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This study explores the disparities in older adults' self-rated health within the urban landscape of China. Drawing on the 1% national population survey of China in 2015, it highlights how variations in city development contribute to geographical health disparities among older residents. In the era of the decentralized fiscal system, a crucial mechanism identified is the role of cities' local fiscal revenue in connecting their socioeconomic development and the health status among older adults. Despite efforts by cities in lower socioeconomic positions to increase fiscal expenditure and address deficits through central transfer payments, they prove inadequate in effectively mitigating population health disparities. The prioritization of economic growth and neglect of public service provision responsibilities are fundamental causes within this fiscal framework. The findings underscore the urgent need for increased central transfer payments in public services to address the growing disparities in older adults' health. • Revealing health disparity among urban older adults amidst fiscal decentralization. • Local fiscal revenue connecting cities' development and individual health. • Ineffectiveness of local fiscal expenditure and deficit in alleviating disparities. • Urgency for leveraging public transfer payments toward public health services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prescribing behavior to prescribe high-priced drugs has been hypothesized to be related to the increasing drug expenditures in China, but little empirical evidence exists. The purpose of this study was to examine whether Chinese physicians, driven by financial incentives, tend to prescribe high-priced drugs. The 2000–2008 drug data in the Yangtze River Basin Hospitals' Drug Use Analysis System were analyzed to examine the prescription patterns of penicillins and cephalosporins in Shanghai. Among the top-100 drugs (by volume), cephalosporins cost as 1.1– 2.3 times as penicillins and their volume was 1.7–18.2 times. Revenues generated from prescribing cephalosporins were 3.4–24.2 times as those from prescribing penicillins. The tendency of prescribing relatively high-priced drugs was observed given the same chemical name, dosage, and specification but different trade names. Furthermore, high-priced drugs remained on the top-100 list with increasing volumes, while some lower-priced drugs exited from the list due to decreases in volumes. Facing the policy dilemmas, the Chinese government needs to implement a new financially rewarding system in which hospitals and physicians are able to achieve financial gains in a cost-effective way including prescribing similar drugs with lower prices. Reforming hospitals' payment methods is necessary and feasible to reshape financial incentives of healthcare providers. The combination of the global budget policy and financial incentive measures would be likely to change providers' prescribing behaviors towards a cost-effective direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an optimal building energy management strategy for the demand response of multi-thermal-zone buildings in the smart electricity grid environment. The proposed method includes a machine learning model, based on a neural network, for a building heating ventilation and air conditioning system. The learned model is then applied to an optimization problem to determine the optimal management scheduling of building loads. The goal of the optimization problem is to minimize building electricity costs and reduce the overall building energy consumption during peak load hours while satisfying human comfort demand. To overcome the coupling issue between the building internal-heat-gain loads and the building heating ventilation and air conditioning system, an iterative algorithm is proposed to solve the optimization problem. In each iteration, a mixed-integer linear programming technique is used to solve a sub-optimization problem for the building internal-heat-gain loads and its results are then applied to another sub-optimization problem, solved by using a particle swarm technique, for the building heating ventilation and air conditioning system. The iterative optimization algorithm stops when convergence between the optimization for the building heating ventilation and air conditioning system and the optimization for the building internal-heat-gain loads is properly reached. EnergyPlus is used to build and simulate complex buildings with multiple-thermal zones according to real-life conditions. The simulation model is also used to test and evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed machine-learning model and the iterative optimization algorithm and the improvement of building energy management in terms of energy consumption efficiency, cost saving, and satisfaction of human comfort. • A Machine-learning based strategy for energy management of multi-thermal zone buildings. • A combination of machine learning and optimization techniques for buildings. • A consideration of human comfort demands into learning-based energy optimization. • An integration of building energy management with demand response for smart grid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• NTSMC-based cascaded control for a DC/DC converter to increase the robustness. • A VIC method to increase the inertia of the DC/DC converter-interfaced DG unit. • Synchronization control to satisfy the plug-and-play of a buck-boost converter. • Hardware experimental results demonstrate the improved performance. To deal with the issues caused by the high integration of renewable resources, the parallel operation of the converters is generally required to improve the system stability and reliability. To support the parallel operation of buck-boost DC/DC converters, they are generally regulated by a cascaded control strategy, which includes droop control loop, and nested proportional-integral (PI) based voltage and current control loops. However, it can provide barely inertia support and needs precise system model to reach the desired performance. In order to overcome these drawbacks, this paper proposes a novel cascaded control strategy for parallel operation of buck-boost DC/DC converters. The proposed cascaded control strategy involves a voltage synchronization loop, a virtual inertia control (VIC) loop, and two nested NTSMC based voltage and current control loops. The voltage synchronization controller can enable the plug and play requirements by synchronizing the output voltage of the converter with the voltage at the point of common coupling (PCC) before connecting a DC/DC converter to the DC microgrid. The VIC can improve the inertia of the converter-interfaced DGs. The nested-loop NTSMC based voltage and current controller can improve the robustness of converter system. Hardware experiments demonstrate the improved performance of the proposed control strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]