Resources Reallocation Research Articles

Does digital transformation increase the labor income share? From a perspective of resources reallocation

Does digital transformation increase the labor income share? From a perspective of resources reallocation

Programmatic management of tuberculosis preventive therapy: Past, present, future

BackgroundTuberculosis (TB) infection (TBI) is an emerging public health priority, involving about one-fourth of the world population. Because patients with TBI are the reservoir for TB, stopping the progression to active disease by preventive treatment is one of the main interventions needed to achieve TB elimination. As of today, the proportion of people with TBI receiving treatment is minimal at the global level, mostly because current international policies recommend systematic testing and treatment for less than 2% of infected people. Present: facts and gapsThe programmatic management of TB preventive treatment involves a set of cascading interventions, of which the effectiveness is limited by the poor predictivity of diagnostic tests, the length and the potential toxicity of treatment, and the suboptimal prioritization within global policies. Partly because of this, competing priorities and the lack of adequate funding are significant barriers for scale-up, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Monitoring and evaluationTo date, there is no universal system of monitoring and evaluation for the programmatic management of TB preventive treatment elements, and just a few countries use the standard recording and reporting tools, contributing to leaving TBI a neglected condition. ConclusionBetter financed research and resources reallocation are essential steps to progress toward TB elimination worldwide.

P340 Issues on implementing treat-to-target approach in Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa: Reality, gaps, and way forward -APMA IBD Coalition

Abstract Background To understand the real-world issues and difficulties in implementing treat-to-target (T2T) approach in managing inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients in the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (APMA) region. Methods A structured survey of 10 questions was sent to 19 IBD specialists from 14 economies/countries in the APMA region between June and August 2022, followed by three hybrid roundtable discussions to identify, elaborate and validate the gaps and challenges in T2T adoption in their healthcare setting. The survey used a series of questions exploring experts’ current practice and preference of treatment endpoints, diagnostic and monitoring tools, and major desirable improvement if resources are not constrained. Results The two major gaps expressed by of IBD specialists in the APMA region are to early diagnose and treat IBD patients (61.1%), and the lack of trained IBD nurses (50%) (Figure 1.The major gaps in the diagnosis and monitoring of IBD in routine clinical practice in APMA). While T2T approach is widely accepted among IBD specialists across the APMA region, blood tests (such as CRP, ESR) and faecal calprotectin (FC) test are two commonly used modalities by 77.8% and 72,2% IBD specialists, respectively However, the availability and cost of FC test is the second leading challenge (55.6%) faced by these specialists, with patient compliance being the most challenging (66.7%)(Figure 2.The biggest challenges in monitoring IBD patients in APMA). As to the most desired IBD monitoring tool, 88.9% considered the application of validated and reproducible intestinal ultrasound (Figure 3.Most desired IBD monitoring tool in APMA if resources are not a problem). The availability of trained IBD nurse (39%) and increasing awareness and training of general practitioner (33%) are the two most important factors that IBD specialists considered to improve care of IBD patients in the region (Figure 4.Major improvements required in diagnosis to improve IBD patient care in APMA). Conclusion Considerable gaps in implementing T2T approach to managing IBD patients in the APMA region are identified via this survey by IBD specialists. Lack of training of general practitioners, IBD nurses and availability of affordable FC are common issues identified in this region, which would deserve implementation of new educational initiatives and resources reallocation.

The Housing Financing Policy and Its Impacts on Low-Income Communities and Indonesian Economy

The housing financing policy or the Liquidity Facility of Housing Financing (FLPP) aims to help low-income communities (MBR) access affordable and livable housing. Unfortunately, MBR's housing backlog is still high, affecting their productivity. The housing financing policy also leverages the changes in other sectors' activities, which can increase or contract economic performance. This study aims to analyze the impact of housing financing policies on MBR's welfare and the Indonesian economy's performance. The Recursive-Dynamic Computable General Equilibrium (RDCGE) and the Econometric Model capture economic resources reallocation at MBR and macroeconomic levels due to housing financing policies. The study results indicate that the FLPP can potentially increase the growth and development of housing and improve community welfare. In addition, the FLPP positively impacts economic performance, although it will make specific sectors worse off. The policy recommendations are related to the simultaneous improvement of the demand and supply sides, as well as improvement in housing budget

The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Hospitalization and Interventional Procedures for Cardiovascular Diseases during the First Wave in Italy.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been responsible for an epidemic of devastating proportion, and it has represented a challenge for worldwide healthcare systems with the need of resources reallocation in order to face epidemic spread. Italy was one of the hardest hit countries by COVID-19, and the Italian government adopted strict rules to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as national lockdown and home quarantine; moreover, the Italian healthcare system had to rapidly re-organize the diagnostic and therapeutic pathways, with a reallocation of health resources and hospital beds, in order to manage COVID-19 patients. The aim of the present review is to provide an overview of the effects of the first pandemic wave on cardiovascular assistance in Italy with the purpose of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the Italian health system.

Coordinating Fast Concurrency Adapting With Autoscaling for SLO-Oriented Web Applications

Cloud providers tend to support dynamic computing resources reallocation (e.g., Autoscaling) to handle the bursty workload for web applications (e.g., e-commerce) in the cloud environment. Nevertheless, we demonstrate that directly scaling a bottleneck server without quickly adjusting its soft resources (e.g., server threads and database connections) can cause significant response time fluctuations of the target web application. Since soft resources determine the request processing concurrency of each server in the system, simply scaling out/in the bottleneck service can unintentionally change the concurrency level of related services, inducing either under- or over-utilization of the critical hardware resource. In this paper, we propose the Scatter-Concurrency-Throughput (SCT) model, which can rapidly identify the near-optimal soft resource allocation of each server in the system using the measurement of each server's real-time throughput and concurrency. Furthermore, we implement a Concurrency-aware autoScaling (ConScale) framework that integrates the SCT model to quickly reallocate the soft resources of the key servers in the system to best utilize the new hardware resource capacity after the system scaling. Based on extensive experimental comparisons with two widely used hardware-only scaling mechanisms for web applications: EC2-AutoScaling (VM-based autoscaler) and Kubernetes HPA (container-based autoscaler), we show that ConScale can successfully mitigate the response time fluctuations over the system scaling phase in both VM-based and container-based environments.

Ukrainian Reform of Decentralization Processes Consolidating the Sustainable Development: Environmental and Legal Aspects

The strategic vision of sustainable development for Ukraine is based on ensuring national interests and accomplishing international commitments proceeding to sustainable development. Sustainable development involves decentralization and implementation of regional policy, which is based on a harmonious combination of national and regional interests regarding ecology. This article aims to identify and analyze environmental and legal components of the decentralization of power in Ukraine as a means to sustainable development provisions. The main focus of ecological decentralization is placed on land resources. This is due to the peculiarities of the national system of environmental law (natural resource and environmental regulations) of Ukraine. The article highlights the main and additional areas of environmental decentralization. It analyzes the legislation and the practice of its implementation in the sphere of natural resources reallocation, territorial communities’ demarcation, and their planning process. The roles of cadasters, registers, and electronic databases in maintaining natural resources for the successful decentralization of power are analyzed. The legal perspectives for the decentralization of environmental control are also outlined. The status of financial and ecological resources redistribution in the process of decentralization is highlighted along with the ways of its subsequent improvement. The conclusion suggests the ways for the improvement of legislation and the practice of its implementation to accomplish successful decentralization reform.

Regional years of life lost, years lived with disability, and disability-adjusted life-years for severe mental disorders in Guangdong Province, China: a real-world longitudinal study

BackgroundTo understand the magnitude and spatial–temporal distribution of the regional burden attributable to severe mental disorders is of great essential and high policy relevance. The study aimed to address the burden of severe mental disorders by evaluating the years of life lost, years lived with disability, and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) in Guangdong, China.MethodsWe undertook a longitudinal study based on a multicenter database established by the Health Commission of Guangdong, involving a total of 21 prefectures and four economic regions in the Guangdong province. A total of 520,731 medical records from patients with severe mental disorders were collected for 2010–2020. Data were analyzed via an integrated evaluation framework by synthesizing prevalence estimates, epidemiological adjustment as well as comorbidity assessment to develop internally consistent estimates of DALY. DALY changes during 2010–2020 were decomposed by population growth and aging and further grouped by Socio-demographic Index (SDI). DALYs were projected to 2030 by the weighted median annualized rate of change in 2010–2020.ResultsIn 2010–2020, the average DALYs for severe mental disorders reached 798,474 (95% uncertainty interval [UI]: 536,280–1,270,465) person-years (52.2% for males, and 47.8% for females). Severe mental disorders led to a great amount of disease burden, especially in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Foshan cities. Schizophrenia and mental retardation with mental disorders were the two leading sources of the burden ascribed to severe mental disorders. Population growth and aging could be accountable for the increasing burden of severe mental disorders. Economic regions with higher SDI carried a greater burden but had lower annualized rates of change in DALYs. The overall burden of severe mental disorders is projected to rise modestly over the next decade.ConclusionsThe findings urge prioritization of initiatives focused on public mental health, prevention strategies, health resources reallocation, and active involvement of authorities to effectively address the anticipated needs.

Toward Sustainable Water Resources Management in the Tunisian Citrus Sector: Impact of Pricing Policies on Water Resources Reallocation

This study aims to analyse Tunisian farmers’ ability to pay (ATP) in a citrus area and propose a penalising price strategy based on the block-pricing process to decrease over-irrigation without affecting farmers’ incomes. The methodology is based on the residual imputation approach to determine farmers’ ATP, a stochastic production frontier to estimate the technical efficiency to determine optimal water irrigation quantity and calculation of the price elasticity of demand for an effective penalty and the Gini index before and after penalisation to study equity improvement. A survey was carried out on a sample of 147 citrus farms in the Nabeul Governorate, Northeastern Tunisia. The technical efficiency analysis confirms that an optimal quantity of 5000 m3/ha guarantees the maximisation of yields and profits. Above this quantity, the amount of overused water could be penalised without significantly affecting farmers’ incomes. Results also reveal that water overconsumption represents 28% of available resources and the ATP varies according to technical efficiency. Therefore, the proposed penalty system could reduce water overconsumption by 44.56% without deteriorating agricultural welfare. To improve water management as well as farmers’ welfare, this study recommends an increase in the technical efficiency level of farms to optimise all production factors for any implemented pricing policy.

A Survey on Malleability Solutions for High-Performance Distributed Computing

Maintaining a high rate of productivity, in terms of completed jobs per unit of time, in High-Performance Computing (HPC) facilities is a cornerstone in the next generation of exascale supercomputers. Process malleability is presented as a straightforward mechanism to address that issue. Nowadays, the vast majority of HPC facilities are intended for distributed-memory applications based on the Message Passing (MP) paradigm. For this reason, many efforts are based on the Message Passing Interface (MPI), the de facto standard programming model. Malleability aims to rescale executions on-the-fly, in other words, reconfigure the number and layout of processes in running applications. Process malleability involves resources reallocation within the HPC system, handling processes of the application, and redistributing data among those processes to resume the execution. This manuscript compiles how different frameworks address process malleability, their main features, their integration in resource management systems, and how they may be used in user codes. This paper is a detailed state-of-the-art devised as an entry point for researchers who are interested in process malleability.

Multi-objective optimization of energy-water nexus from spatial resource reallocation perspective in China

With China’s vast territory and high regional heterogeneity in the spatial energy and water resources distribution, provincial-level embodied energy (EE) and virtual water (VW) reallocation are critical to regional energy and water recourse management but unfortunately, remain far from completed. In this paper, considering the heterogeneity of energy and water resources endowments among provinces, we constructed a dual objectives optimization framework to minimize national energy stress and water stress. Also, we evaluated the EE and VW flows’ synergy impact on mitigating energy and water stress. We found that the spatial resources reallocation has a significant role on mitigating energy and water stress in high-stress regions. The results show that the net energy inflow can increase by 33.5%, and the net water inflow can increase by 42.1% in high-stress regions. The EE and VW flows’ impact on mitigating resource stress is affected by the spatial resource endowments’ heterogeneity. The flows that have the most positive impact on mitigating regional energy and water stress are Shanxi-Jiangsu and Jiangxi-Shanghai, respectively, while the most negative flows are Jiangsu-Henan and Xinjiang-Heilongjiang, respectively. The EE and VW flows among provinces have synergy in mitigating energy and water stress. Policy makers should not only focus on the local resources’ consumption, but on the inter-provincial recourse flow and spatial resource endowments’ heterogeneity. Inter-provincial cooperation is recommended, with reducing the scale of EE and VW trade that has negative impact, which can mitigate regional energy and water stress.

Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms Increase the Efficiency of Memory Functioning for Trauma-Related Information.

The present study explored the resources reallocation explanation for memory biases in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), whereby a preferential allocation of cognitive resources to the processing of threatening stimuli could result in both improvements in their memorization and deficits for other types of information. To this end, 25 participants presenting significant symptoms of PTSD (i.e., total PCL-5 score ≥33) and 32 participants presenting low levels of symptoms (i.e., total PCL-5 score <20) took part in a Remember/Know recognition procedure associated with a dual-task encoding of positive, neutral, negative, and trauma-related words. In order to manipulate the availability of cognitive resources, the encoding of each word was associated with a simultaneous encoding of series of letters and numbers. Results replicated the increased production of Remember recognitions for trauma-related words in participants with significant PTSD symptoms. However, the dual-task load only impaired remember recognitions for non-trauma-related words. Contrary to expectations, these findings suggest that the encoding of trauma-related information in PTSD is relatively independent from the availability of cognitive resources. Thus, rather than reflecting an increased allocation of cognitive resources to the processing of threatening information, memory biases in PTSD appeared to be supported by an enhanced efficiency of their processing.

Analysis and prediction of ridership impacts during planned public transport disruptions

Urban metro and tram networks are regularly subject to planned disruptions, including closures, resulting from the need to maintain and renew infrastructure. In this study, we first empirically analyse the passenger demand response to planned public transport disruptions based on individual passenger travel behaviour, based on which we infer generalised journey time and cost elasticities for different passenger groups and time periods of the day. Second, we develop a model which enables predicting public transport demand for individual origin-destination pairs affected by a closure. The model is trained based on the empirically observed travel behaviour. The proposed method is applied to a case study closure in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, based on which we empirically derive generalised journey time and generalised journey cost elasticities of − 0.99 and − 1.11, respectively. Our results suggest that passengers’ demand response is lower for frequent users of the public transport network, as well as during weekdays - especially during the peak periods. Arguably, this stems from a higher share of captive passengers with a mandatory journey purpose in these segments, who will continue making their journey nevertheless. During weekends - with typically higher shares of leisure related journeys - a much more pronounced demand response is found. The estimated neural network regression model is able to predict passenger demand during public transport closures with a high level of accuracy. This provides public transport agencies more precise insights into the impact of closures on their revenue losses and on the potential need for resources reallocation.

Estimating the role of labor resources reallocation between sectors on the growth of aggregate labor productivity in the Russian economy

Relevance. Economic growth can be achieved in two different ways: through technological improvements and reallocation of market shares from less to more productive units. Despite the significant research literature on innovation in Russia, the literature on market selection, especially at the sectoral level, is relatively scarce. This is the research gap that this study aims to address. Research objective. The article assesses how labor resource reallocation between sectors has influenced the dynamics of aggregate labor productivity in the Russian economy over the past two decades. Data and methods. For this purpose, the growth of aggregate labor productivity was decomposed into the growth of productivity within the sectors themselves and the reallocation of labor resources between them. This allowed us to conduct a quantitative estimation of the role of market selection at the sectoral level. For our study, we used data from Rosstat (from 2002 to 2018) and the World Input-Output Database (from 2000 to 2014). Results. For Rosstat data, the ratio of the effect of changes in labor productivity and labor resource reallocation by sector on total labor productivity over the period was 0.71/0.29, and for WIOD data it was 0.44/0.56. This indicates that labor resources are more likely to be reallocated to related sectors (e.g. between manufacturing industries). Conclusions. The results suggest that there is competitive market selection at the sectoral level and that labor has generally been reallocated to more productive sectors of the economy, contributing significantly to the growth of aggregate productivity in the economy. Our study shows the sectors of the economy where this reallocation has taken place, which may help to determine where this process is successful and where it needs additional stimulation.

Water permits trading framework for urban water demand management based on smart metering

Water rights trading is commonly used as a means of water resources reallocation between different water use sectors or between different end-users within the same sector. No studies, however, were reported on water rights trading from residential water use to other sectors. The primary reasons include the ambiguous definition of residents’ water rights and lack of real-time information about water consumption. This study presents a domestic-industrial water permits trading framework for urban water demand management. The framework is applied to the case study of Dalian demonstrating its feasibility theoretically and technologically from the perspective of the whole city and typical demonstration areas. The finding obtained shows that the tradable water volume accounts for 13.72% of the total residential water use, brings a profit of 91.05 million yuan to the residents, and saves 56.67 million yuan of water resources costs for industry users. The increase in water prices for consumption through tiered pricing can raise the tradable volume to 16.10%. Furthermore, a trading platform based on WeChat is developed to completely materialize the entire water permits trading process according to the real-time water consumption data collected from smart water meters. This study shows that the water permits trading between urban domestic-industrial sectors is an effective means of redistributing urban water resources to improve economic benefits while ensuring urban water supply security.

Traits of a\xa0mussel transmissible cancer are\xa0reminiscent of a parasitic life style

Some cancers have evolved the ability to spread from host to host by transmission of cancerous cells. These rare biological entities can be considered parasites with a host-related genome. Still, we know little about their specific adaptation to a parasitic lifestyle. MtrBTN2 is one of the few lineages of transmissible cancers known in the animal kingdom. Reported worldwide, MtrBTN2 infects marine mussels. We isolated MtrBTN2 cells circulating in the hemolymph of cancerous mussels and investigated their phenotypic traits. We found that MtrBTN2 cells had remarkable survival capacities in seawater, much higher than normal hemocytes. With almost 100% cell survival over three days, they increase significantly their chances to infect neighboring hosts. MtrBTN2 also triggered an aggressive cancerous process: proliferation in mussels was ~ 17 times higher than normal hemocytes (mean doubling time of ~ 3 days), thereby favoring a rapid increase of intra-host population size. MtrBTN2 appears to induce host castration, thereby favoring resources re-allocation to the parasites and increasing the host carrying capacity. Altogether, our results highlight a series of traits of MtrBTN2 consistent with a marine parasitic lifestyle that may have contributed to the success of its persistence and dissemination in different mussel populations across the globe.

Particle Swarm Optimization for Least Square Support Vector Machine in MediumTerm Electricity Price Prediction

Predicting electricity price has now become an important task for planning and maintenance of power system. In medium-term forecast, electricity price can be predicted for several weeks ahead, up to a few months or a year ahead. It is useful for resources reallocation where the market players have to manage the price risk on the expected market scenario. However, the research on medium-term price forecast have also exhibited low forecast accuracy due to the limited historical data for training and testing purposes. Therefore, an optimization technique using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) for Least Square Support Vector Machine (LSSVM) was developed in this study to provide an accurate electricity price forecast with optimized LSSVM parameters. After thorough database mining in English language, no literature has been found on parameter optimization using LSSVM-PSO for medium-term price prediction. The model was examined on the Ontario power market which was reported as among the most volatile market worldwide. Monthly average of Hourly Ontario Electricity Price (HOEP) for the past 12 months and month index were selected as the input. The developed LSSVM-PSO showed higher forecast accuracy with lower complexity than the existing models.

Resources Reallocation of Sections of Imam Reza Hospital Based on Their Performance Using Data Envelopment Analysis

Resources Reallocation of Sections of Imam Reza Hospital Based on Their Performance Using Data Envelopment Analysis

Patient with heart failure: importance to treat valvular diseases.

COVID-19 pandemic is causing an unprecedented burden on healthcare resources and this includes treatment of heart failure and valvular heart diseases (VHD). Percutaneous procedures have broadened the number of patients with VHD who could be treated. However, COVID-19 pandemic has challenged their implementation. The risk of in-hospital infection, resources reallocation, reduced access to hospital caused a substantial delay of VHD treatment with an increased risk of clinical worsening and mortality. Now, the pandemic is not ended and subsequent waves are likely. Reorganization of our healthcare resources is needed, including a proper algorithm for patients’ prioritization, based on the severity of their valve disease, their life expectancy, complexity of the intervention, and the resources available. A wider use of telemedicine for patients’ selection and follow-up and any measurement that can shorten the duration of the hospital stay must be adopted. Patients’ and healthcare staff screening for COVID-19 and all needed procedures to prevent infection will continue to be mandatory. Percutaneous procedures, compared to surgery, are associated with a lower risk of infection and a lower need for in-hospital resources, including a shorter duration of hospital stay. This may favour their adoption when the risk of viral infection is high.

Multi-Sensor Evaluating Effects of an Ecological Water Diversion Project on Land Degradation in the Heihe River Basin, China

To deal with the increasingly severe land degradation in the downstream of the Heihe River Basin(HRB) in northwest China, an Ecological Water Diversion Project(EDWP) was implemented since 2000. A comprehensive analysis of the effects associated with the project on land degradation is necessary. According to the concept of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN), multi-sensor data has been used to extract information on Land Use/Land Cover (LULC), aeolian desertification, and vegetation dynamics, which were chosen as monitoring indices to reveal the process of land degradation in the HRB. Then, these results were combined with meteorological data, socio-economic statistics, and hydrological data to discuss the main driving factors influencing the land degradation process to evaluate the effects of the EWDP on land degradation in the HRB. The results showed that the process of land degradation in the HRB could be divided into two stages, in which the degradation trend was dominant from 1990 to 2000, and the rehabilitation trend was dominant from 2000 to 2015. Although both climate variation and human activities have been favorable to land degradation development in the HRB, climate factors have no significant influence on land degradation in the midstream and downstream in the HRB. The decrease of available water resources is the dominant driving factor of a series of ecological environment problems in the downstream of the HRB, and the land degradation process of the HRB has been stopped and reversed mainly attributed to the EWDP. The EWDP facilitated the recovery of the deteriorated ecosystem by improving the efficiency of surface water resources reallocation in the downstream. Still, the EWDP indirectly led to the sink of the groundwater table in the midstream with resulting in local vegetation degradation.