Search results for "efficiency."
showing 10 items of 1362 documents
Health Insurance Reforms and Health Policies in Rural China
2016
Since the early 2000s, the Chinese government has undertaken a series of reforms in the health sector. Among these, the three most important have been concerned with medical insurance, hospital administration, and pharmaceutical policies. The aims of these reforms were to extend health insurance coverage, to increase the activities and the efficiency of the health establishments, and to improve patient care. This article focuses on two components of these reforms: the development of health insurance in rural areas and the policy on essential medicines in conjunction with hospital reforms. Our longstanding co-operation with a research team from Weifang University and with the Weifang Health …
Test system for trifunctional antibodies in 3D MCTS culture.
2009
The aim of the present study was to assess the feasibility of a 3D tumor cell culture model, that is, multicellular tumor spheroids (MCTSs) as an adequate model for micrometastases and therefore as a pharmacological model for efficacy testing of trifunctional therapeutic antibodies. Unlike conventional monolayer cultures, spheroids allow researchers to study parameters, such as 3D cell shape, 3D cell arrangement and microenvironment, and penetration efficiency of defense cells that may largely influence the efficacy of antibody treatment in vivo. The authors established a long-term coculture of human MCTSs with peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) to test the anticancer effect of the …
Impact des allocations en ressources sur l'efficacité des écoles primaires en Côte d'Ivoire
2011
The quality of primary education in Côte d'Ivoire has deteriorated sharply over the past three decades. This situation is the result of an approximate management of the education system, which is characterized by a lack of educational support, a misallocation of resources, a congestion of classrooms (42 students for a teacher in primary school) and a lack of skilled and well trained teachers. In addition, the military-political conflict in September 2002 did not allow to improve this situation; on the contrary, it has further deteriorated the situation. Thus, the aim of this thesis is first to analyze the influence of resource endowments on the effectiveness of primary schools in Cote d'Ivo…
- CREDIT RISK AND EFFICIENCY IN THE EUROPEAN BANKING SYSTEMS: A THREE-STAGE ANALYSIS
1999
Increased competition and the attempts of European banks to increase their presence in other markets may have affected the efficiency and credit risk. The first of this aspects is based on the incentive to the banks to reduce cost in order to gain in competitiveness. The second is associated to their lack of knowledge of such markets and/or acceptance of a higher risk in order to increase their market share. Despite the importance of these aspects, banking literature has usually analyzed the effects of competition on the efficiency of banking systems without considering these aspects. The few studies that attempt to obtainrisk adjusted efficiency measures do not consider that part of the ri…
Gas cell studies of thorium using filament dispensers at IGISOL
2020
Abstract Filament-based dispensers of thorium have been investigated at the IGISOL facility, Jyvaskyla, for potential use as a thorium ion source for future collinear laser spectroscopy experiments. Several different filaments were manufactured in the Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics of TU Wien, with 232Th and 229Th prepared on tantalum substrates either by drying thorium nitrate solution or via molecular plating, while adding a layer of zirconium for oxide reduction. The filaments were characterized in a helium-filled gas cell by performing selective and efficient in-gas-cell resonance laser ionization and by analyzing the resulting ion beams by mass spectrometry. Additionally, th…
An institutional analysis of the implication of the MAS change process for the evolution of SMSC efficiency
2009
El objetivo general de este trabajo es conocer la relación existente entre el proceso de cambio de un Sistema de Contabilidad de Gestión (SCG) en las pequeñas y medianas empresas (PYME) y el éxito que genera dicho cambio. El éxito del cambio del SCG se va a medir a través de dos indicadores. El primer indicador, el éxito interno, medirá la distancia que existe entre las expectativas (qué se esperaba) de las nuevas técnicas de gestión implantadas y las realidades (qué son). El segundo indicador, el éxito externo, medirá la variación en el nivel de eficiencia relativa de la empresa dentro de su sector. La hipótesis básica de este estudio, plantea que el proceso de cambio puede explicar el niv…
A Decision support system for sustainable operations management in small power plants
2014
The importance of environmentally-friendly electricity production is recognized as one of the most important challenges of our future, covering a broad context of research topics and promoting future scenarios based on renewable energies and new technologies. In the short term, however, energy generation will still be largely relying on power plants fired with fossil fuels whose emissions of pollutants are regulated by the industrial emissions directive in the EU legislation. Such directive does not apply to small and medium combustion plants, which until now, have only been subject to national regulations. As part of its air quality package from December 2013, the EU Commission has propose…
Energy saving in wastewater treatment plants: A plant-generic cooperative decision support system
2017
Abstract In Europe, the analysis of Waste Water Treatment Plants (WWTPs) shows a significant energy efficiency potential (up to 25%). Optimistically, plant managers assess their plant efficiency once or twice per year. Consequently, the time gap between an inefficiency and its detection produces avoidable operational costs. Although the installation of multiple on-line sensors can provide detailed energy information, for a human operator it is unrealistic to analyse the produced data in a satisfactory time-scale. This paper proposes a cooperative tool for energy saving that remotely accesses and evaluates WWTP databases to produce daily energy assessment reports. The novelty of this decisio…
Stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis using the data envelopment model
2006
Abstract Data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis (SMAA-2) are methods for evaluating alternatives based on multiple criteria. While DEA is mainly an ex-post tool used for classifying alternatives into efficient and inefficient ones, SMAA-2 is an ex-ante tool for supporting multiple criteria decision-making. Both methods use a kind of value function where the importance of criteria is modeled using weights. Unlike many other methods, neither DEA nor SMAA-2 requires decision-makers’ weights as input. Instead, these so-called non-parametric methods explore the weight space in order to identify weights favorable for each alternative. This paper introd…
Perovskite CH3NH3PbI3–XClx Solar Cells. Experimental Study of Initial Degradation Kinetics and Fill Factor Spectral Dependence
2021
The main drawback of the methylammonium lead halide perovskite solar cells is their degradation in ambient atmosphere. To investigate ambient-air-induced cell degradation, spec-tral dependencies of open-circuit voltage (VOC), fill factor (FF) and the power conversion effi-ciency (PCE) have been acquired (for the first time reported in literature). Our custom-made measurement system allowed us to perform measurements of the above-mentioned entities in situ directly in vacuum during and after thermal deposition of the elec-trode. We also studied how these parameters in vacuum changed after cell exposure to ambient air for 85 min (50 nm top electrode) and for 180 min (100 nm top Ag electrode).…