MIB is presented. The results could be applied to construct financial portfolios that can manage to reduce the risk in case of simultaneous large losses in several markets.