Estimating the Impacts of Climate Change on Mortality in OECD Countries

The major contribution of this study is to combines both climatic and macroeconomic factors simultaneously in the estimation of mortality using the capital city of 22 OECD countries from the period 1990 to 2008. The empirical results provide strong evidences that higher income and a lower unemployment rate could reduce mortality rates, while the increases in precipitation and temperature variation have significantly positive impacts on the mortality rates. The effects of changing average temperature on mortality rates in summer and winter are asymmetrical and also depend on the location. Combining the future climate change scenarios with the estimation outcomes show that mortality rates in OECD countries in 2100 will be increased by 3.77% to 5.89%.Climate change; mortality; panel data model

Modeling the Effect of Oil Price on Global Fertilizer Prices

The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of crude oil price on global fertilizer prices in both the mean and volatility. The endogenous structural breakpoint unit root test, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, and alternative volatility models, including the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model, Exponential GARCH (EGARCH) model, and GJR model, are used to investigate the relationship between crude oil price and six global fertilizer prices. Weekly data for 2003-2008 for the seven price series are analyzed. The empirical results from ARDL show that most fertilizer prices are significantly affected by the crude oil price, which explains why global fertilizer prices reached a peak in 2008. We also find that that the volatility of global fertilizer prices and crude oil price from March to December 2008 are higher than in other periods, and that the peak crude oil price caused greater volatility in the crude oil price and global fertilizer prices. As volatility invokes financial risk, the relationship between oil price and global fertilizer prices and their associated volatility is important for public policy relating to the development of optimal energy use, global agricultural production, and financial integration.Volatility; Global fertilizer price; Crude oil price; Non-renewable fertilizers; Structural breakpoint unit root test

Linear Displacement and Straightness Measurement by Fabry-Perot Interferometer Integrated with an Optoelectronic Module

This research develops a three degrees of freedom (DOF) measurement system by integrating Fabry-Perot interferometer and photoelectronic inspection module to determine linear displacement, horizontal and vertical straightness geometric error parameters simultaneously. The interferometer and the photoelectronic inspection module in a three DOF measurement system share the same light source, and the two structures are used to measure linear displacement and straightness errors. The experimental results are utilized to calculate the relevant error parameters according to ISO standards and numerical analysis. They show that after the machine error compensation, the positioning deviation of the system is reduced from 55 μm to 19 μm, corresponding to the reduction of 65%. The accuracy is promoted from 65 μm to 31 μm, about the improvement of 52%. The horizontal and vertical straightness errors of the machine are 4.30 μm and 5.71 μm respectively

Leveling Maintenance Mechanism by Using the Fabry-Perot Interferometer with Machine Learning Technology

This study proposes a method for maintaining parallelism of the optical cavity of a laser interferometer using machine learning. The Fabry-Perot interferometer is utilized as an experimental optical structure in this research due to its advantage of having a brief optical structure. The supervised machine learning method is used to train algorithms to accurately classify and predict the tilt angle of the plane mirror using labeled interference images. Based on the predicted results, stepper motors are fixed on a plane mirror that can automatically adjust the pitch and yaw angles. According to the experimental results, the average correction error and standard deviation in 17-grid classification experiment are 32.38 and 11.21 arcseconds, respectively. In 25-grid classification experiment, the average correction error and standard deviation are 19.44 and 7.86 arcseconds, respectively. The results show that this parallelism maintenance technology has essential for the semiconductor industry and precision positioning technology

Improving Performance of CIGS Solar Cells by Annealing ITO Thin Films Electrodes

Indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films were grown on glass substrates by direct current (DC) reactive magnetron sputtering at room temperature. Annealing at the optimal temperature can considerably improve the composition, structure, optical properties, and electrical properties of the ITO film. An ITO sample with a favorable crystalline structure was obtained by annealing in fixed oxygen/argon ratio of 0.03 at 400°C for 30 min. The carrier concentration, mobility, resistivity, band gap, transmission in the visible-light region, and transmission in the near-IR regions of the ITO sample were -1.6E+20 cm−3, 2.7E+01 cm2/Vs, 1.4E-03 Ohm-cm, 3.2 eV, 89.1%, and 94.7%, respectively. Thus, annealing improved the average transmissions (400–1200 nm) of the ITO film by 16.36%. Moreover, annealing a copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS) solar cell at 400°C for 30 min in air improved its efficiency by 18.75%. The characteristics of annealing ITO films importantly affect the structural, morphological, electrical, and optical properties of ITO films that are used in solar cells

Thoracoscopic plication for a huge thoracic meningocele in a patient with Neurofibromatosis

Intrathoracic meningoceles associated with neurofibromatosis type I are rare, and the optimal treatment is still unknown. Herein, we present the case of a 48-year-old Asian female with a huge thoracic meningocele associated with cutaneous neurofibromatosis type I and kyphoscoliosis of the thoracic spine. The large thoracic meningocele was successfully treated through thoracoscopic plication

Orthogonal Constant-Amplitude Sequence Families for System Parameter Identification in Spectrally Compact OFDM

In rectangularly-pulsed orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, constant-amplitude (CA) sequences are desirable to construct preamble/pilot waveforms to facilitate system parameter identification (SPI). Orthogonal CA sequences are generally preferred in various SPI applications like random-access channel identification. However, the number of conventional orthogonal CA sequences (e.g., Zadoff-Chu sequences) that can be adopted in cellular communication without causing sequence identification ambiguity is insufficient. Such insufficiency causes heavy performance degradation for SPI requiring a large number of identification sequences. Moreover, rectangularly-pulsed OFDM preamble/pilot waveforms carrying conventional CA sequences suffer from large power spectral sidelobes and thus exhibit low spectral compactness. This paper is thus motivated to develop several order-I CA sequence families which contain more orthogonal CA sequences while endowing the corresponding OFDM preamble/pilot waveforms with fast-decaying spectral sidelobes. Since more orthogonal sequences are provided, the developed order-I CA sequence families can enhance the performance characteristics in SPI requiring a large number of identification sequences over multipath channels exhibiting short-delay channel profiles, while composing spectrally compact OFDM preamble/pilot waveforms.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure