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This article argues that institutional interactions that cut across the domains of trade and environment are embedded in overarching norms that shape their evolution and impact. In making this argument, it analyzes three cases of such interactions within the climate change and biosafety regime complexes: those relating to trade-related climate policies and measures, forest carbon sinks, and trade in genetically modified organisms. The analysis highlights the dominance of liberal environmentalism (a set of global norms promoting economic efficiency and environmental improvements through market-based mechanisms) in shaping institutional interactions within these regime complexes, even as liberal environmentalism is contested by key actors. This, in turn, has implications for effective management of institutional interlinkages within regime complexes in global environmental governance.

Background: Ultrasonography is widely used to evaluate the kidney status. Serum creatinine and glomerular filtration rate assess the functional status of the kidney. This study tried to find the association between renal parameters in ultrasonography, serum creatinine and estimated glomerular filtration rate in patients with echogenic kidneys.
Methods: Study was done in 61 patients. Four sonographic renal parameters (renal echogenicity grade, renal length, cortical thickness, parenchymal thickness) were obtained from patients showing echogenic kidneys irrespective of cause during ultrasonography of abdomen. Glomerular filtration rate was calculated using Modified Diet in Renal Disease formula after obtaining patient's serum creatinine level. Sonographic renal parameters were compared with serum creatinine and estimated glomerular filtration rate using Pearson's correlation coefficient and one-way ANOVA tests.
Results: The study showed significant correlation of only renal echogenicity grade and parenchymal thickness with eGFR. However, all four sonographic renal parameters showed significant correlation with serum creatinine level. Renal echogenicity grading had strongest correlation with both serum creatinine (r=0.571, p=0.000) and estimated glomerular filtration rate (r= -0.349, p=0.006). Mean serum creatinine (in mg/dL) ± standard deviation was 1.9(±1.5), 4.0(±3.7), 5.8(±3.7), and 15.4(±5.3) for grade I, II, III, and IV echogenic kidneys respectively. Similarly, mean eGFR (in ml/min/1.73m2) ± standard deviation was 50.2(±22.9), 35.9(±40), 15.7(±13.4), and 3.4(±1.1) for Grade I, II, III, and IV echogenic kidneys respectively.
Conclusions: Renal echogenicity is a better sonographic parameter that correlated well with both eGFR and serum creatinine. Renal ultrasound should be routinely used for early diagnosis, grading and monitoring of kidney disease.
Keywords: Correlation; estimated glomerular filtration rate; renal echogenicity; serum creatinine; ultrasound

The European Union (EU) stands at a crossroads regarding its biofuel policies. For more than a decade, the EU sought to create a market for and govern sustainable biofuels for the transport sector, even as debates over sustainability escalated. It did so by devising novel hybrid (public and private) governance arrangements. We took stock of the nature and outcomes of this experiment in hybrid biofuel governance. We relied on qualitative methods of analysis, whereby we reviewed and synthesized the evolution of EU biofuel governance arrangements over time, through detailed document analysis of secondary and primary literature, including EU and related policy documents and private certification scheme websites. Our analysis reveals that, instead of yielding an increasingly stringent sustainability framework, the hybrid EU governance arrangements resulted in a proliferation of relatively lax, industry-driven, sustainability standards, even as the notion of "sustainable biofuels" remained contested in public and political debate. These findings contribute to an ongoing debate about the merits of hybrid (public–private) governance arrangements, and whether a hybrid approach helps strengthen or weaken sustainability objectives. We conclude that a more stringent EU meta-standard on sustainability needs to be developed, to underpin future governance arrangements.

Anticipation methods and tools are increasingly used to try to imagine and govern transformations towards more sustainable futures across different policy domains and sectors. But there is a lack of research into the steering effects of anticipation on present-day governance choices, especially in the face of urgently needed sustainability transformations. This paper seeks to understand how different perspectives on anticipatory governance connect to attempts to guide policy and action toward transformative change. We analyze perspectives on anticipatory governance in a global network of food system foresight practitioners (Foresight4Food) – using a workshop, interviews, and a survey as our sources of data. We connect frameworks on anticipatory governance and on transformation to analyse different perspectives on the future and their implications for actions in the present to transform food systems and offer new insights for theory and practice. In the global Foresight4Food network, we find that most foresight practitioners use hybrid approaches to anticipatory governance that combine fundamentally different assumptions about the future. We also find that despite these diverse food futures, anticipation processes predominantly produce recommendations that follow more prediction-oriented forms of strategic planning in order to mitigate future risks. We further demonstrate that much anticipation for transformation uses the language on deep uncertainty and deliberative action without fully taking its consequences on board. Thus, opportunities for transforming future food systems are missed due to these implicit assumptions that dominate the anticipatory governance of food systems. Our combined framework helps researchers and practitioners to be more reflexive of how assumptions about key human systems such as food system futures shape what is prioritized/marginalized and included/excluded in actions to transform such systems.