Spatial cost efficiency in waste paper handling: the case of corrugated board in Sweden

This paper analyzes the spatial cost efficiency of the Swedish legislation regarding waste disposal handling. We focus on the case of corrugated board and recognize that the different counties in Sweden possess different economic prerequisites in terms of waste paper recovery and utilization potential. We employ data for six corrugated board mills and 20 counties and a non-linear programming model to identify the least cost strategy for reaching the politically specified recycling target of a 65% recovery rate for corrugated board. That is, the total costs of recovering a minimum of 65% in each county are calculated and compared with the case when the country as a whole recovers 65% of all old corrugated board is collected but there exist no uniform target for each county. The conclusion is that from an efficiency point of view the recovery efforts should be concentrated to the highly populated and urbanized counties, and not be uniformly divided throughout the country. In the base case, the results suggest that the cost efficient county-specific recovery rates should range from 51 to 72%.     

上海市医疗废物控制系统建设设想

根据上海的实际情况，借鉴国内外先进的医疗废物管理、处置经验，从控制的角度全面阐述了上海市医疗废物控制系统的目标、集中处置系统以及配套系统等各个方面建设的具体设想。     

Environmental cost of using poor decision metrics to prioritize environmental projects

Conservation decision makers commonly use project‐scoring metrics that are inconsistent with theory on optimal ranking of projects. As a result, there may often be a loss of environmental benefits. We estimated the magnitudes of these losses for various metrics that deviate from theory in ways that are common in practice. These metrics included cases where relevant variables were omitted from the benefits metric, project costs were omitted, and benefits were calculated using a faulty functional form. We estimated distributions of parameters from 129 environmental projects from Australia, New Zealand, and Italy for which detailed analyses had been completed previously. The cost of using poor prioritization metrics (in terms of lost environmental values) was often high—up to 80% in the scenarios we examined. The cost in percentage terms was greater when the budget was smaller. The most costly errors were omitting information about environmental values (up to 31% loss of environmental values), omitting project costs (up to 35% loss), omitting the effectiveness of management actions (up to 9% loss), and using a weighted‐additive decision metric for variables that should be multiplied (up to 23% loss). The latter 3 are errors that occur commonly in real‐world decision metrics, in combination often reducing potential benefits from conservation investments by 30–50%. Uncertainty about parameter values also reduced the benefits from investments in conservation projects but often not by as much as faulty prioritization metrics.     

疫情下医疗废物的处置现状分析

2019年新冠疫情席卷全球,在疫情环境下,医疗废物大幅增多,全国各大城市纷纷出现医疗废物处置不当的现象。本文对国内外现状分析,在认知、设施、管理和监督四个方面发现存在一定的问题,通过加强教育、加大储备、完善机制和改善监管的建议,为提升医疗废物应急处置能力提供参考。     

Organizational policy and other factors associated with emergency medical technician seat belt use

INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this study was to determine factors associated with seat belt usage among Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs). METHODS: As part of biennial re-registration paperwork, nationally registered EMTs completed a survey on the safety and health risks facing Emergency Medical Services (EMS) providers. Respondents were asked to describe their seat belt use while in the front seats of an ambulance. They were categorized as "high" in seat belt use if it had been more than a year since they had not worn their seat belt or "low" in seat belt use if they had not worn their seat belt at least once within the past 12 months. A logistic regression model was fit to estimate the association between seat belt use, organizational seat belt policy, type of EMS organization worked for, EMT certification level, and the size of community where EMS work is performed. RESULTS: Of the 41,823 EMTs that re-registered in 2003, surveys were received from 29,575 (70.7%). A significant interaction between organizational seat belt policy and type of EMS organization was found to exist. Participants reporting no organizational seat belt policy had lower odds of seat belt usage when compared to individuals that do have a seat belt policy. Odds Ratios ranged from 0.20 (95% CI 0.10-0.40) for military organizations to 0.59 (95% CI 0.38-0.93) for private EMS organizations. Paramedics and those working in rural areas also had lower odds of seat belt use. CONCLUSION: Several factors were found to be associated with seat belt usage among EMTs while in the front compartment of an ambulance. However, it appears that only one, organizational policy, is a modifiable characteristic.     

The 2004 Madrid train bombings: an analysis of pre-hospital management

The terrorist train bombings in Madrid, Spain, on 11 March 2004 triggered a swift and massive medical response. This paper analyses the pre-hospital response to the attacks to gain insight into current trends in disaster management among Madrid's Emergency Medical Services (EMSs). To this end, the existing emergency planning framework is described, the basic structures of the different EMSs are presented, and the attacks are briefly depicted before consideration is given to pre-hospital management. Finally, an explanation of the main underlying misconceptions in emergency planning and management in Madrid is provided to aid understanding of the origins of some of the problems detected during the response. These are attributable mainly to inappropriate planning rather than to mistakes in field-level decision-making. By contrast, many of the successes are attributable to individual initiatives by frontline medics who compensated for the lack of clear command by senior managers by making adaptive and flexible decisions.     

Life history costs of olfactory status signalling in mice

Large body size confers a competitive advantage in animal contests but does not always determine the outcome. Here we explore the trade-off between short-term achievement of high social status and longer-term life history costs in animals which vary in competitive ability. Using laboratory mice, Mus musculus, as a model system, we show that small competitors can initially maintain dominance over larger males by increasing investment in olfactory status signalling (scent-marking), but only at the cost of reduced growth rate and body size. As a result they become more vulnerable to dominance reversals later in life. Our results also provide the first empirical information about life history costs of olfactory status signals. Received: 15 December 1999 / Revised: 6 June 2000 / Accepted: 24 June 2000     

企业环境寻求、污染密集型生产区际转移与环境监管

在当前强调产业结构调整的政策背景下,产业有序转移必须以有利于或者加强环境保护为基本目标。环境规制差异造成了不同经济地域之间污染密集型生产的比较优势调整,强化了高污染产业进行生产区位选择的动机,以规避来自政府的环境监管。环境治理成本的不同是高污染企业区际转移的重要驱动因素,企业环境寻求策略推动了污染密集型生产由环境规制强度高的地区向环境规制松弛地区的转移。企业污染密集型生产的区际转移受到环境要素产品生产比较优势的明显影响,这些环境要素产品与区际环境规制差异、企业市场内部化战略以及污染密集型产品的生命周期密切关联。借鉴一般均衡分析框架,可以明晰企业环境寻求策略下污染密集型生产转移的内在机制。一方面,环境成本差异决定了非环境友好产品生产转移的意愿,高强度的环境规制使得企业生产的边际环境治理成本和平均环境治理成本提高,污染密集型生产外迁的动力加强,生产效率高的企业对环境规制强度更加敏感。污染密集型生产承接地提高环境规制强度能形成对环境负面影响的有力对冲,遏制环境恶化趋势。另一方面,合理的区际环境政策差异能在产业有序转移中发挥重要作用。合理设定区际环境规制级差与碳信征信系统建设,加强分类监管与行业节能减排,建立拟承接生产项目的效率筛选机制,提高区域市场开放程度、降低产业优惠政策所形成隐性市场保护等环境监管手段是保证欠发达地区通过产业承接实现跨越式发展的关键所在。     

长江中游城市群经济与生态成本空间演化模式分析

综合运用变异系数、泰尔指数及ESDA-GIS多种方法,在充分考虑传统经济影响因子的基础上,尝试引入经济发展生态成本指标,分析长江中游城市群经济综合发展水平与生态成本的空间匹配及演化模式。研究表明:经济综合发展水平高低聚集特征明显,空间极化现象是导致区域经济发展不平衡的主要原因;生态成本空间集聚现象以高高集聚和低低集聚为主,且呈现出高高集聚减少、低低集聚增多的现象,生态成本消耗有所改善;2001~2012年长江中游城市群市域经济综合发展水平与生态成本表现出越来越显著的差异化空间格局,呈现出由低经济综合发展水平-低生态成本过渡到高经济综合发展水平-高生态成本,进而发展到高经济综合发展水平-低生态成本的空间匹配模式的阶段性特征;高经济综合发展水平-高生态成本的经济发展模式仍在大部分城市中存在,经济与生态空间协调发展的潜力仍然很大。     

医疗废物焚烧中二恶英的产生及控制

医疗废物的安全处置一直被世界各国所重视,我国自SARS灾难后,强化了医疗废物的治理力度。本文针对目前主要采用焚烧法处置医疗废物过程中二恶英的生成途径进行了论述,并结合二恶英的分子结构、毒性及危害提出了控制对策与建议。