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Different Units (different + unit)
Selected AbstractsEffects of beverage alcohol price and tax levels on drinking: a meta-analysis of 1003 estimates from 112 studiesADDICTION, Issue 2 2009Alexander C. Wagenaar ABSTRACT Aims We conducted a systematic review of studies examining relationships between measures of beverage alcohol tax or price levels and alcohol sales or self-reported drinking. A total of 112 studies of alcohol tax or price effects were found, containing1003 estimates of the tax/price,consumption relationship. Design Studies included analyses of alternative outcome measures, varying subgroups of the population, several statistical models, and using different units of analysis. Multiple estimates were coded from each study, along with numerous study characteristics. Using reported estimates, standard errors, t -ratios, sample sizes and other statistics, we calculated the partial correlation for the relationship between alcohol price or tax and sales or drinking measures for each major model or subgroup reported within each study. Random-effects models were used to combine studies for inverse variance weighted overall estimates of the magnitude and significance of the relationship between alcohol tax/price and drinking. Findings Simple means of reported elasticities are ,0.46 for beer, ,0.69 for wine and ,0.80 for spirits. Meta-analytical results document the highly significant relationships (P < 0.001) between alcohol tax or price measures and indices of sales or consumption of alcohol (aggregate-level r = ,0.17 for beer, ,0.30 for wine, ,0.29 for spirits and ,0.44 for total alcohol). Price/tax also affects heavy drinking significantly (mean reported elasticity = ,0.28, individual-level r = ,0.01, P < 0.01), but the magnitude of effect is smaller than effects on overall drinking. Conclusions A large literature establishes that beverage alcohol prices and taxes are related inversely to drinking. Effects are large compared to other prevention policies and programs. Public policies that raise prices of alcohol are an effective means to reduce drinking. [source] Unit commitment at frequency security conditionEUROPEAN TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRICAL POWER, Issue 2 2001X. Lei In island grids and weakly interconnected power systems, the loss of a large proportion of generation will cause the system frequency to fall dramatically. In order to ensure a stable operation with the lowest impact to the system, the disturbed power balance must be equalized within a short specified time by activating the second-reserve of on-line units or by load shedding or both. Unit commitment procedures shall consider these factors to ensure a reliable power supply while minimizing the fuel costs. This paper presents a unit commitment procedure taking the frequency security condition of systems into account. The procedure commits and optimizes units, calculates necessary second-reserve capability, and allocates them among the available on-line units. Parallel to the minimization of daily fuel costs, a specified frequency minimum following the loss of generation is employed as a criterion for maintaining system security. A case study on typical island systems with a large number of different units is demonstrated using the proposed procedure. Results from the study validated robust performance of the proposed procedure that minimizes fuel costs while maintaining frequency security condition. This paper considers only the frequency security condition to be handled. However, it can also be extended with other criteria such transmission capability during transient conditions of interconnected systems. [source] TNC Strategies and Variations in Intra-firm Trade: The Case of Foreign Manufacturing Affiliates in SwedenGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 1 2000Inge Ivarsson The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the forms and determinants of intra-firm trade, i.e. international trade between different units under common TNC ownership, this being a major indication of ,deep economic integration' between developed countries in the 1990s. Theoretically, intra-firm trade can be explained by the existence of economies of common governance and are often found to be associated with R&D-intensive industries and economies of scale. In empirical studies, intra-firm trade is often found to consist of intermediate inputs goods, resulting in vertically integrated production chains. The study is based on detailed firm-level data from around 300 foreign majority-owned affiliates (MOFAs) in manufacturing, in Sweden in 1993. The results show that intra-firm sales by MOFAs in Sweden are as high as those found in studies of manufacturing affiliates of US TNCs. Almost all of MOFAs' intra-firm exports are finished products, while intra-firm imports consist of material inputs and finished products for resale. This suggests that these MOFAs are only marginal involved in vertically integrated production chains, especially in terms of exports. The results of a regression analysis complement earlier studies by showing that the level and composition of intra-firm trade is significantly affected by the international strategy applied by TNCs when operating foreign manufacturing affiliates. Intra-firm exports of finished products and material inputs are positively associated with efficiency-seeking FDI, e.g. affiliates engaged in rationalised production. Market-seeking FDI is associated with intra-firm imports of complementary finished products for resale. By contrast, resource-seeking and strategic asset-seeking FDI was negatively associated with intra-firm trade. [source] ISO 14001 EMS standard registration decisions among Canadian organizationsAGRIBUSINESS : AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, Issue 4 2003Emmanuel K. Yiridoe This study characterized the costs and benefits associated with adopting ISO 14001 environmental management system (EMS) standard, based on a survey of ISO 14001-registered organizations in Canada. Decision makers are contemplating whether it is necessary to register to one or more of the ISO and other international standards and, if so, which ones. Furthermore, an organization that has registered separate departments to different standards and contemplates integrating such standards across the different units may be interested in attributes of particular units that will facilitate integration. Discriminant analysis was conducted to characterize the factors that distinguish between organizations that adopted ISO 14001 alone (single standard), versus those that registered to ISO 14001 along with other quality, health, and safety standards (i.e., multiple standards). The most important factor that motivated adoption to ISO 14001 was to establish a positive environmental profile, thereby promoting goodwill and integrity. Internal factors tended to dominate the motivations for adopting ISO 14001, supporting the hypothesis that external benefits may not be fully realized due to market and policy failure. Internal costs associated with registration depended on the size of the organization and ranged, on average, from CND$17,000 (for organizations with less than 100 employees), to CND$42,000 (for organizations with more than 500 employees). External costs depended more on the type (i.e., sector of the Canadian economy) than on size of the organization. The most important variable that distinguished between Canadian organizations that adopted ISO 14001 alone versus those that adopted ISO 14001 and other standards was whether the organization had an international orientation, that is, those with more than 50% of services or exports to other countries. [EconLit citations: L150, L200, Q290]. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Agribusiness 19: 439,457, 2003. [source] Electronic Nose Technology in Quality Assessment: Predicting Volatile Composition of Danish Blue Cheese During RipeningJOURNAL OF FOOD SCIENCE, Issue 6 2005Jeorgos Trihaas ABSTRACT This work describes for the 1st time the use of an electronic nose (e-nose) for the determination of changes of blue cheeses flavor during maturation. Headspace analysis of Danish blue cheeses was made for 2 dairy units of the same producer. An e-nose registered changes in cheeses flavor 5, 8, 12, and 20 wk after brining. Volatiles were collected from the headspace and analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Features from the chemical sensors of the e-nose were used to model the volatile changes by multivariate methods. Differences registered during ripening of the cheeses as well as between producing units are described and discussed for both methods. Cheeses from different units showed significant differences in their e-nose flavor profiles at early ripening stages but with ripening became more and more alike. Prediction of the concentration of 25 identified aroma compounds by e-nose features was possible by partial least square regression (PLS-R). It was not possible to create a reliable predictive model for both units because cheeses from 1 unit were contaminated by Geotrichum candidum, leading to unstable ripening patterns. Correction of the e-nose features by multiple scatter correction (MSC) and mean normalization (MN) of the integrated GC areas made correlation of the volatile concentration to the e-nose signal features possible. Prediction models were created, evaluated, and used to reconstruct the headspace of unknown cheese samples by e-nose measurements. Classification of predicted volatile compositions of unknown samples by their ripening stage was successful at a 78% and 54% overall correct classification for dairy units 1 and 2, respectively. Compared with GC-MS, the application of the rapid and less demanding e-nose seems an attractive alternative for this type of investigation. [source] Fault-tolerant control of process systems using communication networksAICHE JOURNAL, Issue 6 2005Nael H. El-Farra Abstract A methodology for the design of fault-tolerant control systems for chemical plants with distributed interconnected processing units is presented. Bringing together tools from Lyapunov-based nonlinear control and hybrid systems theory, the approach is based on a hierarchical architecture that integrates lower-level feedback control of the individual units with upper-level logic-based supervisory control over communication networks. The local control system for each unit consists of a family of control configurations for each of which a stabilizing feedback controller is designed and the stability region is explicitly characterized. The actuators and sensors of each configuration are connected, via a local communication network, to a local supervisor that orchestrates switching between the constituent configurations, on the basis of the stability regions, in the event of failures. The local supervisors communicate, through a plant-wide communication network, with a plant supervisor responsible for monitoring the different units and coordinating their responses in a way that minimizes the propagation of failure effects. The communication logic is designed to ensure efficient transmission of information between units, while also respecting the inherent limitations in network resources by minimizing unnecessary network usage and accounting explicitly for the effects of possible delays due to fault-detection, control computations, network communication and actuator activation. The proposed approach provides explicit guidelines for managing the various interplays between the coupled tasks of feedback control, fault-tolerance and communication. The efficacy of the proposed approach is demonstrated through chemical process examples. © 2005 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2005 [source] Being an outsider: nurses' statements about a vignette of an elderly resident with a schizophrenia diagnosis and dementia behaviourJOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRIC & MENTAL HEALTH NURSING, Issue 2 2004O. HELLZÉN rn phd In an exploratory study of nurses' approach to elderly people with a diagnosis of long-term schizophrenia, the aim was to investigate nurses' views of the care of an elderly fictitious person with long-term schizophrenia. All the nurses in one municipality in northern Sweden working at seven different units were investigated. A vignette, which was based on a case description in a previous study of an 84-year-old woman with severe dementia and problematic behaviour, was used after a minor alteration. In this study, the woman's age in the case description was changed from 84 to 68 years and the diagnosis was changed from severe dementia to long-term schizophrenia; otherwise, the description was the same as in the original case. The main finding was the nurses' inability to see the resident as anything other than what the ,label', the diagnosis, said. The nurses are interpreted as being caught in a dilemma of loyalty , on the one hand, the loyalty to the organization with its traditional goals and means and, on the other hand, the loyalty to the resident with her wishes in the forefront of their minds. [source] Design, validation, and use of an evaluation instrument for monitoring systemic reformJOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Issue 6 2001Kathryn Scantlebury Over the past decade, state and national policymakers have promoted systemic reform as a way to achieve high-quality science education for all students. However, few instruments are available to measure changes in key dimensions relevant to systemic reform such as teaching practices, student attitudes, or home and peer support. Furthermore, Rasch methods of analysis are needed to permit valid comparison of different cohorts of students during different years of a reform effort. This article describes the design, development, validation, and use of an instrument that measures student attitudes and several environment dimensions (standards-based teaching, home support, and peer support) using a three-step process that incorporated expert opinion, factor analysis, and item response theory. The instrument was validated with over 8,000 science and mathematics students, taught by more than 1,000 teachers in over 200 schools as part of a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of Ohio's systemic reform initiative. When the new four-factor, 20-item questionnaire was used to explore the relative influence of the class, home, and peer environment on student achievement and attitudes, findings were remarkably consistent across 3 years and different units and methods of analysis. All three environments accounted for unique variance in student attitudes, but only the environment of the class accounted for unique variance in student achievement. However, the class environment (standards-based teaching practices) was the strongest independent predictor of both achievement and attitude, and appreciable amounts of the total variance in attitudes were common to the three environments. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 646,662, 2001 [source] Impact of antimicrobial drug usage measures on the identification of heavy users, patterns of usage of the different antimicrobial classes and time-trends evolutionJOURNAL OF VETERINARY PHARMACOLOGY & THERAPEUTICS, Issue 4 2008C. CHAUVIN Several measurement units are available to quantify antimicrobial usage in veterinary medicine, to obtain diverse measures such as the weight of active substance used, the live weight (LW) treated, the fraction of animals exposed, the number of treatments recorded or the cost represented. These measures can be applied to study practices variability between farms, to characterize patterns of usage of the different antimicrobial classes or to follow evolution of antimicrobial usage with time. An investigation was carried out to specifically explore the influence of measurement units on the conclusions obtained from such studies. Antimicrobial exposure was explored in a sample of turkey and chicken broiler flocks, using six different units [kg of active compound, treatments, days of administration, kg of LW treated, animal daily dose to treat 1 kg of LW (ADDkg) and euros] to compare flocks usage variability and patterns of use of the different antimicrobial classes. Time-trends evolutions of macrolides usage in turkey broilers, characterized by percentage of flocks exposed and LW treated, were also compared. In all analyses, the measure gave different results without equivalences, highlighting the necessity for care in choosing the measurement unit and caution in interpreting the figures obtained. [source] Global R&D Project Management and Organization: A TaxonomyTHE JOURNAL OF PRODUCT INNOVATION MANAGEMENT, Issue 5 2000Vittorio Chiesa This work studies the management and organization of global R&D projects, i.e. projects leading to innovations to be exploited in multiple countries. It provides a taxonomy of how firms conduct such projects. The empirical base is composed of twelve multinational companies, from the three major areas (Europe, Japan, North America), operating technology-intensive businesses. Two basic structures are identified: the specialization based, where one foreign lab (the firm's center of excellence) is assigned the responsibility for developing a new product, process or technology on the basis of a global mandate, and the integration based, where different units contribute to technology development programs and global innovations are the result of the joint work of these units. In each categories two sub-cases have been found: the center of excellence and the supported specialization, on the one hand, and the network and specialized contributor structures, on the other. The four structures have been studied in relation to: the key characteristics of the organization and management of global projects (in each phase, from conception to introduction into the market), the organizational factors affecting the success, the context conditions in which the structure is considered appropriate. [source] Vibrational spectroscopic studies of newly developed synthetic biopolymersBIOPOLYMERS, Issue 5 2010Rajan K. Bista Abstract Vibrational spectroscopic techniques such as near-infrared (NIR), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), and Raman spectroscopy are valuable diagnostic tools that can be used to elucidate comprehensive structural information of numerous biological samples. In this review article, we have highlighted the advantages of nanotechnology and biophotonics in conjunction with vibrational spectroscopic techniques in order to understand the various aspects of new kind of synthetic biopolymers termed as polyethylene glycol (PEG)ylated lipids. In contrast to conventional phospholipids, these novel lipids spontaneously form liposomes or nanovesicles upon hydration, without the supply of external activation energy. The amphiphiles considered in this study differ in their hydrophobic acyl chain length and contain different units of PEG hydrophilic headgroups. We have further explored the thermotropic phase behaviors and associated changes in the conformational order/disorder of such lipids by using variable-temperature FTIR and Raman spectroscopy. Phase transition temperature profiles and correlation between various spectral indicators have been identified by either monitoring the shifts in the vibrational peak positions or plotting vibrational peak intensity ratios in the CH stretching region as a function of temperature. To supplement our observations of phase transformations, a thermodynamic approach known as differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) has been applied and revealed a good agreement with the infrared and Raman spectroscopic data. Finally, the investigation of thermal properties of lipids is extremely crucial for numerous purposes, thus the results obtained in this work may find application in a wide variety of studies including the development of PEGylated lipid based drug and substances delivery vehicles. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Biopolymers 93: 403,417, 2010. This article was originally published online as an accepted preprint. The "Published Online" date corresponds to the preprint version. You can request a copy of the preprint by emailing the Biopolymers editorial office at biopolymers@wiley.com [source] Investigations of thermotropic phase behavior of newly developed synthetic PEGylated lipids using Raman spectro-microscopyBIOPOLYMERS, Issue 11 2008Rajan K. Bista Abstract In this article, a temperature-controlled Raman spectro-microscopic technique has been utilized to detect and analyze the phase behaviors of two newly developed synthetic PEGylated lipids trademarked as QuSomesÔ, which spontaneously form liposomes upon hydration in contrast to conventional lipids. The amphiphiles considered in this study differ in their hydrophobic hydrocarbon chain length and contain different units of polyethylene glycol (PEG) hydrophilic headgroups. Raman spectra of these new artificial lipids have been recorded in the spectral range of 500,3100 cm,1 by using a Raman microscope system in conjunction with a temperature-controlled sample holder. The gel to liquid phase transitions of the sample lipids composed of pure 1,2-dimyristoyl- rac -glycerol-3-dodecaethylene glycol (GDM-12) and 1,2-distearoyl- rac -glycerol-3-triicosaethylene glycol (GDS-23) have been revealed by plotting peak intensity ratios in the CH stretching region as a function of temperature. From this study, we have found that the main phase transitions occur at a temperature of ,5.2 and 21.2°C for pure GDM-12 and GDS-23, respectively. Furthermore, the lipid GDS-23 also shows a postphase transition temperature at 33.6°C. To verify our results, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) experiments have been conducted and the results are found to be in an excellent agreement with Raman scattering data. This important information may find application in various studies including the development of lipid-based novel substances and drug delivery systems. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Biopolymers 89: 1012,1020, 2008. This article was originally published online as an accepted preprint. The "Published Online" date corresponds to the preprint version. You can request a copy of the preprint by emailing the Biopolymers editorial office at biopolymers@wiley.com [source] | ||||||||||||||||