Search

Energy efficiency (EE) is an important strategy for China to save energy and reduce energy-related emissions. With significant regional diversities in China, it is important to conduct the EE assessment at the regional level. Usually, the regional EE assessment is applied to 30 regions in Mainland China using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique. With the "Belt and Road" strategy initiated by the Chinese government, it is reasonable and necessary to take Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan into consideration. However, such data expansion for China's regional EE assessment using DEA can reverse the relative rankings of some decision-making units, which is called the "rank reversal" phenomenon. In this paper, we illustrate in theory that rank reversal occurs in general DEA models, and apply the most popular five DEA models to assess China's regional energy efficiency from 2000 to 2014. The empirical study shows that the 30 regions in Mainland China have the least rank reversal when Tone's slack-based model (SBMT) is adopted. The main cause of ranking reversal is the addition of decision-making units lying on production frontier. Better understanding of the rank reversal phenomenon is critical for the energy efficiency assessment using DEA to inform the policy makings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of data envelopment analysis (DEA) in China’s regional energy efficiency and carbon emission efficiency (EE&CE) assessment has received increasing attention in recent years. This paper conducted a comprehensive survey of empirical studies published in 2006–2015 on China’s regional EE&CE assessment using DEA-type models. The main features used in previous studies were identified, and then the methodological framework for deriving the EE&CE indicators as well as six widely used DEA models were introduced. These DEA models were compared and applied to measure China’s regional EE&CE in 30 provinces/regions between 1995 and 2012. The empirical study indicates that China’s regional EE&CE remained stable in the 9th Five Year Plan (1996–2000), then decreased in the 10th Five Year Plan (2000–2005), and increased a bit in the 11th Five Year Plan (2006–2010). The east region of China had the highest EE&CE while the central area had the lowest. By way of conclusion, some useful points relating to model selection are summarized from both methodological and empirical aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The China Assessment of Antifungal Therapy in Hematological Disease study, the first large-scale observational study of invasive fungal disease (IFD) in China, enrolled 1401 patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) (75.2% allogeneic and 24.8% autologous) at 31 hospitals across China. The overall incidence of proven or probable IFD was 7.7% (108 of 1401); another 266 cases (19.0%) were possible IFD. After allogeneic or autologous HSCT, the incidence of proven/probable IFD was 8.9% (94 of 1053) and 4.0% (14 of 348), respectively. Some cases (14 of 108) developed during conditioning before transplantation. The cumulative incidence of proven/probable IFD increased steeply in the first month after transplantation and after 6 months, the incidence was significantly higher in allogeneic than it was in autologous transplant recipients (9.2% versus 3.5%; P = .001) and when stem cells were derived from cord blood or bone marrow and peripheral blood ( P = .02 versus other sources). Independent risk factors for proven/probable IFD in allogeneic HSCT were diabetes, HLA-matched unrelated donor, prolonged severe neutropenia (absolute neutrophil count > 500/mm 3 for >14 days), and immunosuppressants (odds ratio, 2.0 to 3.4 for all). Antifungal prophylaxis was independently protective ( P = .01). Previous IFD and prolonged severe neutropenia were significant independent risk factors among autologous transplantation patients ( P < .01, P = .04, respectively). In total, 1175 (83.9%) patients received antifungal prophylaxis (91.6% triazoles) and 514 (36.7%) were treated in the hospital with therapeutic antifungals (89.1% triazoles; median 27 days). Empirical, pre-emptive, and targeted antifungals were used in 82.3%, 13.6%, and 4.1% of cases, respectively. Overall mortality (13.4%; 188 deaths) was markedly higher in patients with proven (5 of 16; 31.3%), probable (20 of 92; 21.7%), or possible (61 of 266; 22.9%) IFD; allogeneic (171 of 1053; 16.2%) rather than autologous (17 of 348; 4.9%) HSCT and was significantly higher in patients receiving pre-emptive (18.6%) rather than empirical (6.1%) or targeted (9.5%) antifungal therapy ( P = .002). Improvements in the selection and timing of prophylactic antifungals would be welcome. Health care providers should remain alert to the increased risk of IFD and associated mortality in allogeneic HSCT recipients and the ongoing risk of IFD even after discharge from the hospital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An integrated approach is proposed in this paper to incorporate the group heterogeneity into the framework of natural disposability and managerial disposability, which allows evaluating the CO 2 emission performance under different mitigation strategies (scale-oriented strategy and innovation-oriented strategy). It is able to deal with the intertemporal incomparability when adopting a global technology. In the empirical study, we categorized China's 27 manufacturing sectors into five groups and evaluated their emission performance under different mitigation strategies during 2003–2016. According to the empirical results, we found that there is still much potential (about 70%–80%) for improving the CO 2 emission performance considering the entire manufacturing industry. From the perspective of different groups, the global technologies/innovators group shows the highest emission efficiency, while the energy-/resource-intensive commodities' group performed the worst. Besides, different sectors showed significant technology heterogeneity. Finally, the desirable CO 2 mitigation strategies varied with the different groups. For the labor-intensive tradables' group, we found that the desirable strategy is to decrease the input of energy and other production factors, i.e. scale-oriented strategy. For the regional processing group, the innovation-oriented strategy is more efficient. • Modified global meta-frontier non-radial DDF approach is proposed. • Group heterogeneity is incorporated in natural/managerial disposability framework. • CO 2 emissions performance for China's manufacturing sectors is measured. • Global technologies/innovators group performs best, while energy-/resource-intensive commodities group performs worst. • Desirable mitigation strategies varies with respect to technology heterogeneity of different groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]