Cumulative Resources Research Articles

The future of thermoeconomics: From industrial cost minimization toward cumulative resources accounting and sustainability assessment

Thermoeconomics has been developed with the main object of first identifying, and then reducing the costs of the energy produced by industrial power plants. More recently, the same approach formalized in the Exergy Cost Theory has been recognized as a useful tool also in a wider field, like industrial symbiosis and sustainability assessment. To do this, exergy supply chains have been tracked backward and backward, to include in the primary resource consumption a more and more complete inventory of the indirect consumption.In the Authors’ opinion, the future of Thermoeconomics is to go on in this direction. If a very complete inventory of all indirect consumption were obtained, the sustainability assessment of a production process could be performed (at least in principle) by applying the idea that the lower its consumption (direct and indirect) of scarce primary resources, the more sustainable a production process is.In this paper, the idea of the Thermoeconomic Environment (TEE) is summarized, to highlight as it is a consistent ultimate boundary of the exergy cost accounting, where the origin of the exergy supply chains can be properly placed. Then, the frame of the TEE is used to discuss some possible options for obtaining a more complete inventory of all indirect consumption, and to outline its possible perspective connections with some relevant environmental models, coming from Biology, Dynamic of Populations, or Climatology.

Cumulative lifetime violence severity, social determinants and anxiety in a national sample of Canadian men

BackgroundDespite anxiety disorders being the ninth leading cause of disability and associated with social inequities, little attention has been given to how intersections among social determinants of health and chronic stressors such as cumulative lifetime violence affect the likelihood of experiencing anxiety disorders. Our purpose was to explore the relationships among cumulative lifetime violence severity as target and perpetrator, social determinants of health and generalized anxiety disorder in Canadian men.MethodsUsing a community sample of 592 Canadian men who self-identified as having experienced violence, we developed and tested an evidence-based model of generalized anxiety disorder including indicators of cumulative lifetime violence, gender, social location, socio-economic disparity, personal resources and other chronic stressors using logistic regression.ResultsMost men (76.4%, n = 452) reported experiences as both target and perpetrator. The model accounted for 50.8% of the variance in anxiety severity χ2 (8) = 264.43, p = .000). The prevalence of probable generalized anxiety disorder was 30.9%, a rate higher than that found among Canadian men in general in the same period. Remarkably, the likelihood of generalized anxiety disorder increased by a factor of 5.30 for each increase of 1 in cumulative lifetime violence severity, and six-fold for feeling overwhelmed by demands of everyday life (aOR = 6.26). Masculine discrepancy stress, having been born in Canada, unemployment, and food insecurity also contributed significantly to increasing the likelihood of generalized anxiety disorder. Both social support and mastery had significant aORs < 1, suggesting possible protective effects. Together these findings delineate characteristics and social determinants that may heighten vulnerability to generalized anxiety disorder and influence its progression among men who have experienced lifetime violence.ConclusionsThese findings are the first evidence that Canadian men with lifetime violence histories are a sub-group disproportionately affected by chronic stressors and socio-economic disparities and that together the presence and/or severity of these factors increases their vulnerability to generalized anxiety disorder. Our results highlight the importance of strengths-based trauma- and violence-informed approaches to care, including practical resources to reduce the stress of everyday life, improve social support, and reinforce personal control and choice.

On the integration of diverging material flows into resource‐constrained project scheduling

This study deals with an extension of the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) by constraints on material flows released during the execution of project activities. These constraints arise from limited processing capacities for materials and maximum inventories of intermediate storage facilities. Production scheduling problems with converging material flows have been studied extensively. However, this is the first project scheduling problem integrating diverging material flows typically observed in dismantling projects, e.g., building deconstruction, power plant decommissioning, or battery/car decommissioning. Diverging material flows do not directly impact the project planning but only impose delays in the case of congestion. We model material flows by using operations that represent the processing of materials, and cumulative resources that represent storage facilities. As a method for efficiently generating starting solutions, we propose a schedule generation scheme tailored to the particular precedence structure of such problems. Furthermore, we extensively study the schedule generation scheme’s performance on generated test instances and compare it to the constraint programming solver IBM ILOG CP Optimizer. It turns out that the solution quality strongly depends on the employed model and that neither of the two solution methods is generally superior.

The Sample Analysis Machine Scheduling Problem: Definition and comparison of exact solving approaches

Nowadays there exists a wide variety of automatic machines that perform analytical tests on liquid samples, such as water, blood, urines, saliva, etc. A test can be modelled as a set of activities with given precedences and through sharing a set of limited resources. A scheduling process is therefore required to find a feasible or optimal execution of a set of tests. An important particularity of the machines performing tests are their storage areas of limited capacity. For instance, one activity may require a sample to be moved to an observation area, while another activity may later remove this sample from that observation area.In this paper, we introduce a real problem encountered in the analytical instrument industry known as the Sample Analysis Machine Scheduling Problem (SAMSP). We show that the SAMSP is a particular case of the Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem with Cumulative Resources (RCPSP-Cu), and present a successful application of optimization techniques for it. We are interested in exact approaches, since the models presented will be used to prove the maximum throughput of the selected machine layouts. In particular, we compare the performance of approaches based on Constraint Programming (CP), Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT), and Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP), on real instances of SAMSP.

Deep gold mineralization features of Jiaojia metallogenic belt, Jiaodong gold Province: Based on the breakthrough of 3000 m exploration drilling

ABSTRACT Recently, continuous breakthroughs have been made about deep gold prospecting in the Jiaodong gold province area of China. Approximately 5000 t of cumulative gold resources have been explored in Jiaodong, which has thus become an internationally noteworthy gold ore cluster. The gold exploration depth has been increased to about 2000 m from the previous

Through the Anti-Monopoly Lens: What Constitutes ‘Unfairly High Patent Pricing’ in China?

Abstract This article proposes that a patentee’s unilateral pricing of proprietary technology should be presumed legal per se under Sec. 55 IPR immunity framework provided by the Anti-Monopoly Law, unless a plaintiff overcomes all three of the following hurdles with actual evidence: (i) the patentee enjoys a dominant market position; (ii) such pricing constitutes de facto refusal to deal with or significant ‘margin squeeze’ for subsequent or follow-on innovators; and (iii) the constructive refusal or ‘margin squeeze’ would likely foreclose dynamic competition. This seemingly high evidentiary burden is justified by three cumulative resources: (i) the very patent mechanism in facilitating innovation, including a solid promise of supra-competitive profit through the right to lawfully exclude competition by imitation, and thus the instigation of a virtuous circle of dynamic competition through pivoting on the critical link of competition by substitution; (ii) the prevalent cautious attitude in sister jurisdictions when dealing with the concept; and (iii) the inevitable limitations of antitrust law, manifested in the administrative and error costs due to lack of proper information and economic analysis methodologies on dynamic efficiency. Through a detailed illustration with six specific scenarios, we see in a quasi-quantitative way that the actual likelihood of unilateral foreclosure on dynamic competition, even in the case of a monopolist patentee, is extremely low despite the existence of a theoretical possibility. Facing this meager likelihood and information deficiency, it would be unwise for a Chinese court to incur enormous costs of searching for a possibility in every case, with the mere guidance of a vague rule-of-reason framework.

Здатність деревних видів акумулювати важкі метали в умовах нафтозабруднених ґрунтів

Досліджено особливості акумуляції хімічних елементів деревними рослинами в умовах впливу Битків-Бабчинського нафтового родовища. Рентгенофлуоресцентним методом встановлено концентрацію алюмінію, цинку, титану, феруму, стронцію, нікелю, купруму, арсену, брому, рубідію, молібдену, паладію, аргентуму, плюмбуму, ванадію у сухій масі листкових пластинок клена гостролистого, бука лісового, ліщини звичайної, берези повислої, липи серцелистої та осики, що зростають у забрудненому нафтопродуктами довкіллі. За допомогою програм CorelDRAW та ImageJ розраховано частку некротизованої тканини асиміляційних органів деревних рослин в умовах впливу родовища. Встановлено прямо пропорційну залежність між ураженням листкових пластинок дерев некрозами та накопиченням хімічних елементів рослинами. Зафіксовано відсутність арсену, брому, молібдену, паладію, аргентуму, плюмбуму, ванадію у листках клена, бука, липи. Виявлено зростання вмісту хімічних елементів у асиміляційних органах дослідних дерев у такому ряді: Mo → Pb → Pd → Ag → Br → As → V → Ni → Rb → Cu → Sr → Ti → Zn → Fe → Al. Частка некротизації листків в умовах Битків-Бабчинського нафтового родовища зростає у ряді дослідних рослин: бук → клен → липа → осика → береза → ліщина. Максимальною акумулятивною здатністю хімічних елементів володіє ліщина, мінімальною – бук та клен. Враховуючи значні кумулятивні ресурси ліщини, доцільно використовувати вид як фіторемедіант забрудненого хімічними елементами довкілля. Клен та бук належать до рослин-елімінаторів, які вибірково та в невеликих кількостях поглинають токсиканти з довкілля, що зумовлено наявністю у цих видів потужних протекторних механізмів. Береза, липа та осика відзначаються цінними біоіндикаторними характеристиками та їх можна використовувати для оцінювання екологічного напруження середовища.

What Russia Can Teach Us about Power and Influence in World Politics

There is a striking opposition within the current discourse on Russia’s position in the world. On the one hand, there are well-known arguments about Russia’s “weak hand” (relatively small and stagnating economy, vulnerability to sanctions, technological backwardness, deteriorating demography, corruption, bad institutions, etc.). On the other hand, Russia is accused of “global revisionism”, attempts to reshape and undermine the liberal world order, and Western democracy itself. There seems to be a paradox: Russia with a perceived decline of major resources of national power, exercises dramatically increased international influence. This paradox of power and/or influence is further explored. This paper introduces a new complex Index of national power. On the basis of ratings of countries authors compare the dynamics of distribution of power in the world with a focus on Russia’s national power in world politics since 1995. The analysis brings evidence that the cumulative resources of Russia’s power in international affairs did not increase during the last two decades. However, Russia’s influence in world politics has significantly increased as demonstrated by assertive foreign policy in different parts of the world and its perception by the international political community and the public. Russia remains a major power in today’s world, although some of its power resources are stagnating or decreasing in comparison to the US and rising China. To compensate for weaknesses Russia is using both traditional and nontraditional capabilities of international influence.

Peak resource analysis of concurrent distributed systems

Traditional cost analysis frameworks have been defined for cumulative resources which keep on increasing along the computation. Examples of cumulative resources are execution time, number of executed steps, and energy consumption. Non-cumulative resources are acquired and (possibly) released along the execution. Examples of non-cumulative cost are number of connections established that are later closed, or resources requested to a virtual host which are released after using them. We present a static analysis framework to infer the peak cost for non-cumulative types of resources in concurrent distributed systems. Our framework is generic w.r.t. the type of resource and can be instantiated with any of the above mentioned resources as well as with any other resource that is measurable by inspecting the instructions of the program. The concurrent distributed language that we consider allows creating distributed locations dynamically within the program and spawning tasks that execute concurrently at any of the existing locations. Our analysis infers, for the different distributed locations, the maximum (or peak) amount of resources that they may require along any execution. This information can be used, among other applications, to detect bottlenecks in the system and to efficiently dimension the processing capacity and storage that the locations of the concurrent distributed system require.

The RAS Library for Natural Sciences through the eyes of cataloguers

Key functions of the RAS Library for Natural Sciences are highlighted. The processes of catalog organization, development and update using BIBLIOBUS AILS are examined. Basic requirements to bibliographic record technology are discussed. The authors conclude that cataloguers need to access to reconciled cumulative reference information resources to consolidate the catalog and to ensure its reliable quality control.

Family Resources and Effects on Child Behavior Problem Interventions: A Cumulative Risk Approach

Family resources have been associated with health care inequality in general and with social gradients in treatment outcomes for children with behavior problems. However, there is limited evidence concerning cumulative risk—the accumulation of social and economic disadvantages in a family—and whether cumulative risk moderates the outcomes of evidence-based parent training interventions. We used data from two randomized controlled trials evaluating high-intensity (n = 137) and low-intensity (n = 216) versions of Parent Management Training—Oregon (PMTO) with a 50:50 allocation between participants receiving PMTO interventions or regular care. A nine-item family cumulative risk index tapping socioeconomic resources and parental health was constructed to assess the family’s exposure to risk. Autoregressive structured equation models (SEM) were run to investigate whether cumulative risk moderated child behaviors at post-treatment and follow-up (6 months). Our results showed opposite social gradients for the treatment conditions: the children exposed to cumulative risk in a pooled sample of both PMTO groups displayed lower levels of behavior problems, whereas children with identical risk exposures who received regular care experienced more problems. Furthermore, our results indicated that the social gradients differed between PMTO interventions: children exposed to cumulative risk in the low-intensity (five sessions) Brief Parent Training fared equally well as their high-resource counterparts, whereas children exposed to cumulative risk in the high-intensity PMTO (12 sessions) experienced vastly better treatment effects. Providing evidence-based parent training seem to be an effective way to counteract health care inequality, and the more intensive PMTO treatment seemed to be a particularly effective way to help families with cumulative risk.

How birds cope physiologically and behaviourally with extreme climatic events.

As global climate change progresses, the occurrence of potentially disruptive climatic events such as storms are increasing in frequency, duration and intensity resulting in higher mortality and reduced reproductive success. What constitutes an extreme climatic event? First we point out that extreme climatic events in biological contexts can occur in any environment. Focusing on field and laboratory data on wild birds we propose a mechanistic approach to defining and investigating what extreme climatic events are and how animals cope with them at physiological and behavioural levels. The life cycle of birds is made up of life-history stages such as migration, breeding and moult that evolved to match a range of environmental conditions an individual might expect during the year. When environmental conditions deteriorate and deviate from the expected range then the individual must trigger coping mechanisms (emergency life-history stage) that will disrupt the temporal progression of life-history stages, but enhance survival. Using the framework of allostasis, we argue that an extreme climatic event in biological contexts can be defined as when the cumulative resources available to an individual are exceeded by the sum of its energetic costs-a state called allostatic overload. This allostatic overload triggers the emergency life-history stage that temporarily allows the individual to cease regular activities in an attempt to survive extreme conditions. We propose that glucocorticoid hormones play a major role in orchestrating coping mechanisms and are critical for enduring extreme climatic events.This article is part of the themed issue 'Behavioural, ecological and evolutionary responses to extreme climatic events'.

Paleoproterozoic plume-related basaltic rocks in the Mana gold district in western Burkina Faso, West Africa: Implications for exploration and the source of gold in orogenic deposits

Birimian volcanic rocks of the Mana District are located in the an important gold-mineralized segment of the Paleoproterozoic Houndé greenstone belt, western Burkina Faso, which contains cumulative resources of ∼11 Moz. Five orogenic gold deposits (∼8 Moz) are hosted in or close to basaltic rocks. Theses rocks were studied to investigate their possible role as a gold source in younger orogenic gold deposits. They are Fe-rich tholeiitic basalts with flat REE patterns, with (La/Yb)N = 0.96–1.3 and without negative Eu anomaly (Eu/Eu* = 0.92–1.26). The basalts also have low initial Sr isotopic ratios (0.693612–0.702190) and positive εNd values (+2.25 to +3.14). Using a Ce/Nb vs. Th/Nb diagram and various plume-related basalts worldwide for comparison, the Mana basalts are shown to be plume-related. In addition, using Zr/Nb vs. Nb/Th and Nb/Y vs. Zr/Y binary diagrams and reference fields, the Mana basaltic rocks appear to have formed directly above the plume head. Because plume-related basalts tend to be enriched in gold relative to MORB, we propose that the gold endowment of the Mana district is mostly related to the occurrence of plume-related basaltic rocks, which may have served as an important metal stock during subsequent remobilization for forming the orogenic gold deposits. We also propose that for gold exploration, two simple geochemical diagrams involving Zr, Y, Nb and Th could be used at an early stage to test the origin of the basaltic rocks and hence indirectly establish the fertility of a specific belt for hosting orogenic gold deposits.

A branch-and-price-and-check model for the vehicle routing problem with location congestion

This paper considers a vehicle routing problem with pickup and delivery, time windows and location congestion. Locations provide a number of cumulative resources that are utilized by vehicles either during service (e.g., forklifts) or for the entirety of their visit (e.g., parking bays). Locations can become congested if insufficient resources are available, upon which vehicles must wait until a resource becomes available before proceeding. The problem is challenging from a computational standpoint since it incorporates the vehicle routing problem and the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. The main contribution of this paper is a branch-and-price-and-check model that uses a branch-and-price algorithm that solves the underlying vehicle routing problem, and a constraint programming subproblem that checks the feasibility of the location resource constraints, and then adds combinatorial nogood cuts to the master problem if the resource constraints are violated. Experimental results show the benefits of the branch-and-price-and-check approach.

The Global Imperative: “World Wellness”

Public health refers to all organized measures to prevent disease, promote health, and prolong life. Wellness is an active process of becoming aware of and making choices toward a healthy and fulfilling life. Public health capacity to manage health problems and promote wellness relies on cumulative resources and relationships. There is a growing need for accurate global, regional, and country statistics on population and health. Public health capacity is also very dependent on investment. Each country either ignores or establishes a mission to manage the health and safety of its people. Changing the paradigm needs to involve non-governmental organizations (ngos).

Civic Participation through Volunteerism among Youth across Immigrant Generations

This study examines patterns of civic participation through volunteerism among youth across immigrant generations using the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002. This study asks the following question: Does the association between volunteerism and immigrant generational status vary by race and ethnicity, and are differences in volunteerism by race/ethnic immigrant generation status mediated by acculturation, cumulative resources during youth, and institutional opportunities? The results show that the first and second generation Hispanic youth are less likely to volunteer than third+ generation whites. The findings demonstrate that the lower levels of family socioeconomic status, parents’ civic participation, engagement in extracurricular activities, and enrollment in postsecondary institutions account for this pattern. Contrary to classical assimilation theory, having non-English-language-speaking parents is associated with a higher likelihood of volunteerism. Furthermore, an immigrant advantage is found for first generation Hispanic youth for regular volunteerism, and a second generation advantage is found for Asians for all volunteer frequencies.

A quadratic extended edge-finding filtering algorithm for cumulative resource constraints

Edge-finding, extended edge-finding, not-first/not-last and energetic reasoning are well-known filtering rules used in constraint-based scheduling problems for propagating constraints over disjunctive and cumulative resources. In practice, these filtering algorithms frequently form part of a sequence to form a more powerful propagator, thereby helping to reduce search tree size. In this paper, we propose a sound O(n2) extended edge-finding algorithm for cumulative resources, where n is the number of tasks sharing the resource. This algorithm uses the notion of minimum slack to detect when extended edge-finding justifies a strengthening of a domain, and it is more efficacious when executed on a domain already at the fix point of standard edge-finding. Previously, the best known complexity for filtering extended edge-finding on cumulative resources was O(kn2) (where k is the number of distinct capacity requirements). Experimental results on resource constrained scheduling benchmarks confirm that the new algorithm outperforms previous extended edge-finding algorithms, and sometimes results in better performance than standard edge-finding alone. Furthermore, we show that our method is competitive with the current state-of-the-art in edge-finding-based algorithms.

Utilization of Coal Ash in China

Coal ash belongs to a kind of mixed material like pozzolana, which is formed after the combustion of the pulverized coal at high temperature. China is the No. 1 coal production and use country all over the world, and the coal ash produced from burning coal accounts for about 30% of the total fire coal. How to use cumulative secondary resources well, reduce floor space and environmental pollution, create higher added value, and comprehensively utilization of coal ash obtains more and more attention from people. This article describes the composition nature of coal ash and comprehensive utilization status quo in construction, building materials, agriculture, environmental protection and chemical industry, and makes recommendations on the problems and development trend of coal ash in China.

A Branch and Bound Algorithm for Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem Subject to Cumulative Resources

A Branch and Bound Algorithm for Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem Subject to Cumulative Resources

Tests for the Second Order Stochastic Dominance Based on L-Statistics

We use some characterizations of convex and concave-type orders to define discrepancy measures useful in two testing problems involving stochastic dominance assumptions. The results are connected with the mean value of the order statistics and have a clear economic interpretation in terms of the expected cumulative resources of the poorest (or richest) in random samples. Our approach mainly consists of comparing the estimated means in ordered samples of the involved populations. The test statistics we derive are functions of L-statistics and are generated through estimators of the mean order statistics. We illustrate some properties of the procedures with simulation studies and an empirical example.