a b s t r a c tRecognized as one of the most mature renewable energy technologies, wind energy has been developing rapidly in recent years. Many countries have shown interest in utilizing wind power, but they are concerned about the environmental impacts of the wind farms. The continuous growth of the wind energy industry in many parts of the world, especially in some developing countries and ecologically vulnerable regions, necessitates a comprehensive understanding of wind farm induced environmental impacts. The environmental issues caused by wind farms were reviewed in this paper by summarizing existing studies. Available mitigation measures to minimize these adverse environmental impacts were discussed in this document. The intention of this paper is to provide state-of-the-art knowledge about environmental issues associated with wind energy development as well as strategies to mitigate environmental impacts to wind energy planners and developers.

Members of the ADAR (adenosine deaminase that acts on RNA) enzyme family catalyze the hydrolytic deamination of adenosine to inosine within double-stranded RNAs, a poorly understood process that is critical to mammalian development. We have performed fluorescence resonance energy transfer experiments in mammalian cells transfected with fluorophore-bearing ADAR1 and ADAR2 fusion proteins to investigate the relationship between these proteins. These studies conclusively demonstrate the homodimerization of ADAR1 and ADAR2 and also show that ADAR1 and ADAR2 form heterodimers in human cells. RNase treatment of cells expressing these fusion proteins changes their localization but does not affect dimerization. Taken together these results suggest that homo-and heterodimerization are important for the activity of ADAR family members in vivo and that these associations are RNA independent. Double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs)2 in eukaryotes are subject to a variety of processing reactions, including cleavage by the RNase III family members Drosha and Dicer in the micro RNA and small interfering RNA gene-silencing pathways and editing by members of the ADAR (adenosone deaminase that acts on RNA) enzyme family (1, 2). This latter reaction involves the hydrolytic deamination of adenosine (A) to inosine (I) within the context of dsRNA. Editing events of this type have been demonstrated in both cellular and viral transcripts and have been shown to function in altering the coding properties of the edited RNAs. For example, the life cycle of the Hepatitis ␦ virus is regulated by an editing event in the anti-genome in which a UAG stop codon is converted to a UIG tryptophan codon (3). An A to I modification is involved in the functional regulation of a growing number of cellular factors. These include the tissue-specific editing of the serotonin 5-HT2C receptor, which results in a reduction in response to serotonin agonists (4). Transcripts for subunits of the neural-specific AMPA class of glutamate-gated (GluR) ion channels undergo A to I modification at two positions, the Q/R and R/G editing sites, that affect the properties of the resulting channels (5, 6). In addition to the editing of these and other neuronal transcripts to effect codon changes, one deaminase family member, ADAR2, has been shown to autoregulate its own expression by the creation of a 3Ј-splice site (CAA to CAI) (7). Despite the identification of these editing substrates, the global role of A to I modification in higher eukaryotes remains unclear. Measurement of inosine levels in RNA isolated from rat tissue suggests a greater level of editing than indicated by known RNA substrates (8). A cloning protocol that depended upon an inosine-specific cleavage of RNA detected a large number of editing sites in non-coding regions of RNAs from Caenorhabditis elegans and humans that included sites in 5Ј-and 3Ј-untranslated regions and introns (9). Recent bioinformatic studies have suggested the presence of more than 12,000 editing sites corresponding to non-coding regions of t...

Inspired by the commonly held view that international stock market volatility is equivalent to cross-market information flow, we propose various ways of constructing two types of information flow, based on realized volatility (RV) and implied volatility (IV), in multiple international markets. We focus on the RVs derived from the intraday prices of eight international stock markets and use a heterogeneous autoregressive framework to forecast the future volatility of each market for 1 day to 22 days ahead. Our Diebold-Mariano tests provide strong evidence that information flow with IV enhances the accuracy of forecasting international RVs over all of the prediction horizons. The results of a model confidence set test show that a market's own IV and the first principal component of the international IVs exhibit the strongest predictive ability. In addition, the use of information flows with IV can further increase economic returns. Our results are supported by the findings of a wide range of robustness checks.

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Integration reforms have been piloted as key policies to address the fragmented health insurance system in China. They are also regarded as a better choice for realizing a Universal Basic Medical Insurance System (UBMIS). This study has attempted to explore the determinants that may affect respondents' dissatisfaction with the reforms. The aim is to provide evidence for more effective policy adjustment during the next round of nationwide integration reforms in China. A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted in Ningbo, Chongqing and Heilongjiang from 2014 to 2015. A stratified cluster sampling method was adopted. A total of 1644 respondents, working in units related to health insurance, were selected. A multivariate logistic regression model was employed to identify any association between dissatisfaction and the features of the ongoing integration reforms of health insurance schemes. Overall, about 47.6% of the respondents reported dissatisfaction with the ongoing integration reforms. This high level of dissatisfaction was found to be associated with ineffective outcomes of the integration reforms in achieving management system improvement [odds ratio (OR) = 1.846], inequity reduction (OR = 1.464) and actual coverage expansion (OR = 1.350), as perceived by the respondents. Those who were satisfied with the previously separated health insurance schemes (OR = 0.643), and those who preferred other policy options for achieving a UBMIS (OR = 1.471) were more likely to report dissatisfaction with the current reforms. Higher expectations of the risk-pooling level (with ORs ranging from 1.361 to 1.661) also significantly contributed to dissatisfaction. Health insurance managers in China have conflicting opinions about the performance of piloted integration reforms. Many believe that these reforms have failed significantly to improve the management systems, narrow inequity and expand actual benefit coverage. Various strategies should be undertaken in order to address these issues, such as clarifying the administrative institution behind the merged schemes at the central level, unifying the insurance information network, developing consistent policies and bridging the differences in benefits among schemes and regions.