Low-cost Plan Research Articles

Factors Affecting the Revenue of Air Asia Berhad During Covid-19 Pandemic

Air Asia Berhad is very well-known as the low-cost airline, the headquarter is located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is the largest airline in Malaysia by fleet size and destinations. It has consistently been named as the world’s best low-cost carrier for 11 years by Skytrax. Low-cost plan helps the company to earn profit in fact. However, in 2020, the revenue of Air Asia Berhad has decreased terribly due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Covid-19 pandemic began to spread in the final week of January 2020 at Malaysia and until this moment in time, the whole world is still facing the pandemic. It is also known as Coronavirus which can be spread through air and close contact. Due to Covid-19 pandemic, the passengers carried has been decreased by 74% by January to December 2020 on comparison with January to December 2019 which directly implies less revenue generation. Furthermore, many of the staff has been laid off. The particular aim for this research is to determine the factors affecting the revenue generation of the company during Covid-19. Google form was used to collect the needed information for this research. With the collected data through the study, it was found out that restrictions in travelling, paucity of passengers and high number of workers in the company are the main factors giving the current impact to the company’s revenue.

Life in the Balance by Jen Petro-Roy

Reviewed by: Life in the Balance by Jen Petro-Roy Elizabeth Bush Petro-Roy, Jen Life in the Balance. Feiwel, 2021 [272p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781250619730 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781250619747 $9.99 Reviewed from digital galleys Ad Gr. 4-6 Veronica, like her mother and grandmother and great-grandmother, is dedicated to the softball diamond, and this is the year she's in the running for a spot on an elite softball travel team. This is emphatically not the time for her mother to admit to being an alcoholic and check into rehab for two months. Veronica explodes with all the petulance of a sixth grader under pressure; of course she's heard her parents' fights; of course she's suffered from her mother's sporadic neglect; of course she's onboard with her mother's well-being and peace at home. But now? As Veronica grapples with—and often refuses to grapple with—understanding alcoholism as a disease rather than a choice, she drops the ball on her best friend Claudia's travails with her parents' divorce, and she exacerbates her father's distress over family finances, which force him to take a second job and may render Veronica's travel team dreams a moot point. Petro-Roy's novel is heartfelt, and the reactions of mother, father, daughter, and neglected friend are realistic. Authorial scripting is [End Page 228] constantly on display, though, from lengthy heart-to-hearts that explicate alcoholism, to the neat availability of a new friend who attends a children of alcoholics support group, to Veronica's singing talent, which offers both a low-cost Plan B if she can't do softball and a beeline straight to the feel-terrific conclusion. There's still plenty of honesty here, however, and much to cheer for as Veronica settles into understanding her family challenge and how to meet it. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

A Low-Cost Real-World Planning Strategy for Deploying a Dedicated Short-Range Communications Roadside Unit on a Highway Off-Ramp

The deployment of dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) roadside units (RSUs) allows a connected or automated vehicle to acquire information from the surrounding environment, such as a traffic light’s signal phase and timing, using vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. Several scholarly papers exist on planning strategies for DSRC RSU deployments using simulation without accounting for wireless communication constraints and environmental changes. This paper proposes an empirical-based planning strategy for a highway off-ramp in a real-world environment. The research goal focuses on developing a low-cost and structured deployment plan for DSRC RSUs with the following objectives: use free planning tools; apply the deployment strategy in a real-world environment; utilize publicly available DSRC RSU data measurements; and leverage existing intelligent transportation systems infrastructure when possible. The proposed planning strategy includes three steps: (1) conduct a virtual site survey, (2) gather baseline performance data for the DSRC RSU equipment, and (3) generate a predictive radio frequency signal. The planning strategy was successfully applied on a highway off-ramp at exit 19A of the Capital Beltway, which encircles Washington, DC.

Helping Military Service Members Make Their Food Dollars Count

Helping Military Service Members Make Their Food Dollars Count

Linking SNAP to Food Security: Exploring Reinstating a Purchase Requirement and Tying Benefits to the Low-Cost Food Plan

Abstract The United States has a food assistance structure that, by design, does not assure that households receiving food assistance will be food secure, is deeply inefficient, and is at financial and structural risk. The two most common forms of food assistance used today are Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program) and charitable food assistance in the form of groceries (provided through a network of food banks, food pantries, and other related programs). Approximately 43 million persons participate in SNAP and nearly one-third of them also rely on a food pantry for groceries. The use of charitable food assistance by persons relying on SNAP demonstrates that SNAP’s benefit level and structure does not sufficiently result in food security. The article argues that reinstating a purchase requirement for SNAP and increasing the level of benefits provided to SNAP participants would increase the food security of participants, alleviate the chronic demand for food from food banks and food pantries, and ultimately allow the charitable food assistance network to better accomplish its goal of providing emergency food assistance to the needy.

Enterprises' compliance with government carbon reduction labelling policy using a system dynamics approach

A carbon reduction labelling scheme is an effective policy tool for motivating enterprises or organizations to reduce their life-cycle-based carbon emissions to benefit the environment. This paper uses system dynamics to model enterprises' compliance with a combined government policy instrument for a carbon reduction labelling scheme, that is, government subsidies and economic sanctions. A case study of paper enterprises in China is provided to demonstrate the application of the proposed model in which two optional technological plans to reduce the enterprises' carbon emissions are examined. The technological plans are categorized as a low-cost and high-cost plan. The simulation results show that both the technological plans are vulnerable to the combined policy making, and the high-cost plan shows superior environmental performance for carbon emissions reduction. However, the enterprises are more inclined to choose the low-cost plan because of superior economic performance. The study offers insights to help enterprises select optimal actions on carbon emissions reduction and to inform government of possible sustainable policy design to promote low-carbon development. The model limitations are discussed as a basis for further improvements in low-carbon development.

Study on the 3G Network-Based Interactive Monitoring System for Highway Engineering

In this paper, an interactive monitoring system for real-time, dynamic and multi-dimension monitoring of highway engineering by utilizing the current 3G network has been proposed innovatively after analyzing the characteristics of highway engineering construction. It has been applied into a transformation project of a certain national road and achieved fine results. It can provide a convenient and low-cost plan for the informationization and intelligent construction of highway engineering.

Soft Goals Can Be Compiled Away

Soft goals extend the classical model of planning with a simple model of preferences. The best plans are then not the ones with least cost but the ones with maximum utility, where the utility of a plan is the sum of the utilities of the soft goals achieved minus the plan cost. Finding plans with high utility appears to involve two linked problems: choosing a subset of soft goals to achieve and finding a low-cost plan to achieve them. New search algorithms and heuristics have been developed for planning with soft goals, and a new track has been introduced in the International Planning Competition (IPC) to test their performance. In this note, we show however that these extensions are not needed: soft goals do not increase the expressive power of the basic model of planning with action costs, as they can easily be compiled away. We apply this compilation to the problems of the net-benefit track of the most recent IPC, and show that optimal and satisficing cost-based planners do better on the compiled problems than optimal and satisficing net-benefit planners on the original problems with explicit soft goals. Furthermore, we show that penalties, or negative preferences expressing conditions to avoid, can also be compiled away using a similar idea.

A Simple, Low-Cost Plan to Improve Trauma Systems in Dominica

A Simple, Low-Cost Plan to Improve Trauma Systems in Dominica

Stanford University’s Experience With Managed Competition

Stanford University has a "managed competition" model of health insurance. Stanford contributes the cost of the low-cost plan, and employees are responsible for premium differences between this plan and other offerings. Each employee gets what he or she wants and is willing to pay for, and everyone has low-cost access to health insurance. Stanford risk-adjusts the premiums based on age and sex and plans soon to adjust including prescription drug data. In the past five years, premiums have risen rapidly, in line with the rest of the market. For competition to transform the delivery system, most employers in the region must adopt managed competition.

A Low Tech Answer to a High Tech Problem

This article describes how to fairly allocate Internet Access Workstations once a library decides to have them. The various plans used by the San Francisco Main Library are discussed. After many trials and errors, the San Francisco Main Library has developed a low tech, low cost plan for equitably allocating Internet Access Workstations. Any library with one public Internet Terminal to fifty public Internet Terminals can use this plan. This plan benefits both staff and patrons by having a compromise in assuming responsibility for monitoring the stations. Computer programs used for this purpose are expensive and are only available from a handful of companies. The faults in these programs are discussed.

How Will Changes in Health Insurance Tax Policy and Employer Health Plan Contributions Affect Access to Health Care and Health Care Costs?

To understand how changes in federal taxation of and employer contributions to health insurance benefits affect the decisions of firms to offer insurance, the willingness of households to purchase different health plans, and the resultant health expenditures. Economic policy simulation. Secondary data analysis. A total of 18,343 sampled families (representing 77 million total families throughout the United States) with a working household head from the 1988 Current Population Survey who were not covered by either Medicare, Medicaid, or CHAMPUS (Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Uniformed Services) insurance. One intervention limits the amounts of tax-free employer contributions to health insurance premiums to 80% of our estimate of the base plan in the market and assumes that employer contributions will also be limited to this maximum. A second intervention eliminates the favorable tax treatment of employer-paid premiums altogether and assumes that employees will pay the full price of insurance. Change in the number of working families offered employment-based insurance, change in insurance plan choice, and change in medical spending. Capping the favorable tax treatment and employer contributions decreases the number of families offered employment-based insurance by approximately 91,000, increases the number of families selecting the least generous insurance plan from 20% under the current situation to 33%, and reduces overall health spending by less than 2%. By eliminating the tax exemption altogether, the number of families offered employment-based insurance decreases by approximately half a million families, the number of families selecting the least generous plan goes from 20% to 40%, and overall spending falls by about $16 billion. Eliminating the tax subsidy and limiting employer-paid contributions to the low-cost plan substantially increases the number of low-income uninsured under a voluntary insurance system, decreases overall spending only modestly, but would raise tax revenues by $36 billion. These tax revenues could be used to assist low-income families to obtain insurance coverage.

Recreational Travel: Gasoline Shortages and Price Increases

An empirical study utilizes visitation data from a number of recreational attractions in California to estimate the reduction of travel due to the gasoline price increases that occurred during 1977-79 and the gas shortages that occurred in 1979. Differences in the price elasticities and the impacts of the gas shortage are determined by comparing private and public recreation sites, located in both urban and rural areas. It is shown that local zoos suffer the greatest long term visitation reduction due to increased gas prices, and that recreation attractions that draw from the national tourism market are least affected by gas prices. However, national attractions are the most affected by a gas shortage. It is recommended that public officials should consider mass transit for providing mobility to low cost local recreation areas and plan for possible mitigation of adverse local economic consequences if major recreational attractions are affected by future fuel shortages.

Economies of Scale, Networks, and Network Cost Elasticity

A foundation for examining network economy of scale effects is presented. A natural measure of the network scale effect is the network cost elasticity e, defined as the ratio of the fractional decrease in network average cost per circuit mile to the fractional increase in total circuit miles carried by the network. The maximum scale effect is given by e = 1 while e = 0 signifies no scale effect. The value of e can be estimated by comparing two network plans, one with nominal circuit demands and one with small variations in the demands. For a static network model, e can vary from 0 to 0.75 for several possible ways of changing each point-to-point circuit demand. The complex point-to-point nature of network demand must be included in any meaningful study of network scale effects. A simple example is used to show that static studies, while providing useful insight, have little relevance to issues concerned with a communications network evolving over time. A dynamic model of network evolution is presented which includes the point-to-point nature of demand and the sequential nature of facility installation decisions. A low-cost plan is developed for a nominal and slightly modified demand forecast. The transmission facilities assumed available are the same for both plans. However, advances in transmission technology during the study interval must be allowed in both plans if the results are to have relevance.