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The structure and dynamics of internal costs of research and development in the regions of the Russian Federation have been considered. Particular attention has been paid to the characteristics of the scope of variation and uniformity of internal costs of research and development per organization. The regions with the maximum values of the considered indicator have been selected. The grouping of the subjects of the Russian Federation on the priority areas of research and development costs for 2010 and 2017 has been carried out. The characteristic of changes in priorities in the regions has been given.

Abstract Purpose Road haulage has been the most widely used mode of freight transport in many European countries for several decades. Given the attention to sustainable transport in this century, the rail-road combined transport may result to be a good alternative, under specific conditions, to road haulage. This paper analyses the main conditions to make the option competitive, using a simplified method useful for the stakeholders involved in decision processes. Method Relevant cost items have been identified since previous studies available in literature. The proposed formulas consider the different phases of transport chain and have been used to investigate such parameters as the external costs and the location of terminals. Results If the pre- and post-phases are too long or simply too onerous, the economic advantages of the rail section may not be sufficient to guarantee the convenience of the combined transport. It can be economically competitive over long distances, even when the drayage covers greater distances. Conclusions The method has been used to examine those situations, in terms of distance covered and frequency of the service, in which rail-road combined transport can be cost-effective as an alternative to the full-road solution. The obtained range can be reviewed based on the services, such as shuttle trains to connect seaports with dry ports: the short distance covered may be more convenient due to the high quantities of goods as well as the fixed train composition and path allocation, which means lower terminal cost and times. Finally, some innovative proposals have been introduced.

Eye blinking is one of the most frequent human actions. The control of blinking is thought to reflect complex interactions between maintaining clear and healthy vision and influences tied to central dopaminergic functions including cognitive states, psychological factors, and medical conditions. The most imminent consequence of blinking is a temporary loss of vision. Minimizing this loss of information is a prominent explanation for changes in blink rates and temporarily suppressed blinks, but quantifying this loss is difficult, as environmental regularities are usually complex and unknown. Here we used a controlled detection experiment with parametrically generated event statistics to investigate human blinking control. Subjects were able to learn environmental regularities and adapted their blinking behavior strategically to better detect future events. Crucially, our design enabled us to develop a computational model that allows quantifying the consequence of blinking in terms of task performance. The model formalizes ideas from active perception by describing blinking in terms of optimal control in trading off intrinsic costs for blink suppression with task-related costs for missing an event under perceptual uncertainty. Remarkably, this model not only is sufficient to reproduce key characteristics of the observed blinking behavior such as blink suppression and blink compensation but also predicts without further assumptions the well-known and diverse distributions of time intervals between blinks, for which an explanation has long been elusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continual increase of transport mobility has caused a lot of environmental and community problems. Although the railway transport is considered to be the most environmentally friendly type of transport, its share on the EU transport market was reduced. In comparison with 2000, the share of the rail freight transport within modes of transport used in EU decreased in 2012 by 1.3%. Using electric traction leads to the external costs in the freight rail transport 90% lower compared to the road transport. The contribution deals with social costs incurred in the course of operation of the freight rail transport. Social costs include costs borne by the manager of the infrastructure, costs borne by the operators of the freight rail transport and external costs that are passed on to the whole company. The contribution provides with the results of the survey focused on the comparison of social costs incurred by the use of dependent and independent traction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A relevant issue for the strategic modeling of interregional freight transport networks is to include external costs as part of a policy that supports the mechanisms for managing and pricing to achieve the social optimum. In this paper, a freight transport model, including external cost, is developed and applied to the Colombian intercity intermodal strategic network involving equilibrium between the phases of distribution and traffic assignment. Each link on the network includes internal costs: time and operation, and external costs: congestion, accidents, air pollution and CO2emissions. Marginal costs on the freight transport network are calculated using two approaches. First, it is assumed that an additional unit of demand does not affect the equilibrium of the transport network, and then the marginal cost is estimated as the sum of marginal costs on the shortest path links. The second approach assumes that an additional unit of demand changes the network equilibrium and, consequently, the marginal costs are estimated by calculating the difference between the two equilibrium scenarios. Both approaches are applied to seven selected route corridors covering the most important national freight transport corridors. It was found that both methods produce similar results. Average external costs were rated equal to 0.014 US$/ton-km for highways, 0.000105 US$/ton-km for inland waterway transport and 0.0016 US$/ton-km for rail. In highways, external costs are equivalent to 37% of internal costs, in railways 12%, and in inland waterways they represent only 1%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental Agencies require Decision Support Systems, in order to plan Air Quality Policies considering the cost of emission reduction measures and the human health effects (with related social costs). The use of Decision Support Systems is also useful to spread information to general public, explaining the effectiveness of proposed air quality plans. In this paper, a multi-objective approach to control PM10 concentration at a regional level is presented. The problem considers both the internal costs (due to the implementation of emission reduction measures) and the external costs (due to population exposure to high PM10 concentrations). To model PM10 concentrations, a single surrogate model is used for the entire domain, allowing the implementation of a very efficient optimization procedure. The surrogate model is derived through a set of 10 simulations, performed using a Chemistry Transport Model fed with different emission reduction scenarios. The methodology is applied to Northern Italy, a region affected by very high PM10 concentrations that exceed the limit values specified by the EU legislation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Industries are becoming progressively more aware of the environmental and social liabilities pertaining to their operations and products, with associated financial effects. Uncertainties in measuring these financial effects can be addressed by using environmental evaluation and accounting techniques. Environmental accounting assists in expressing environmental and social liabilities as environmental costs. While environmental accounting systems now form part of industrial decision making in first world countries, there is a lack of similar systems in South Africa. The EEGECOST model was developed to promote environmental accounting in South Africa. Implementation of the model will provide South African industries with the framework for corporate evaluation of alternative investments, projects and processes and for estimating economic and environmental performance at present and especially in the future. The model identifies, records and allocates internal and external environmental costs to five identified cost types, categorised into several environmental media groups. It also assists in the capital budgeting process for alternative investments. Applicability of the model was tested in a case study conducted on the life cycle assessment of a functional unit of one million cigarettes. The model indicated that Type V costs (external costs, with Types I to IV being different internal cost types) contributed 12% of the total production costs of a functional unit of cigarettes. As Type V costs are subjective, it is recommended that further research be conducted to structure an objective framework to evaluate and determine cost factors involved in the development of Type V costs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]