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The global climate budget for 1.5°C necessitates distributing future CO2 emissions to individual countries. In Germany, this translates to 3.1 billion tons (January 2022). All sectors must engage to meet this target, particularly the lignite (i.e. low-grade brown coal) sector. This entails leaving significant reserves untapped. Also, economic factors are already driving a decline in coal consumption, aided by Germany's renewable expansion and rising CO2 prices. Forecasts suggest lignite phase-out by 2030, prompting reevaluation of mining plans without devastation of villages. The paper proposes new mining plans for the main lignite regions Rhineland and Lusatia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a qualitative methodology, 14 women experiencing food insecurity were interviewed to explore their experiences with engaging in healthy eating to manage their weight. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews and evaluated using content analysis methods. Resilience factors situated throughout the social environment altered the path from exposure to risk (food insecurity) to poor outcomes (unhealthy eating behaviors/obesity). Resilience factors included social safety net programs, transportation, stretching the food budget, nutritional knowledge, and motivation. Study results can be used to develop strength-based policies and interventions to address obesity among women with low incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The arrangement of charging infrastructure has become an urgent issue as electric logistics vehicles (ELVs) transition from urban areas to intercity operations. In this study, we established a multi-stage layout model for intercity charging and swapping infrastructure (CSI) based on the travel characteristics of electric logistics vehicles, to minimize the investment cost of operators and the time cost of vehicle users in Hubei Province, China. Furthermore, the effect of "random", "conservative", and "radical" layout strategies for the infrastructure deployment was analyzed based on an improved genetic algorithm. It is found that the random layout strategy leads to a balance between infrastructure operators and users with the lowest total cost, which is 81.2% and 88.8% of the costs based on the radical strategy and the conservative strategy, respectively. The conservative strategy could reduce investment risks for operators with the lowest investment cost, while the radical strategy prioritizes the convenience of electric logistics vehicles, with the lowest user time cost. The case study suggests that choosing conservative strategies can bring benefits when the budget is limited, while radical strategies have more advantages when the budget is abundant. Random strategies bring the best overall social benefits. The configuration of CSI and travel characteristics of ELVs play important roles in determining layout strategies. • Travel characteristics of electric logistics vehicles is explored. • Multi-stage layout model for intercity charging and swapping infrastructure. • To minimize the investment cost of operators and the time cost of vehicle users. • The effect of random, conservative, and radical strategies is analyzed. • Results show that each strategy has its specific application scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, disappointing poverty trends and welfare state limitations in many European countries – including constraints on minimum income benefits – have paved the way for a larger role of the third sector. An interesting but controversial form of third-sector in-kind support is food aid provision. In Europe, food aid is, so far, a non-rights-based practice displaying worrisome discretionary and stigmatizing characteristics. Yet, the phenomenon of food aid in Europe has spread, professionalized, and penetrated the institutions of the welfare state. This raises the question if, how and to what extent food aid plays a role in bypassing structural constraints on minimum income protection. This article applies an exploratory case study approach to estimate the monetary value of food aid in relation to statutory minimum incomes in four EU-countries. We use cross-nationally comparable food reference budgets to price food aid packages in Belgium, Finland, Hungary and Spain. The results show that food aid, although not sufficient to close the at-risk-of-poverty gap, is non-trivial for some European households. In Spain and Belgium food aid packages can reach up to €100 a month (expressing 7% to 11% of respective minimum income benefit levels). Importantly, we perceive (formalized) cooperation and interaction between local welfare agencies and food charities in all countries, suggesting that welfare state actors use non-rights-based food aid for filling gaps in the social safety net. The large between- and within-country variation of the monetary values of food aid packages points, however, to food aid as a problematic discretionary practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Independent living (IL) skills can assist youth in and aging out of foster care transition to adulthood. Research consistently documents that youth aging out of foster care are resilient, yet often face challenges developing self-sufficiency. Using National Youth Transition Database (NYTD) data for Florida, this study examined receipt of IL services and outcomes for youth at ages 17 and 19. Results showed most youth did not receive IL services across several domains. Many youth experienced homelessness, incarceration, and substance abuse referrals after leaving care. Findings suggest that child welfare professionals should ensure that youth receive IL services while in foster care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand non-compliance behaviors in investment goods in pandemic preparedness and resilience, we resort to a form of bounded rationality that people suffer from a lack of self-control due to "present bias", and differ in their sophistication levels (the degree to which they are aware of such compliance barriers). We focus on (i) the manufacturer's pricing strategy under an advance selling framework, and (ii) the subsidy policy to mitigate under-adoption, to generate operational insights. We show that subsidizing the manufacturer is more cost-effective than subsidizing consumers, because the latter subsidy will not fully trickle down to consumers when the manufacturering manipulates prices in response. In particular, when the subsidy program is budget-constrained, the manufacturer subsidy should be provided only in the spot period. In contrast, when the budget constraint is relaxed, subsidies in both periods should be provided. Surprisingly, such a subsidy program has non-monotone impacts on consumers' adoption quantities. Intuitively, this is because the spot-period subsidy induces consumers' non-compliance behaviors in the advance period. In response, the manufacturer/seller will shift to a pricing strategy that may further reduce the advance-selling quantity. This result provides a natural explanation to reconcile the mixed effects of adoption subsidies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facing budgetary limitations and deteriorating infrastructure, government agencies and municipalities are contemplating a shift from reactive maintenance and repair (M&R) approaches to preventive M&R for road infrastructure. However, ambiguities concerning the long-term returns of preventive M&R for road systems deter their commitment to this transition. Although previous studies have demonstrated the advantages of preventive M&R, a comprehensive understanding of its value remains insufficient, particularly considering budget restrictions, varying levels of required serviceability, the types of preventive treatments, and the extent of preventive M&R. To bridge this knowledge gap, this study evaluated the economic impact of preventive treatments over the lifespan of urban highways, taking an urban highway in South Korea as a case study. The analysis results reveal a significant decrease in costs beginning after the first decade of the systematic applications of preventive M&R, with potential savings ranging between 20% and 30% over a half-century period. The findings will inform road M&R agencies or municipalities about cost profiles when employing preventive treatment methods (PTMs) for road M&R, thereby facilitating PTM implementation to reduce long-term road M&R budgets. Practical Applications: Government agencies and municipalities, grappling with limited budgets and aging road infrastructure, increasingly are considering preventive maintenance and repair (M&R) strategies over traditional reactive approaches. This shift, although promising, faces uncertainties regarding its long-term economic benefits. Prior research has underscored the advantages of preventive M&R, but a thorough understanding of its financial implications, particularly in the context of budget limitations, diverse serviceability needs, and various preventive measures, still is lacking. This study bridges this gap by evaluating the economic impact of preventive M&R on urban highways, using a South Korean urban highway as a case study. Our findings indicate a notable reduction in costs, especially after the first decade, with potential savings of 20%–30% over 50 years. These results offer crucial insights for road maintenance agencies and municipalities, presenting a clear cost–benefit analysis of implementing preventive M&R strategies. Such information is pivotal in aiding these entities to make informed decisions, potentially leading to significant reductions in long-term road maintenance budgets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We develop a model on how military and trade alliances can impact defense spending. • Importance of trade and its balance with the leader influences defense spending. • The larger the leader's trade and surplus, the lower the minor partners' spending. Military spending was the main government expenditure until the 20th century, and it still represents a significant fraction of most governments' budgets. We develop a theoretical model to understand how both military and trade alliances with military leaders can impact defense spending. By increasing the costs of military aggression by a non-ally, an alliance reduces the probability of war and allows minor partners reducing their military spending in exchange for a stronger trade relationship with an alliance leader and a higher trading surplus for the latter. We test our hypotheses with data on 138 countries for 1996–2020. Our results show that the importance of the trade relationship and the trade balance with the military alliance leader is a significant driver of military spending. The greater the weight of trade with the military leader and the higher its trade surplus, the lower is the defense spending of the minor partner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In developing countries, banks have been looking out for new ways to improve their performance using digital transformation. This research bases itself on critical methodology, in which, a Data Analytics Lifecycle based on the Design Thinking concept (DAL-DT) has been used to support management control systems, and propose ways to optimise employee incentives, capital budgeting, workforce planning systems, in the context of a commercial bank in Vietnam. In addition, our study also examines the organisational actors engaged in the application of DT initiatives through the social practice theoretical lens of Bourdieu, regarding habitus, capitals, and fields. The results reveal that although DAL-DT, in principle, provides effective strategic plans along with a cohesive corporate culture that supports the implementation of DT initiatives, there are some constraints to this innovative reform. For instance, the top management of commercial banks in developing nations seem to display a lack of willingness and misunderstanding of the concept of DT, add to that the lack of suitable resources coupled with over-expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns with 'vulnerability' increasingly proliferate in global and regional pacts, international and domestic legislations, and policy discourses and practices regarding migration and international protection. Also in France, vulnerability governance has made its inroads, and policy documents hail vulnerability considerations as a strengthening of the politics of reception and integration of asylum seekers and a means to improve accommodation and care. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Marseille, I argue that vulnerability governance, situated within the context of securitization of migration and budget constraints in the reception system, leads to a 'differential inclusion', which is partial, conditional and precarious. By examining the understanding and operationalization of vulnerability within French migration legislation, policies, and governance practices, the study exposes how normative constructs of gender and sexuality inform the identification and hierarchization of vulnerable persons. Ethnographic evidence illustrates how these norms are perpetuated by governance actors, including civil society, and sometimes strategically mobilized or internalized by asylum seekers in their quest for recognition and assistance. In conclusion, the article highlights how protection-seeking migrants also contest the authorities' understanding and operationalization of vulnerability. Through protests and legal actions, they expose the state's role in producing and differentially distributing vulnerability through abandonment and destitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using 9 years of full‐depth profiles from 55 Deep Argo floats in the Southwest Pacific Basin collected between 2014 and 2023, we find consistent warm anomalies compared to a long‐term climatology below 2,000 m ranging between 11 ± 2 to 34 ± 2 m°C, most pronounced between 3,500 and 5,000 m. Over this period, a cooling trend is found between 2,000 and 4,000 m and a significant warming trend below 4,000 m with a maximum rate of 4.1 ± 0.31 m°C yr−1 near 5,000 m, with a possible acceleration over the second half of the period. The integrated Steric Sea Level expansion below 2,000 m was 7.9 ± 1 mm compared to the climatology with a trend of 1.3 ± 1.6 mm dec−1 over the Deep Argo era, contributing significantly to the local sea level budget. We assess the ability to close a full Sea Level Budget, further demonstrating the value of a full‐depth Argo array. Plain Language Summary: Cold, dense waters formed near polar regions in both hemispheres, sink to great depths and fill‐up the majority of the world's deep ocean. Compilation of sparse observations of temperature from global ship‐based surveys at roughly 10‐year intervals worldwide have shown that sequestration of excess atmospheric heat into the deep ocean has caused these waters to warm steadily since the 1990's into the Present. Not only does this warming have implications for changes in large scale ocean circulation, but is also associated with warming‐induced sea level rise. Using a new data set collected between 2014 and 2023 from 55 freely drifting robotic floats (Deep Argo) which gather crucial bimonthly temperature and salinity data between the surface ocean and the ocean floor, we find the greatest warming trend at a depth of 5,000 m of 4 ± 0.3 m°C yr−1 and an associated sea level rise rate below 2,000 m of 1.3 ± 1.6 mm dec−1. Deep Argo data being collected in ocean basins worldwide are crucial in providing high resolution data of the warming deep ocean and its implications on global sea level, ocean mixing and large‐scale ocean circulation. Key Points: Nine years of Deep Argo data in the S.W. Pacific reveals continued warming in the abyss while the mid‐depths cooledWaters below 4,000 m show an accelerated warming trend with a maximum overall warming rate of 4.1 ± 0.31 m°C yr−1 at 5,000 mDeep ocean steric expansion contributed 1.3 ± 1.6 mm dec−1 to total the local sea level [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unravelling the intricate mechanisms that govern community coexistence remains a daunting challenge, particularly amidst ongoing environmental change. Individual physiology and metabolism are often studied to understand the response of individual animals to environmental change. However, this perspective is currently largely lacking in community ecology. We argue that the integration of individual metabolism into community theory can offer new insights into coexistence. We present the first individual‐based metabolic community model for a terrestrial mammal community to simulate energy dynamics and home range behaviour in different environments. Using this model, we investigate how ecologically similar species coexist and maintain their energy balance under food competition. Only if individuals of different species are able to balance their incoming and outgoing energy over the long‐term will they be able to coexist. After thoroughly testing and validating the model against real‐world patterns such as of home range dynamics and field metabolic rates, we applied it as a case study to scenarios of habitat fragmentation ‐ a widely discussed topic in biodiversity research. First, comparing single‐species simulations with community simulations, we find that the effect of habitat fragmentation on populations is strongly context‐dependent. While populations of species living alone in the landscape were mostly positively affected by fragmentation, the diversity of a community of species was highest under medium fragmentation scenarios. Under medium fragmentation, energy balance and reproductive investment were also most similar among species. We therefore suggest that similarity in energy balance among species promotes coexistence. We argue that energetics should be part of community ecology theory, as the relative energetic status and reproductive investment can reveal why and under what environmental conditions coexistence is likely to occur. As a result, landscapes can potentially be protected and designed to maximize coexistence. The metabolic community model presented here can be a promising tool to investigate other scenarios of environmental change or other species communities to further disentangle global change effects and preserve biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wars increase the importance of government functions, yet they also constrain their ability to fulfill these functions. In particular, wars hinder economic activity, thereby limiting governments' capacity to raise the revenues required to maintain stability and meet the heightened needs of citizens. Effective governance is therefore severely undermined in times of war. However, empirical research on how wars affect government procurement is limited. We address this gap by exploring procurement dynamics using over one million public purchases of goods and services in Ukraine between January 2021 and October 2022, corresponding to the Russian invasion of the country. We document a large fall in the total number of purchases since the invasion and an increase in the share of successfully completed procurements. This higher success rate comes at the cost of efficiency, with the government paying more to source their goods. This can be attributed to the decline in the share of government purchases via online auctions and the reduced competition. Thus, the prioritization of the quick acquisition of goods and services forced governments to sacrifice cost-effectiveness. In summary, the war did not lower the successful purchasing of private goods and services, and transparency was not decreased. However, the trade-off of speed and transparency for greater costs may become increasingly problematic with the growing budget constraints resulting from the war. This article contributes to our understanding of the Ukrainian government choices during the early phase of the war. The results also highlight the importance of ensuring procurement efficiency and transparency when the war ends as reconstruction efforts will require substantial increases in government procurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public procurement related expenditure is approximately fifty to seventy percent of the national budget of developing countries and accounts for almost a third of the gross domestic product. Cognizant of the significant funds committed in public procurement, the quest for value for money is critical. This study sought to determine the effect of procurement practices on value for money in State Corporations in Kenya. Specifically, the study investigated the effect of procurement planning, supplier sourcing, supplies management and E-procurement on value for money. Data collected from 87 State Corporations in Kenya was used in this study. The results of the study indicated that procurement planning, supplier sourcing, supplies management and e-procurement positively and significantly affect the value for money in state corporations in Kenya. The study concluded that proper procurement practices positively and significantly affect the value for money in state corporations in Kenya. The findings of this study contributes to literature by providing an empirical examination on the impact of procurement practices and value for money from a developing country perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earth-based gravitational waves interferometric detectors are shot-noise limited in the high-frequency region of their sensitivity band. While enhancing the laser input power is the natural solution to improve on the shot noise limit, higher power also increases the optical aberration budget due to the laser absorption in the highly reflective coatings of mirrors, resulting in a drop of the sensitivity of the detector. Advanced Virgo exploits Hartmann Wavefront Sensors (HWSs) to locally measure the absorption-induced optical aberrations by monitoring the optical path length change in the core optics. Despite the very high sensitivity of Hartmann sensors, temperature fluctuations can cause a spurious curvature term to appear in the reconstructed wavefront due to the thermal expansion of the Hartmann plate, that could affect the accuracy of the aberration monitoring. We present the implementation and validation of a control loop to stabilize the Advanced Virgo HWS temperature at the order of Δ T ⩽ 0.01 K, keeping the spurious curvature within the detector's requirements on wavefront sensing accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carpooling is one of the travel demand management strategies to mitigate road congestion. Incentive-Based Travel Demand Management (IBTDM) strategies are pivotal for carpool promotion by providing incentives to address inconveniences and privacy apprehensions, yet their efficacy lacks validation. Considering the constraints of incentive budget as well as the penetration rate, it is important to assess the long-term impact of incentives on carpooling, improve the programs in term of information feedback and identify the individuals who are most inclined to carpool. To achieve the goals, we conducted a laboratory experiment through WeChat applet platform focused on carpooling and departure time choices. 194 participants successfully completed the entire experiment. The experiment emphasizes several crucial elements, including long term (participants making daily travel choices in one month), the interactivity and information feedback mechanisms, instruments enhancing participant engagement (redeeming incentives at the end of the experiment, etc.), exit questionnaire to collect travelers' behavioral strategies. The findings elucidate several key insights: 1) Incentives have a significant long-term influence on encouraging travelers to carpool, and compensatory mechanisms for unsuccessful carpool matches further amplify travelers' impetus. 2) IBTDM administrations can promote carpooling by improving feedback information according to travelers' learning effect in each round, such as introducing real-time displays of the numbers of carpool drivers and passengers. 3) Drawing from the analysis of travelers' participation, behavioral compliance and psychological strategies of carpooling, it can be inferred that individuals with higher incomes, fewer commuting days who have a solid grasp of the experimental mechanism, constitute prospective candidates for carpooling programs. This work contributes to helping IBTDM administrations clarify the target participants and develop a more reasonable carpooling program. The behavioral data collection approach based on our laboratory experiment is portable for future studies. • An interactive long-term laboratory experiment was conducted by WeChat applet. • Incentives have a significant long-term impact on promoting carpool. • Participants' information-based learning effects affect their travel behaviors. • Young, high-income travelers with good experimental understanding tend to carpool with incentives. • Low-income travelers with private cars tend to adjust departure times with incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Budget allocation in project risk response is a vital issue in project risk management since it relates to a reasonable utilization of strict project budgets and effective mitigations of the risks that typify projects. This paper presents an integrated method based on an optimization model and fault tree analysis for allocating a risk response budget from a preventive and protective perspective. The proposed method consists of three main steps. The first step is to analyse and calculate risk probabilities and risk losses which involves identifying risk causes that may trigger a risk event to occur using fault tree analysis. It also identifies consequences once the risk event occurs, evaluates the occurrence probabilities of risk causes and expected financial losses of consequences. The second step is to build a relationship between the budget allocated to risk response strategies and the corresponding response effects. The third step is to construct an optimization model aiming at minimizing the total risk cost. We present proofs for the optimal risk response strategy in special cases of the budget allocation model. Furthermore, a detailed computational experiment is performed to gain insights into the three-phased budget allocation model for more general cases. The results show that an optimal risk response budget can be determined and the structure of the risk network has a significant impact on the preferred risk response strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is a popular method to infer, based on the sampled data, whether the true means of a set of subpopulations differ from each other. The variance of conditional expectation (VOCE) is the variance of these effects in sub-populations, and this is estimated by sampling a sub-population of size n k , for each sub-population labeled k, and by sampling K such sub-populations in the experiment. For the general case of varying n k , it is unknown what the variance of the VOCE estimator is, though it is known for the special case n k = n , n ≥ 2 for all k ∈ 1 , 2 , ... , K as derived in the literature. The following derivation settles the former question and is of value in situations where sampling has constraints or only a skewed sampling budget is available. Our first application is with regard to the decision of whether samples from pilot simulation can be included in the regular simulation to estimate VOCE. The second application is an estimation technique where the estimate of optimal inner-loop size n * can be updated throughout the duration of simulation. We demonstrate with these 2 applications where we observe a 20% reduction in the variance of the VOCE estimate, when the proposed method is applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although adaptive cancer therapy shows promise in integrating evolutionary dynamics into treatment scheduling, the stochastic nature of cancer evolution has seldom been taken into account. Various sources of random perturbations can impact the evolution of heterogeneous tumors, making performance metrics of any treatment policy random as well. In this paper, we propose an efficient method for selecting optimal adaptive treatment policies under randomly evolving tumor dynamics. The goal is to improve the cumulative "cost" of treatment, a combination of the total amount of drugs used and the total treatment time. As this cost also becomes random in any stochastic setting, we maximize the probability of reaching the treatment goals (tumor stabilization or eradication) without exceeding a pre-specified cost threshold (or a "budget"). We use a novel Stochastic Optimal Control formulation and Dynamic Programming to find such "threshold-aware" optimal treatment policies. Our approach enables an efficient algorithm to compute these policies for a range of threshold values simultaneously. Compared to treatment plans shown to be optimal in a deterministic setting, the new "threshold-aware" policies significantly improve the chances of the therapy succeeding under the budget, which is correlated with a lower general drug usage. We illustrate this method using two specific examples, but our approach is far more general and provides a new tool for optimizing adaptive therapies based on a broad range of stochastic cancer models. Author summary: Tumor heterogeneities provide an opportunity to improve therapies by leveraging complex (often competitive) interactions of different types of cancer cells. These interactions are usually stochastic due to both individual cell differences and random events affecting the patient as a whole. The new generation of cancer models strive to account for this inherent stochasticity, and adaptive treatment plans need to reflect it as well. In optimizing such treatment, the most common approach is to maximize the probability of eventually stabilizing or eradicating the tumor. In this paper, we consider a more nuanced version of success, maximizing the probability of reaching these therapy goals before the cumulative burden from the disease and treatment exceed a chosen threshold. Importantly, our method allows computing such optimal treatment plans efficiently and for a range of thresholds at once. If used on a high-fidelity personalized model, our general approach could potentially be used by clinicians to choose the most suitable threshold after a detailed discussion of a specific patient's goals (e.g., to include the trade-offs between toxicity and quality of life). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding and quantifying the global methane (CH4) budget is important for assessing realistic pathways to mitigate climate change. Emissions and atmospheric concentrations of CH4 continue to increase, maintaining CH4 as the second most important human-influenced greenhouse gas in terms of climate forcing after carbon dioxide (CO2). The relative importance of CH4 compared to CO2 for temperature change is related to its shorter atmospheric lifetime, stronger radiative effect, and acceleration in atmospheric growth rate over the past decade, the causes of which are still debated. Two major challenges in reducing uncertainties in the factors explaining the well-observed atmospheric growth rate arise from diverse, geographically overlapping CH4 sources and from the uncertain magnitude and temporal change in the destruction of CH4 by short-lived and highly variable hydroxyl radicals (OH). To address these challenges, we have established a consortium of multi-disciplinary scientists under the umbrella of the Global Carbon Project to improve, synthesise and update the global CH4 budget regularly and to stimulate new research on the methane cycle. Following Saunois et al. (2016, 2020), we present here the third version of the living review paper dedicated to the decadal CH4 budget, integrating results of top-down CH4 emission estimates (based on in-situ and greenhouse gas observing satellite (GOSAT) atmospheric observations and an ensemble of atmospheric inverse-model results) and bottom-up estimates (based on process-based models for estimating land-surface emissions and atmospheric chemistry, inventories of anthropogenic emissions, and data-driven extrapolations). We present a budget for the most recent 2010–2019 calendar decade (the latest period for which full datasets are available), for the previous decade of 2000–2009 and for the year 2020. The revision of the bottom-up budget in this edition benefits from important progress in estimating inland freshwater emissions, with better accounting of emissions from lakes and ponds, reservoirs, and streams and rivers. This budget also reduces double accounting across freshwater and wetland emissions and, for the first time, includes an estimate of the potential double accounting that still exists (average of 23 Tg CH4 yr-1). Bottom-up approaches show that the combined wetland and inland freshwater emissions average 248 [159–369] Tg CH4 yr-1 for the 2010–2019 decade. Natural fluxes are perturbed by human activities through climate, eutrophication, and land use. In this budget, we also estimate, for the first time, this anthropogenic component contributing to wetland and inland freshwater emissions. Newly available gridded products also allowed us to derive an almost complete latitudinal and regional budget based on bottom-up approaches. For the 2010–2019 decade, global CH4 emissions are estimated by atmospheric inversions (top-down) to be 575 Tg CH4 yr-1 (range 553–586, corresponding to the minimum and maximum estimates of the model ensemble). Of this amount, 369 Tg CH4 yr-1 or ~65 % are attributed to direct anthropogenic sources in the fossil, agriculture and waste and anthropogenic biomass burning (range 350–391 Tg CH4 yr-1or 63–68 %). For the 2000–2009 period, the atmospheric inversions give a slightly lower total emission than for 2010–2019, by 32 Tg CH4 yr-1 (range 9–40). Since 2012, global direct anthropogenic CH4 emission trends have been tracking scenarios that assume no or minimal climate mitigation policies proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (shared socio-economic pathways SSP5 and SSP3). Bottom-up methods suggest 16 % (94 Tg CH4 yr-1) larger global emissions (669 Tg CH4 yr-1, range 512–849) than top-down inversion methods for the 2010–2019 period. The discrepancy between the bottom-up and the top-down budgets has been greatly reduced compared to the previous differences (167 and 156 Tg CH4 yr-1 in Saunois et al. (2016, 2020), respectively), and for the first time uncertainty in bottom-up and top-down budgets overlap. The latitudinal distribution from atmospheric inversion-based emissions indicates a predominance of tropical and southern hemisphere emissions (~65 % of the global budget, <30° N) compared to mid (30° N–60° N, ~30 % of emissions) and high-northern latitudes (60° N–90° N, ~4 % of global emissions). This latitudinal distribution is similar in the bottom-up budget though the bottom-up budget estimates slightly larger contributions for the mid and high-northern latitudes, and slightly smaller contributions from the tropics and southern hemisphere than the inversions. Although differences have been reduced between inversions and bottom-up, the most important source of uncertainty in the global CH4 budget is still attributable to natural emissions, especially those from wetlands and inland freshwaters. We identify five major priorities for improving the CH4 budget: i) producing a global, high-resolution map of water-saturated soils and inundated areas emitting CH4 based on a robust classification of different types of emitting ecosystems; ii) further development of process-based models for inland-water emissions; iii) intensification of CH4 observations at local (e.g., FLUXNET-CH4 measurements, urban-scale monitoring, satellite imagery with pointing capabilities) to regional scales (surface networks and global remote sensing measurements from satellites) to constrain both bottom-up models and atmospheric inversions; iv) improvements of transport models and the representation of photochemical sinks in top-down inversions, and v) integration of 3D variational inversion systems using isotopic and/or co-emitted species such as ethane as well as information in the bottom-up inventories on anthropogenic super-emitters detected by remote sensing (mainly oil and gas sector but also coal, agriculture and landfills) to improve source partitioning. The data presented here can be downloaded from https://doi.org/10.18160/GKQ9-2RHT (Martinez et al., 2024). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Retailers have been using promotion as a differentiation strategy that influences consumers' expenditures and their shopping basket budgetary allocation. This study assessed the effect of retail promotions on total shopping basket expenditure and determined whether promotions provoke a reallocation of the shopping budget. The analysis was performed on a chain of supermarkets in Catalonia, Spain using a consumer scanner data set from Kantar Worldpanel for 2017. The methodological approach had two steps: prediction of the effect of promotion on household expenditures using an expenditure regression model and estimation of the promotion own- and cross-effect using the censored Exact Affine Stone Index. Promotion had a positive own-effect and mostly a negative asymmetric cross-effect, implying a small but significant budget reallocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The activity budget of giraffe in various African populations has been studied extensively, revealing that it is affected by body size, foraging patterns, and sex. Foraging patterns show an animal's feeding choices in its environment and are influenced by resource availability, competition, and predation risk. The ability of giraffe to survive and reproduce is significantly impacted by the variation in activity budget and foraging across different ecosystems. Our study focused on evaluating the seasonal activity budgets and foraging patterns of Nubian giraffe in Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya. We used the scan sampling method to record the activity budget of giraffe which included foraging, movement, resting, and drinking water. We then evaluated if activities varied with the seasons. A total of 11,280 activities were documented, with 4560 (40.4%) occurring during the dry season and 6720 (59.6%) during the wet season. Foraging accounted for 53% of the time budget during the dry season, but increased to 57% during the wet season. There was a slight drop in records of movement (22%; n = 995 of 4560) and resting (25%; n = 1145 of 4560) from the dry season to the wet season (20%; n = 1375 out of 6720 and 22%; n = 1515 of 6720). During the dry season, females (53%) foraged longer than males (47%), whereas males (44%) had longer resting periods than females (56%). Giraffe frequently fed on Vachellia xanthophloea (67%; n = 4136 of 6215 foraging records), Maytenus senegalensis (19%), and Solanum incanum (9%) over both seasons. Overall, seasons had little impact on giraffe activity time budgets and foraging patterns in Lake Nakuru National Park. A better insight into the behavioural patterns of this subspecies will allow managers to enhance the protection and conservation of the species and its habitat. Heavy foraging on Vachellia by giraffe at LNNP has been associated with a population decline in number, so perhaps planting more of this species in LNNP could promote a rebound in numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a case study of a zone-picking system in a distribution centre. In particular, we designed a basic simulation model for analysing the system using Simio and connected the model to the MySQL database using the existing and new steps in Simio. A ranking and selection problem was subsequently formulated to determine the capacity of the system that maximises the expected throughput while satisfying the constraints on: (1) the expected maximum utilisation, (2) expected time-averaged number of boxes in the main conveyor, and (3) expected flow time. To solve the problem under a limited simulation budget, we implemented an optimal computing budget allocation procedure, which may work in the presence of stochastic constraints. The experimental results demonstrate that our approach can more efficiently and effectively determine the capacity of the system than the equal allocation scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing current socio-economic crises strains public budgets and may threaten fiscal sustainability. Particularly in the welfare sector, where high expenditures meet poor controllability, efficient resource usage is essential to ensure future governments' capability to act while alleviating current problems. Consequently, this paper asks: why are some countries more efficient in translating social expenditure into welfare outcomes? To answer this question, it is argued that efficiency is a matter of institutional structures and their vertical policy-process integration (VPI): efficiency depends on institutional structures' capability to (1) ensure policymakers' responsibility and to (2) provide coordinated feedback, thus pushing for considerate and informed resource use. Analysing the effect of VPI on the relationship between welfare efforts and social outcomes in 21 OECD countries over three decades, the results show that VPI can not only turn 'less' into 'more', but it also compensates for performance losses in the face of spending cuts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares the performance of Transformers with LSTM for the classification of the behavioural time budget in horses based on video data. The behavioural time budget of a horse consists of amount of time of the activities such as feeding, resting, lying, and moving, which are important indicators of welfare and can be a basis of pain detection. Video technology offers a non-invasive and continuous monitoring approach for automated detection of horse behaviours. Computer vision and deep learning methods have been used for automated monitoring of animal behaviours, but accurate behaviour recognition remains a challenge. Previous studies have employed Convolutional LSTM models for behaviour classification, and more recently, Transformer-based models have shown superior performance in various tasks. This study proposes a multi-input, multi-output classification methodology to address the challenges of accurately detecting and classifying horse behaviours. The results demonstrate that the multi-input and multi-output Transformer model achieves the best performance in behaviour classification compared with single input and single output strategy. The proposed methodology provides a basis for detecting changes in behaviour time budgets related to pain and discomfort in horses, which can be valuable for monitoring and treating horse health problems. • Changes in behaviour time budgets has potential to detect health issues in horses. • A comparison of LSTM and Transformer models for equine behaviour classification. • A novel multi-input, multi-output methodology for equine behaviour classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Limited research has been directed toward coastal protection infrastructure compared to other types of infrastructure, despite the increasing global population in low-elevated coastal regions and the threats posed by climate change. This paper presents a risk-based asset management framework for coastal protection structures that improves accuracy with each inspection. The framework consists of five components: the Coastal Asset Inventory (CAI), Inspection and Condition Assessment (ICA) module, Backward Markovian Deterioration Model (BMDM), Forward Markovian Deterioration Model (FMDM), and Intervention Policy Engine (IPE). The framework addresses challenges in accurately predicting coastal structure deterioration due to uncertainties in wave loading conditions and the need for frequent inspections. It is applied to rubble-mound breakwaters in Alexandria, Egypt. The BMDM and FMDM models are developed based on inspection data, and the IPE optimizes interventions considering structural condition, risk thresholds, and budget constraints. Results showed that long-term deterioration estimates occur at an accelerated rate with an increase in inspection points, triggering earlier interventions. However, the framework proves reliable even with only two inspection points, allowing asset managing agencies to implement the model based on the structural condition at the year of construction and a minimum of two inspections. The proposed risk-based asset management framework provided a comprehensive approach to managing coastal protection infrastructure, reducing risks to life and property. By accurately predicting deterioration and optimizing intervention decisions, the framework can greatly assist in the effective management and maintenance of coastal assets. This is vital in ensuring the safety of coastal populations facing global climate change and demographic growth. Coastal protection structures are crucial for safeguarding coastal populations in the face of climate change and demographic growth. This research paper introduces a risk-based asset management framework for coastal protection structures, with practical applications for coastal management agencies and practitioners. The framework addresses the challenges of predicting coastal structure deterioration and optimizing intervention decisions. The framework consists of five components: the Coastal Asset Inventory (CAI), Inspection and Condition Assessment (ICA), Backward Markovian Deterioration Model (BMDM), Forward Markovian Deterioration Model (FMDM), and Intervention Policy Engine (IPE). It has been successfully applied to rubble-mound breakwaters in Alexandria, Egypt. The practical implications are significant: The framework enables asset managers to make informed decisions on coastal infrastructure maintenance and interventions, reducing risks to life and property. It provides a comprehensive approach to managing coastal protection infrastructure and ensuring the safety of coastal populations. By accurately predicting deterioration and optimizing interventions, the framework supports effective management and maintenance of coastal assets. Its reliability and flexibility make it a valuable tool for coastal management practitioners, promoting sustainable development and safeguarding coastal areas. With its potential for broader application, this risk-based asset management framework offers practical solutions for coastal protection worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The non-scanning radiometer with short-wavelength (SW: 0.2–5.0 μm) and total-wavelength (TW: 0.2–50.0 μm) channels is the primary payload of the Integrated Earth–Moon Radiation Observation System (IEMROS), which is designed to provide comprehensive Earth radiation measurements and lunar calibrations at the L1 Lagrange point of the Earth–Moon system from a global perspective. This manuscript introduces a radiometer preflight calibration methodology, which involves background removal and is validated using accurate and traceable reference sources. Simulated Earth view tests are performed to evaluate repeatability, linearity, and gain coefficients over the operating range. Both channels demonstrate repeatability uncertainties better than 0.34%, indicating consistent and reliable measuring performance. Comparative polynomial regression analysis confirms significant linear response characteristics with two-channel nonlinearity less than 0.20%. Gain coefficients are efficiently determined using a two-point calibration approach. Uncertainty analysis reveals an absolute radiometric calibration accuracy of 0.97% for the SW channel and 0.92% for the TW channel, underscoring the non-scanning radiometer's capability to provide dependable global Earth radiation budget data crucial to environmental and climate studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies multilateral trading problems in which agents' valuations for items are interdependent. Assuming that each agent's information has a greater marginal effect on her own valuation than on the other agents' valuations, the paper identifies a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of trading mechanisms satisfying efficiency, ex-post incentive compatibility, ex-post individual rationality, and ex-post budget balance. The paper presents a trading mechanism that satisfies the four properties when the necessary and sufficient condition holds and shows that this mechanism maximizes the ex-post budget surplus among all efficient, ex-post incentive compatible, and ex-post individually rational trading mechanisms. The paper examines an environment where each agent can possess at most one unit of an item, and her information about the item is one-dimensional. It then extends the results to two general environments: the multiple units environment and the multidimensional information environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Mangrove ecosystems exhibit significant carbon storage and sequestration. Its capacity to store and sequester significant amounts of carbon makes this ecosystem very important for climate change mitigation. Indonesia, owing to the largest mangrove cover in the world, has approximately 3.14 PgC stored in the mangroves, or about 33% of all carbon stored in coastal ecosystems globally. Unfortunately, our comprehensive understanding of carbon flux is hampered by the incomplete repertoire of field measurement data, especially from mangrove ecosystem-rich regions such as Indonesia and Asia Pacific. This study fills the gap in greenhouse gases (GHGs) flux studies in mangrove ecosystems in Indonesia by quantifying the soil CO2 and CH4 fluxes for different land use types in mangrove ecosystems, i.e., secondary mangrove (SM), restored mangrove (RM), pond embankment (PE) and active aquaculture pond (AP). Environmental parameters such as soil pore salinity, soil pore water pH, soil temperature, air temperature, air humidity and rainfall are also measured. Results: GHG fluxes characteristics varied between land use types and ecological conditions. Secondary mangrove and exposed pond embankment are potential GHG flux sources (68.9 ± 7.0 and 58.5 ± 6.2 MgCO2e ha− 1 yr− 1, respectively). Aquaculture pond exhibits the lowest GHG fluxes among other land use types due to constant inundation that serve as a barrier for the release of GHG fluxes to the atmosphere. We found weak relationships between soil CO2 and CH4 fluxes and environmental parameters. Conclusions: The data and information on GHG fluxes from different land use types in the mangrove ecosystem will be of importance to accurately assess the potential of the mangrove ecosystem to sequester and emit GHGs. This will support the GHG emission reduction target and strategy that had been set up by the Indonesian Government in its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) and Indonesia's 2030 Forest and Other Land Use (FOLU) Net Sink. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research shows that economic coercion successfully influences targeted states' behavior 38 percent of the time. This article integrates research on economic sanctions and foreign aid by assessing the relative effectiveness of two types of economic coercion: economic sanctions and foreign aid suspensions. It argues that suspending aid is more effective than adopting economic sanctions because (1) aid suspensions are economically beneficial for the adopting state, while sanctions are costly, (2) aid suspensions directly affect the targeted government's budget, (3) market forces undermine sanctions but not aid suspensions, and (4) aid suspensions are less likely to spark adverse behavioral reactions. A quantitative analysis estimates the success rate of imposed aid suspensions to be 44 percent and that of economic sanctions to be 26 percent. The results are robust across two alternative datasets on economic coercion, and qualitative evidence corroborates the outlined mechanisms. The findings suggest that economic sanctions are less effective than previously thought and that large donor states have a higher chance of achieving political goals through economic coercion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local governments play a very important role in providing and disseminating public data; with the assistance of the national government, they also strive to promote effective policies for accessing this data. However, local governments face challenges in independently promoting public data policies owing to budget, manpower and technical constraints. This study analyses public data provided by local governments in South Korea from the perspective of management and use, apart from suggesting considerations for the public data policies of local governments. Public data provided by local governments were also collected, and both the data management method and use of such data were evaluated. Data management measures the currentness in complying with the update policy for each dataset, and the data utilisation measures the relationship between view and download as usefulness. A clustering analysis was conducted to analyse the common characteristics of individual local governments. According to the research results, most local governments do not systematically manage their datasets, and the use of the data provided is extremely low. It is therefore necessary to establish an effective data policy that considers the characteristics of local governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Large trees in plantations generally produce more wood per unit of resource use than small trees. Two processes may account for this pattern: greater photosynthetic resource use efficiency or greater partitioning of carbon to wood production.We estimated gross primary production (GPP) at the individual scale by combining transpiration with photosynthetic water‐use efficiency of Eucalyptus trees. Aboveground production fluxes were estimated using allometric equations and modeled respiration; total belowground carbon fluxes (TBCF) were estimated by subtracting aboveground fluxes from GPP. Partitioning was estimated by dividing component fluxes by GPP.Dominant trees produced almost three times as much wood as suppressed trees. They used 25 ± 10% (mean ± SD) of their photosynthates for wood production, whereas suppressed trees only used 12 ± 2%. By contrast, dominant trees used 27 ± 19% of their photosynthate belowground, whereas suppressed trees used 58 ± 5%. Intermediate trees lay between these extremes. Photosynthetic water‐use efficiency of dominant trees was c. 13% greater than the efficiency of suppressed trees.Suppressed trees used more than twice as much of their photosynthate belowground and less than half as much aboveground compared with dominant trees. Differences in carbon partitioning were much greater than differences in GPP or photosynthetic water‐use efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the effects of agreement formalization and partners on cooperation costs in twelve local government services in New York State. Our survey differentiates agreement formalization (informal, memorandum of understanding, joint production, contracting and special districts) and controls for cooperation duration and non-profit partners. Cost data (1996–2016) enable panel models which find agreement formality often has no effect on costs. Non-profit partners typically reduce costs. Formality is associated with higher costs in services where quality improvements are sought, and lower costs where formality shifts budget authority. In general the costs of formality appear to be balanced by savings over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of smallholder farmers into emerging value chains for fine‐grain and aromatic 'premium quality rice' (PQR) could prove to be crucial to improving rural livelihoods in Bangladesh, though efforts could be constrained by farmers' differing levels of agronomic knowledge. Based on a pre‐analysis plan, we analyse farmers' ability to efficiently allocate production enhancing inputs in PQR cultivation based on a survey of 1420 farmers in key PQR producing areas. Farmers received a hypothetical budget to allocate to six different inputs advised for efficient production of PQR, mimicking familiar production decisions made seasonally on their own farms. Our results suggest that even without budget or input access constraints farmers tend to inefficiently allocate inputs in PQR in this hypothetical setting. In particular, they tend to overspend on seeds, fertiliser and pesticides. Farmers with better access to agricultural information, such as through PQR specific extension services, conversely reach substantially higher efficiency scores and decided to spend significantly less on fertiliser. Without future adjustments such as more targeted extension services, implied higher production costs will likely lower the profitability of PQR cultivation for smallholder farmers, thereby limiting potential income gains. Besides these economic concerns, excessive input use is associated with environmental externalities. Improved efficiency is therefore desirable from both an economic and environmental standpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing methods for filter pruning mostly rely on specific data-driven paradigms but lack the interpretability. Besides, these approaches usually assign layer-wise compression ratios automatically only under given FLOPs by neural architecture search algorithms or just manually, which are short of efficiency. In this paper, we propose a novel interpretable task-inspired adaptive filter pruning method for neural networks to solve the above problems. First, we treat filters as semantic detectors and develop the task-inspired importance criteria by evaluating correlations between input tasks and feature maps, and observing the information flow through filters between adjacent layers. Second, we refer to the human neurobiological mechanism for the better interpretability, where the retained first layer filters act as individual information receivers. Third, inspired by the phenomenon that each filter has a deterministic impact on FLOPs and network parameters, we provide an efficient adaptive compression ratio allocation strategy based on differentiable pruning approximation under multiple budget constraints, as well as considering the performance objective. The proposed method is validated with extensive experiments on the state-of-the-art neural networks, which significantly outperforms all the existing filter pruning methods and achieves the best trade-off between neural network compression and task performance. With ResNet-50 on ImageNet, our approach reduces 75.49% parameters and 70.90% FLOPs, only suffering from 2.31% performance degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The real-time sharing of traffic data can offer improved services to users and timely respond to environmental changes. However, this data often involves individuals' sensitive information, raising substantial privacy concerns. It is imperative to find ways to protect the privacy of the shared traffic data while maintaining its ongoing data utility. In this paper, a Differential Privacy-based scheme with Spatial Correlation for Real-time traffic data (named as DP-SCR) is proposed. DP-SCR not only ensures the high data utility of shared traffic data, but also provides strong privacy protection. Specifically, DP-SCR is designed to adhere to w-event ε -differential privacy, ensuring a high level of privacy protection. Subsequently, a novel adaptive allocation based on spatial correlation prediction is proposed to optimize the privacy budget allocation in differential privacy. In addition, a feasible dynamic clustering algorithm is developed to minimize the relative perturbation error, which further improves the quality of shared data. Finally, the analyses demonstrate that DP-SCR provides w-event privacy for the shared data of each section, and the spatial correlation is a more pronounced characteristic of the traffic data than other characteristics. Meanwhile, experiments conducted on real-world data show that the MAR and MER of the predicted data in DP-SCR are smaller than those in other baseline DP-based schemes. It indicates that the DP-SCR scheme proposed in this paper can provide more accurate shared data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maritime transportation plays a pivotal role in the global merchandise trade. To improve maritime safety and protect the environment, every state must effectively control ships flying its flag, which is called flag state control (FSC). However, the existing FSC system is so inefficient that it cannot perform its intended function. In this study, we adopt an optimization method to tackle this problem by constructing an integer programming (IP) model to solve the FSC officer routing and scheduling problem, which aims to maximize the total weight of inspected ships with limited budget and human resources. Then we prove that the IP model can be reformulated into a partially relaxed IP model with the guarantee of the result optimality. Finally, we perform a case study using the Hong Kong port as an example. The results show that our model can be solved to optimality within one second at different scales of the problem, with the ship number ranging from 20 to 1000. Furthermore, our study can be extended by considering the arrangement of working timetables with finer granularity and the fatigue level of personnel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than 16 million Americans living with cognitive impairment warrant a diagnostic evaluation to determine the cause of this disorder. The recent availability of disease-modifying therapies for Alzheimer's disease (AD) is expected to significantly drive demand for such diagnostic testing. Accurate, accessible, and affordable methods are needed. Blood biomarkers (BBMs) offer advantages over usual care amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers in these regards. This study used a budget impact model to assess the economic utility of the PrecivityAD® blood test, a clinically validated BBM test for the evaluation of brain amyloid, a pathological hallmark of AD. The model compared 2 scenarios: (1) baseline testing involving usual care practice, and (2) early use of a BBM test before usual care CSF and PET biomarker use. At a modest 40% adoption rate, the BBM test scenario had comparable sensitivity and specificity to the usual care scenario and showed net savings in the diagnostic work-up of $3.57 million or $0.30 per member per month in a 1 million member population, translating to over $1B when extrapolated to the US population as a whole and representing a 11.4% cost reduction. Savings were driven by reductions in the frequency and need for CSF and PET testing. Additionally, BBM testing was associated with a cost savings of $643 per AD case identified. Use of the PrecivityAD blood test in the clinical care pathway may prevent unnecessary testing, provide cost savings, and reduce the burden on both patients and health plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parliament and the separation of power are essential elements of democratic consolidation. However, what role does parliament take if democracy is in retreat? Following a comparative approach, this article analyses the role of the Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR) during a process of democratic decline. Indonesia is seen as a success story of democratisation. Since 1998, the country has transitioned from an autocratic regime to a vibrant multi-party democracy. However, twenty years on, academics have been highlighting far-reaching patterns of democratic regression. Whereas there have been studies of the democratic setback globally and more in-depth analyses of aspects of the Indonesian democracy in retreat, there has been little attention on the role of the country's legislature in this situation. This article analyses how the DPR has been executing its legislative mandate during Joko Widodo's second presidential term from 2019 to 2024. Examining three cases of legislation, it found the DPR is not actively resisting the democratic decline. On the contrary, the hypothesis has been proven that the parliament is an active factor in autocratic legalism. This has been most visible in the reduced scrutiny of draft legislation, limited deliberation, and narrow public consultation to serve elite interests. In addition to a weakened legislative role by the DPR, there has been reduced oversight and scrutiny of government policies, visible through limited questioning of ministers or inquiries into the use of the budget and the appointment of government-favoured candidates to national commissions, courts, and state bodies. Moreover, the nature of a consensus-based decision-making system has allowed the executive to effectively control the parliament, instead of the other way around. This is despite some reminders from the Constitutional Court to respect the legal provisions that require deliberation and consultation of the people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent decades, optimal experimental design has surged in popularity due to affordable computing and efficient algorithms. However, some researchers highlight that this focus has often side‐lined the importance of including pure experimental replication in designs, as many optimality criteria do not inherently suggest designs with replicates. In this study, we introduce an approach that allows the designer to input a desired replication structure into the optimal design search. We list all potential replication structures, indicate the corresponding budget for pure‐error (PE) and lack‐of‐fit (LOF) degrees‐of‐freedom, and use particle swarm optimization to search for the optimal design in each scenario. We demonstrate our approach on various unexplored I$I$‐optimal design scenarios and several scenarios recently discussed in literature. Our findings reveal the existence of highly‐efficient I$I$‐optimal designs with unique replication structures, offering designers informed choices on allocating a limited budget for PE and LOF degrees‐of‐freedom. This method is versatile and compatible with other optimizers, such as the coordinate exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Warranty is a standard and essential policy for today's products. The period and cost of warranty are majorly affected by the reliability of products. Therefore, validation and verification of product reliability are required to control warranty costs and sustain the brand reputation. In this paper, we propose a modified reliability acceptance sampling plan (MRASP) for product reliability validation. The operating characteristic function of the MRASP is derived by considering the accelerated time‐to‐failure data with Type‐II censoring, which follows a Weibull distribution. To minimize the number of failures required for the accelerated life test and consider the sampling risk constraints, we constructed an optimization model to determine the optimal plan design of the proposed MRASP. Following the optimal plan design, practitioners can set the number of failures required in the accelerated life test to estimate the lifetime capability of the submitted lot and decide the lot disposition using the acceptance benchmark. In addition, the lifetime capability estimation can be used to infer the warranty return rate and warranty cost of the lot, which is valuable for practitioners to formulate the warranty budget. Finally, we illustrate a real‐world case to demonstrate the practicality and applicability of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To obtain feedback from school nutrition stakeholders on an agent-based model simulating school lunch to inform model refinement and future applications. Qualitative study using online discussion groups. School nutrition professional stakeholders across the US. Twenty-eight school nutrition stakeholders. Perceptions and applicability of MealSim for school nutrition stakeholders to help reduce food waste. Deductive approach followed by inductive analysis of discussion group transcripts. Stakeholders appreciated the customizability of the cafeteria characteristics and suggested adding additional characteristics to best represent the school meal system, such as factors relating to school staff supervision of students during meals. The perceived utility of MealSim was high and included using it to train personnel and to advocate for policy and budgetary changes. However, they viewed MealSim as more representative of elementary than high schools. Stakeholders also provided suggestions for training school nutrition administrators on how to use MealSim and requested opportunities for technical assistance. Although agent-based models were new to the school nutrition stakeholders, MealSim was viewed as a useful tool. Application of these findings will allow the model to meet the intended audience's needs and better estimate the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research article presents, a design of a graphene-based, octagonal shaped three element series feed terahertz (THz) linear array antenna is designed for very short-distance wireless communication applications. The antenna utilizes a four-layer structure comprising a gold ground plate and patch, with quartz (SiO4) serving as the substrate with a thickness of 140 µm deposited on the gold ground plate. On this substrate, an octagonal three-element linear array patch made of gold is applied, and finally, a fourth layer of elliptical-shaped graphene, with a thickness of 10 nm, is deposited onto the gold patch plate. The THz linear array antenna demonstrates good performance, with a reflection coefficient value of less than − 10 dB in the 0.285–0.535 THz range, resulting in a substantial 250 GHz bandwidth and the peak realized gain value is 5.25 dBi. Further, the designed antenna employs material switching via change in the chemical potential of graphene to attain pattern reconfigurability and facilitates beam steering capabilities for wireless applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optical Wireless Communications (OWCs) are capable of handling large data rates in the Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) at low latency to be suitable for real-time image and video applications. This paper presents communication link feasibility via link budget to determine the link communication range for three types of line-of-sight link configurations: point-to-point, diffused, and modulating retro-reflector link. The main aim of this paper is to present a more realistic power link budget which is developed to take into account the following: LED Photo Source Lambertian radiation model, Beer-Lambert pass loss model that includes absorption and scattering effects of water types, Spherical wave propagation model, photodetector which is modeled by active area model, transmitter projection optics (PO) gain and receiver collection optics (CO) gain. Moreover, this paper considers the effects of aquatic channels 'scattering and absorption by using intensity modulation direct detection IM-DD OOK, LED and LD–PS based transmitter, and SiPM-PD based receiver. The impact of different underwater environments, transmitter, and receiver parameters will be investigated on the communication link range. Its communication range on the order of tens of meters could be achieved by the three-link configurations. It is concluded from the analysis; that the line-of-sight point-to-point provides more communication range than a diffused line of sight. A diffused line of sight is used when it is required to multicast from a node to several nodes. Modulating retro-reflector provides moderate communication range and it is used when one party has more resources than the other one on the communication link. Medium distances are achieved by up to a hundred meters by placing multiple relay nodes between the source node and the destination node. The communication range is increased as increasing the active physical area of the photodetector and the transmitted power of the photo source. The communication range in both clear sea water and clear ocean water is higher than turbid water which is less since optical water suffers from higher attenuation. By using the multi-hop concept, an extended communication link range can be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioural observations were used to investigate the temporal dynamics events and associated variation in the daily activities of a sedentary population of mallard duck (Anas platyrhynchos) inhabiting an urban park in northern Portugal. Data was collected at Porto City Park from December to April, during the species' courtship and early nesting periods. The most frequent activities for this population were locomotion, resting and feeding. Statistical analysis revealed that male and female behaviours differed significantly throughout the courtship period, as males exhibited more displays and aggressive behaviour while females were more prone to feed in order to meet their increased nutritional and energetic needs. Temporal analyses showed that courtship reached a peak in intensity in February, since it was in this month that the highest values for mating, aggressive behaviour in males and defensive behaviour in females were observed. Behavioural differences were found for this population, with higher feeding rates compared to those of wild populations as well as lower defensive behaviour rates. This paper sheds light on how synanthropized populations, as well as those from Southwestern Europe, show different behavioural responses from other populations. Additional extensive monitoring of population dynamics and factors such as latitudinal differences, habituation to humans and climate change will help to predict future growth and expansion rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the financial determinants of the efforts of local government units (LGUs) to invest in the area of energy transition (ET). The main objective is to verify the links between the scale, directions, and funding sources of LGUs' investments in ET and their budgetary situation described by the level of income independence, budget result, and debt level. The general research hypothesis assumes that the ET investment activity of LGUs is associated with their financial situation. The analysis covers the period 2019–2022 and uses data from the questionnaire-based survey conducted in 2023 among 181 LGUs in the Podkarpackie region in southern Poland. Non-parametric tests were employed to verify the association between the LGUs' ET investment activity and their financial situation: the Chi2 test, the Mann–Whitney U test, the Kruskal–Wallis test, and the Kendall's Tau correlation. Financial aspects were shown to influence the scale of municipal ET investments, as well as the type of projects implemented. Among the analysed financial indicators, the debt level was the most important constraint for LGUs to make their own ET investments. The debt level not only determined the scale of municipal ET investment, but also influenced decisions on the type of investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: For many countries, especially those outside the USA without incentive payments, implementing and maintaining electronic medical records (EMR) is expensive and can be controversial given the large amounts of investment. Evaluating the value of EMR implementation is necessary to understand whether or not, such investment, especially when it comes from the public source, is an efficient allocation of healthcare resources. Nonetheless, most countries have struggled to measure the return on EMR investment due to the lack of appropriate evaluation frameworks. Methods: This paper outlines the development of an evidence-based digital health cost-benefit analysis (eHealth-CBA) framework to calculate the total economic value of the EMR implementation over time. A net positive benefit indicates such investment represents improved efficiency, and a net negative is considered a wasteful use of public resources. Results: We developed a three-stage process that takes into account the complexity of the healthcare system and its stakeholders, the investment appraisal and evaluation practice, and the existing knowledge of EMR implementation. The three stages include (1) literature review, (2) stakeholder consultation, and (3) CBA framework development. The framework maps the impacts of the EMR to the quadruple aim of healthcare and clearly creates a method for value assessment. Conclusions: The proposed framework is the first step toward developing a comprehensive evaluation framework for EMRs to inform health decision-makers about the economic value of digital investments rather than just the financial value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, policy initiatives involving increases in the tobacco tax have increased pressure on budget allocations in poor households. In this study, we examine this issue in the context of the expansion of the social welfare state that has taken place over the last two decades in several emerging economies. This study explores the case of Colombia between 1997 and 2011. In this period, the budget share of the poorest expenditure quintile devoted to tobacco products of smokers' households doubled. We analyse the differences between the poorest and richest quintiles concerning the changes in budget shares, fixing a reference population over time to avoid demographic composition confounders. We find no evidence of crowding-out of education or healthcare expenditures. This is likely to be the result of free universal access to health insurance and basic education for the poor. For higher-income households, tobacco crowds out expenditures on entertainment, leisure activities, and luxury expenditures. This finding should reassure policymakers who are keen to impose tobacco taxes as an element of their public health policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several Lyman Continuum (Ly C) emitters have been detected so far, but their observed ionizing spectra sometimes differ from attenuated stellar spectra predicted by stellar population synthesis modelling. This discrepancy may be due to a significant contribution of Ly C nebular emission. We aim to quantify the importance this emission in Ly C leakers: its contribution to the ionizing photons budget, and to measurements of Ly C escape. To estimate the nebular contribution to the Ly C spectra of galaxies, we run photoionization models with Cloudy for a range of Binary Population and Spectral Synthesis templates, varying the column density of the surrounding gas, from density-bounded (N H  i  = 1016 cm−2) to ionization-bounded (N H  i  = 1019 cm−2) regimes. In the limits of very optically thin (f esc = 1), or thick configurations (f esc = 0), there is no nebular contribution to the emergent Ly C spectra. This contribution matters only at intermediate Ly C opacities (0 < f esc < 1), where it alters the shape of the Ly C spectrum chromatically, so that escape fractions estimates are highly sensitive to the wavelength range over which they are calculated. We propose a formula to estimate integrated escape fractions using F λ700/ F λ1100 flux ratios, since this wavelength range is not affected by nebular emission. Regarding simulations, the boost of hydrogen ionizing photons escaping galaxies is inversely proportional to the stellar escape fractions, but since typical simulated escape fractions are low, Ly C photons escape is important. Nebular Ly C is a non-negligible additional source of ionizing photons from galaxies, whose contribution has been overlooked so far in observations and in cosmic reionization simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The set of awards vectors for a claims problem coincides with the core of the associated coalitional game. We analyze the structure of this set by defining for each group of claimants a, so called, utopia game, whose core comprises the most advantageous imputations available for the group. We show that, given a claims problem, the imputation set of the associated coalitional game can be partitioned by the cores of the utopia games. A rule selects for each claims problem a unique allocation from the set of awards vectors. The average-of-awards rule associates to each claims problem the geometric center of the corresponding set of awards vectors. Based on the decomposition of the imputation set, we obtain an interpretation of the average-of-awards rule as a point of fairness between stable and utopia imputations and provide a backward recurrence algorithm to compute it. To illustrate our analysis, we present an application to the distribution of CO 2 emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]