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AbstractDemand‐side measures are thought to be a sustainable approach to meeting the future supply‐demand balance. We assess the uptake of domestic demand‐side measures and potential factors that may promote the uptake of water efficiency devices. Fifty‐one face‐to‐face questionnaires were used to collect demographic and household characteristics data. We use descriptive statistics and univariate models to assess factors promoting water efficiency. Fifty‐one adult participants aged between 30 and 64 years provided data on water consumption and efficiency. Participants investigating water saving solutions and homeowners were more likely to utilise water efficiency devices. Targeted factors shown to promote consumer up‐take of water efficiency measures along with strategies utilising low‐cost efficiency devices provide a cost‐effective means to reduce water consumption.

The need to put into perspective the ever-mounting body of new information, beyond the frames of disciplines, on environmental security of food and water issues in Asia provided the impetus for the development of this book. It combines presentations from symposia on food and water sustainability held recently in Macau, China. This book represents the latest research findings in all the major aspects of food and water security issues in Asia. The first chapter portrays the strategies for water resources management in Asian countries. In this connection, the environmental challenges for sustainable development were discussed. Model application on spatial allocation of water resources viewed the tradeoff between economic goal and ecological goal. The hydrological changes related to the socio-economic development in china were also included in this chapter. The second chapter deals with sustainable water uses in domestic purposes for both urban and rural areas. The potential use of reclaimed wastewater was described in the context of different cities as reference for the urban water management in whole Asia. The traditional drinking water uses in rural communities and associated challenges towards sustainability were also discussed in this regard. The third chapter focuses on the security issues in aquatic products. The long-term strategy for the fisheries development in China was represented as lessons for other communities in Asia. The environmental impacts of aquaculture and the control measures were also included in this discussion. Chapter four of this book represents the sustainability aspect in food grains. The delicate balance between water resources and food grain production was addressed. Sustainable strategies for water use and food production were described in the context of several Asian countries. The impact of biofuel production on food security issues was raised in this discussion. Some other socio-economic factors related to this issue were also included in this chapter. The overarching importances of the food and water sustainability issues in climate changes have been shown in chapter five. Impacts of global warming on water resources and food production in Asian countries were described with examples and simulation. Mitigation measures were also sited with regional references in Korea, Thailand and other parts of Asia. Strategies aiming the security issues in food and water were addressed in chapter six. Scenarios of environmental managements in Asian countries related to allocation of water resources, water quality, remediation of hazardous wastes, and soil clean up were the major topics in this context. The organizational strategies were also assessed in this discussion.

In this paper, we analyze the relation between interest rate targets and money supply in a (bubble-free) rational expectations equilibrium of a standard cash-in-advance model. We examine lump-sum injections of money aimed to implement interest rate sequences that satisfy interest rate target rules. An interest rate target with a positive inflation feedback in general corresponds to money growth rates rising with inflation. When prices are not completely flexible, this implies that a non-destabilizing money supply cannot implement a forward-looking and active interest rate rule. This principle also applies for an alternative model version with an interest elastic money demand. The implementation of a Taylor-rule then requires money injections that lead to explosive or oscillatory equilibrium sequences. In contrast, an inertial interest rate target can be implemented by a non-destabilizing money supply, even if the inflation feedback exceeds one, which is often found in interest rate rule regressions.

Objective. We estimate the effect of poor child health on the labor supply of fathers post‐welfare reform, using a national sample of mostly unwed parents and their children—a group at high risk of living in poverty.Method. We control for a rich set of covariates, include state fixed effects, and test for the endogeneity of child health by estimating bivariate probit models.Results. We find that having a young child in poor health reduces the father's probability of being employed by four percentage points. The effect appears to be strongest among fathers who cohabit with, but are not married to, the child's mother.Conclusion. The results suggest a potential source by which young children with serious health problems may receive lower levels of health investment than their healthier peers—their fathers' reduced likelihood of being employed.

This report presents the results of a study of factors impacting Information and Communication Technology (ICT) adoption in the supply chain of Facilities Management (FM) in Denmark. The research questions addressed in this study are: What are the key factors that influence adoption and assimilation of ICT systems in the supply chain of FM? What are the main benefits gained from deploying ICT systems in FM supply chain? This study is important because it investigates motivators, barriers and benefits of adopting ICT systems in the FM supply chain, which is new to the FM literature as well as the IT innovation adoption literature and supply chain management literature. The report takes the starting point on the definitions of supply chain, supply chain management and FM to go deeper into a literature review of factors that can affect the adoption and assimilation of ICT in the supply chain. On the base of this literature review a semi-structured interview guide has been developed and 12 in depth interviews have been conducted with respondents from 12 different companies. Each interview lasted circa 1.5-2 hours and all interviews were fully transcribed. Data for the study were also gathered from archival sources as well as attendance to practitioner conferences and workshops on the topic of IT systems in FM. The participant lists of these seminars and conferences, the web site of the Danish network for FM as well as discussion with industry experts were used to find relevant companies and people to interview. The results of the study show that there are a number of factors that influence adoption and assimilation of ICT in the supply chain of FM in Denmark. By following the literature, these factors have been grouped according to organizational, technology and external environmental factors. Some of the most important organizational factors are better FM management decisions, better long term and short term planning and forecasting of FM resources, better overview and control over the budget and the activities that need to be done as well as bbetter service provided to the customers. Among the organizational barriers important ones are the difficulty of writing in the contract the process of how and when to get data from the FM service providers, and lack of resources to implement the systems and to make the necessary organizational changes in order for the system to get implemented. Among the external drivers there are improve and control relationships with FM service provider, opportunity to offer single point of contact also in complicated bundled services, government regulation, and critical mass of users. Among the external barriers there are lack of collaboration among software providers, clients and users in order to develop and store all those info and disagreements between the service provider and the customer about the data that need to deliver. In any case supplier-customer interdependence was found as a key external factor. Among the technological factors important are increased control and systematization in data collection and service delivery, better decision regarding service provision and employees got more control of their daily work. Among the technological barriers there are the ICT systems are still not user friendly, different systems are not compatible, and lack of standard format and classification schemes for FM data input. The research presented in this study has been financed by the Centre for Facilities Management - Realdania Research (CFM) based at the Department of Management Engineering, Denmark Technical University (DTU).

One area of research that has been somewhat neglected in water planning programs and water development is that pertaining to water law and water institutions. Over the years each state has developed a complex system of water law and organizations for the allocation and distribution of water. The usual role of these institutions is one of orderly development and the efficient use of the water resource. However, in many cases water law and institutions have imposed serious constraints upon the planning and the most efficient use of a valuable resource. This study, through historic research, has attempted to define these water institutions in the state of Utah. In order to fully identify these agencies an in-depth study was made of the active water institutions in Weber County. This was accomplished through personal interviews, review of articles of incorporation, court records, annual reports and similar documents. The study has revealed that all of these institutions as established by legislation have the opportunity to overlap in areas of jurisdiction, sources of water and potential customers. This possibility of overlapping or duplication of services exists but may not necessarily be practiced. The most serious legislative omission is the lack of vertical coordination between the state and local agencies and horizontal cooperation among institutions operating in the same area. This lack of coordination and cooperation has precluded the most efficient use and development of the water resources of the state.

"This book explores emerging new ideas and methodologies that are of common practical interest in the area of sustainable supply chain management. It provides real time case studies that will assist scientists and practitioners in decision-making, to handle their institutions problems and challenges specially in the new areas on remanufacturing"--

In this study, novel biobased dispersions to entrap probiotic bacteria were developed and characterized regarding their formation, microstructure and in vitro viability and culturability performance in model salivary, gastric and intestinal fluids. The systems are composed of type B pigskin gelatin and sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (NaCMC) which, depending on concentrations and temperature, can form water-in-water (W/W) emulsion droplets as observed by optical and fluorescence microscopy. Model probiotic bacteria, Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (LGG), were successfully entrapped into the W/W emulsion droplets with surprisingly high viability. Moreover, the survival of the LGG cells, when exposed to the different model fluids, was improved after their entrapment in the W/W emulsions. Therefore, the developed dispersions display high potential for probiotic encapsulation and eventual delivery into the intestinal tract with acceptable viability. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd ; This work was supported by funding from the People Program (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union's Seventh Framework Program FP7/2007–2013/under REA grant agreement n° 606713 BIBAFOODS. The Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) is acknowledged through the project PTDC/AGR-TEC/4814/2014 and researcher grant IF/01005/2014 . J. Esquena also acknowledges grateful support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness ( CTQ2014-52687-C3-1-P grant), Generalitat de Catalunya ( 2014 SGR 1655 and TECCIT15-1-0009 ), and NANBIOSIS Singular Scientific Technological Infrastructures . Dra. Isabel Nunes (Center for Neurocience and Cell Biology-University of Coimbra) is greatly acknowledged for the support on the flow cytometry experiments. Professor Björn Lindman is acknowledged for valuable comments on the manuscript. Appendix A ; Peer reviewed

AbstractIn this article, we address two network design problems for a responsive supply chain that consists of make‐to‐order (make‐to‐assemble) facilities facing stochastic demand and service time. The response time to customer orders, critical to the success of the supply chain, is the sum of the flow time in the facility and the delivery time to the customers. The response time performance in our models is measured by the probability that the response time is shorter than a constant. This nonlinear performance measure makes the models less or not tractable. The objective of both problems is to minimize the expected network cost that consists of the cost of delivery to customers as a function of the time of delivery (or the mode of transportation), the fixed cost of locating facilities and the capacity cost as a linear function of the processing capacity. The main decision variables are the number and locations of facilities, the resources allocated to them and the delivery mode selected between facilities and demand. In the first problem, a constraint is imposed to ensure an acceptable response time level. In the second problem, a penalty is charged on the number of days that each unit is delivered later than the targeted response time and is incorporated into the objective function. In the first problem, the probabilistic constraint on the flow time can be linearized and the problem can be formulated as an integer linear programming model. In the second problem, we propose an approximation approach to linearize the objective function and an iterative search and cut algorithm to combine linear approximation with neighborhood search. A multi‐start meta‐heuristic is also suggested. Computational experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of these solution procedures. Recommendations are made on the basis of the computational results. This appears to be the first study in the area of locating capacitated facilities with stochastic demand to incorporate the delivery mode choice decision and to evaluate the expected congestion cost as a function of the actual flow time in the facilities, instead of the average one. The models developed enable the decision maker to investigate the effect of a combination of facility location, capacity allocation, and delivery mode decisions on the expected network cost and the response time. In addition, the findings of the computational experiments shed light on tuning parameters of approximation algorithms.

After Bonn and Marrakech it is likely that emission trading will be realized in the near future. Major influences on the permit market are the institutional details, the participation structure and the treatment of hot air. Different scenarios do not only differ in their implications for the demand and supply of permits and thus the permit price, but also in their allocative effects. Most repercussions can be expected to stem from the effects on the world markets for fossil fuel and especially the oil market. For example the withdrawal of the USA from the Kyoto Protocol and the allocation mechanism for the hot air in Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe influence the level of energy demand and gross and net energy prices which in turn change the production structure of energy intensive goods and influence welfare depending on whether a country is an energy net exporter or importer. In this paper we discuss different institutional designs for hot air trading combined with the US withdrawal and quantify the effects by using a computable general equilibrium model. Besides detailed results for the analyzed scenarios, two major findings are relevant for future studies on emission trading: First, marginal abatement cost curves are not as stable as presumed up to now. Second, we find that indeed the allocative repercussions of a scenario are to a large degree determined by its effects on world energy demand and world energy prices. Both findings imply that partial equilibrium models of permit trading that are based on marginal abatement curves ignore the important interaction between the permit market and the world energy markets.

Objective. We estimate the effect of poor child health on the labor supply of fathers' post-welfare reform, using a national sample of mostly unwed parents & their children -- a group at high risk of living in poverty. Method. We control for a rich set of covariates, include state fixed effects, & test for the endogeneity of child health by estimating bivariate probit models. Results. We find that having a young child in poor health reduces the father's probability of being employed by four percentage points. The effect appears to be strongest among fathers who cohabit with, but are not married to, the child's mother. Conclusion. The results suggest a potential source by which young children with serious health problems may receive lower levels of health investment than their healthier peers -- their fathers' reduced likelihood of being employed. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document.