Implications of the sustainable development paradigm for Switzerland

The sustainable development paradigm raises issues of global, intra- and intergenerational social equity as well as respect for nature, and economic welfare. Switzerland is confronted by these issues within its own country, and has a moral responsibility vis-a-vis the rest of the world. Syndromes of global change are affecting many eco-regions, not only in developing and transition countries, but to a lesser extent also the affluent countries. Switzerland as a nation has an impact on syndromes through its far-reaching economic activities, which are non-sustainable. At the global level, more modest consumption patterns, a considerably slowed demographic change, a nonconsumptive but sustainable use of natural resources, and conflict transformation are the main prerequisites for improving sustainability. Switzerland's current contribution to sustainability is much less than what it could be, hence the need for additional action along general principles in,accordance with Swiss traditions and innovative potentials. A number of concrete actions could be taken immediately. These are: labelling the socially and ecologically sustainable production of goods and services, and their negotiation at WTO level; enhancing international cooperation and research; strengthening education and research for sustainability, and emphasizing energy and material flux efficiency at home and abroad.

Driver Aggression as a Function of Status Concurrence: An Analysis of Horn-Honking Responses

Various field experiments were conducted to examine the influence of social status on aggression in road traffic. Horn-honking response times of subjects blocked by an experimental car at traffic lights were considered to be an indicator of the degree of aggression. During an initial experiment, the status of the frustrator was varied and an inverse relation was observed between status and aggression towards the frustrator. On the other hand, in a more recent experiment higher status aggressors were found to behave more aggressively. In our study we combined the two designs, i.e., we varied the status of the frustrator and at the same time measured the status of the aggressor. Neither results of the former experiments could be replicated, but we observed a reduction in aggression when frustrator and aggressor were of similar social status.

Measurement of the muon neutrino inclusive charged-current cross section in the energy range of 1–3 GeV with the T2K INGRID detector

We report a measurement of the νµ-nucleus inclusive charged current cross section (=σ cc) on ironusing data from exposed to the J-PARC neutrino beam. The detector consists of 14 modules in total, which are spread over a range of off-axis angles from 0◦ to 1.1◦. The variation in the neutrino energy spectrum as a function of the off-axis angle, combined with event topology information, is used to calculate this cross section as a function of neutrino energy. The cross section is measured to be σcc(1.1 GeV) = 1.10±0.15 (10^−38cm^2/nucleon), σcc(2.0 GeV) = 2.07±0.27 (10^−38cm^2/nucleon), and σcc(3.3 GeV) = 2.29 ± 0.45 (10^−38cm^2/nucleon), at energies of 1.1, 2.0, and 3.3 GeV, respectively. These results are consistent with the cross section calculated by the neutrino interaction generators currently used by T2K. More importantly, the method described here opens up a new way to determine the energy dependence of neutrino-nucleus cross sections.