How does air pollution affect household energy expenditure: A micro-empirical study based on avoidance behavior.

China is one of the world's most highly-pollutant countries, and over the last few years has experienced severe and persistent haze pollution. Exploring the effects of air pollution on household energy expenditure will provide a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of the economic effects of environmental pollution. It is an important question but remains unanswered because of an estimation endogeneity. Household non-clean energy consumption would increase air pollution. A major challenge in estimates is how to accurately and cleanly identify the unwatched effect of air pollution given the endogeneity. Using the global satellite monitoring data and unique micro-household survey data, we try to construct an instrumental variable to identify the net effect of air pollution on Chinese household energy expenditure. We find that the increase in air pollution has a significantly positive effect on household energy expenditure. The results remain robust after a series of pivotal checks. Our findings highlight that stay-home-avoidance behaviors as a potential mechanism behind the energy-associated effects of air pollution on household energy expenditure. The well-educated, high-income, and urban households in southern China are more likely to engage in stay-home-avoidance behaviors. These findings can provide some useful policy enlightenments for the government in terms of environmental regulation and promotion of household clean energy.

A 769 µW Battery-Powered Single-Chip SoC With BLE for Multi-Modal Vital Sign Monitoring Health Patches.

An all-in-one battery powered low-power SoC for measuring multiple vital signs with wearables is proposed. All functionality needed in a typical wearable use case scenario, including dedicated readouts, power management circuitry, digital signal processing and wireless communication (BLE) is integrated in a single die. This high level of integration allows an unprecedented level of miniaturization leading to smaller component count which reduces cost and improves comfort and signal integrity. The SoC includes an ECG, Bio-Impedance and a fully differential PPG readout and can interface with external sensors (like an IMU). In a typical application scenario where all sensor readouts are enabled and key features (like heart rate) are calculated on the chip and streamed over the radio, the SoC consumes only 769 µW from the regulated 1.2 V supply.

Correlation Consistent Gaussian Basis Sets for H, B-Ne with Dirac-Fock AREP Pseudopotentials: Applications in Quantum Monte Carlo Calculations.

In this paper, we introduce correlation consistent Gaussian-type orbital basis sets for the H and B-Ne atoms for use with the CASINO Dirac-Fock AREP pseudopotentials. These basis sets are tested in coupled cluster calculations on H2, B2, C2, N2, O2, and F2 as well as in quantum Monte Carlo calculations on the water monomer and dimer and the water-benzene complex, where they are found to give low variances in variational Monte Carlo calculations and to lead to reduced time step errors and improved convergence in diffusion Monte Carlo calculations compared to the use of nonoptimized basis sets. The use of basis sets with a large number of contracted s and p primitives is found to be especially important for the convergence of the energy in the diffusion Monte Carlo calculations.