148 research outputs found
Maintenance and Expansion: Modeling Material Stocks and Flows for Residential Buildings and Transportation Networks in the EU25
Material stocks are an important part of the social metabolism. Owing to long service lifetimes of stocks, they not only shape resource flows during construction, but also during use, maintenance, and at the end of their useful lifetime. This makes them an important topic for sustainable development. In this work, a model of stocks and flows for nonmetallic minerals in residential buildings, roads, and railways in the EU25, from 2004 to 2009 is presented. The changing material
composition of the stock is modeled using a typology of 72 residential buildings, four road and two railway types, throughout the EU25. This allows for estimating the amounts of materials in in-use stocks of residential buildings and transportation networks, as well as input and output flows. We compare the magnitude of material demands for expansion versus those for maintenance of existing stock. Then, recycling potentials are quantitatively explored by comparing the magnitude of estimated input, waste, and recycling flows from 2004 to 2009 and in a business-as-usual scenario for 2020. Thereby, we assess the potential impacts of the EuropeanWaste Framework Directive, which strives for a significant increase in recycling.
We find that in the EU25, consisting of highly industrialized countries, a large share of material inputs are directed at maintaining existing stocks. Proper management of existing transportation networks and residential buildings is therefore crucial for the future size of flows of nonmetallic minerals
Supply versus use designs of environmental extensions in input–output analysis: Conceptual and empirical implications for the case of energy
Input–output analysis is one of the central methodological pillars of industrial ecology. However,the literature that discusses different structures of environmental extensions (EEs), that is, thescope of physical flows and their attribution to sectors in the monetary input–output table (MIOT),remains fragmented. This article investigates the conceptual and empirical implications of apply-ing two different but frequently used designs of EEs, using the case of energy accounting, whereone represents energy supply while the other energy use in the economy. We derive both exten-sions from an official energy supply–use dataset and apply them to the same single-region input–output (SRIO) model of Austria, thereby isolating the effect that stems from the decision for theextension design. We also crosscheck the SRIO results with energy footprints from the g lobalmulti-regional input–output (GMRIO) dataset EXIOBASE. Our results show that the ranking offootprints of final demand categories (e.g., household and export) is sensitive to the extensiondesign and that product-level results can vary by several orders of magnitude. The GMRIO-basedcomparison further reveals that for a few countries the supply-extension result can be twice thesize of the use-extension footprint (e.g., Australia and Norway). We propose a graph approachto provide a generalized framework to disclosing the design of EEs. We discuss the conceptualdifferences between the two extension designs by applying analogies to hybrid life-cycle assess-ment and conclude that our findings are relevant for monitoring of energy efficiency and emissionreduction targets and corporate footprint accounting
Treatment trends for muscle-invasive bladder cancer in Germany from 2006 to 2019
Purpose:
To examine national treatment trends of muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) in Germany with a special focus on radical cystectomy (RC).
Patients and methods:
Population-based data were derived from the nationwide hospital billing database of the German Federal Statistical Office and institution-related information from the reimbursement.INFO tool based on hospitals’ quality reports from 2006 to 2019. Additionally, we used the German National Center for Cancer Registry data to analyze all cases of bladder cancer with stage ≥ T2 who received RC, chemotherapy, radiation therapy or a combination from 2006 to 2017.
Results:
The annual number of RC cases in Germany increased by 28% from 5627 cases in 2006 to 7292 cases in 2019 (p = 0.001). The proportion of patients undergoing RC remained constant at about 75% in all age groups between 2006 and 2017 (p = 0.3). Relative to all performed RC, the proportion of patients > 75 years increased from 25% in 2006 to 38% in 2019 (p = 0.03). The proportion of patients receiving a combination of RC and chemotherapy increased from 9% in 2006 to 13% in 2017 (p = 0.005). In 2006, 8 of 299 urology departments (2.7%) performed more than 50 RCs per year, which increased to 17 of 360 (4.7%) in 2019. In 2019, 107 departments (29%) performed 25–49 RCs and 236 (66%) departments performed < 25 RCs.
Conclusion:
In Germany, three out of four patients with MIBC receive RC and the proportion of patients > 75 years is increasing. The combination of surgery and chemotherapy is increasingly used. With overall increasing case numbers, there is a slight tendency towards centralization.Peer Reviewe
Subgap anomaly and above-energy-gap structure in chains of diffusive SNS junctions
We present the results of low-temperature transport measurements on chains of
superconductor--normal-constriction--superconductor (SNS) junctions fabricated
on the basis of superconducting PtSi film. A comparative study of the
properties of the chains, consisting of 3 and 20 SNS junctions in series, and
single SNS junctions reveals essential distinctions in the behavior of the
current-voltage characteristics of the systems: (i) the gradual decrease of the
effective suppression voltage for the excess conductivity observed at zero bias
as the quantity of the SNS junctions increases, (ii) a rich fine structure on
the dependences dV/dI-V at dc bias voltages higher than the superconducting gap
and corresponding to some multiples of 2\Delta/e. A model to explain this
above-energy-gap structure based on energy relaxation of electron via
Cooper-pair-breaking in superconducting island connecting normal metal
electrods is proposed.Comment: RevTex, 5 pages, 4 figure
Multi-Overlap Simulations for Transitions between Reference Configurations
We introduce a new procedure to construct weight factors, which flatten the
probability density of the overlap with respect to some pre-defined reference
configuration. This allows one to overcome free energy barriers in the overlap
variable. Subsequently, we generalize the approach to deal with the overlaps
with respect to two reference configurations so that transitions between them
are induced. We illustrate our approach by simulations of the brainpeptide
Met-enkephalin with the ECEPP/2 energy function using the global-energy-minimum
and the second lowest-energy states as reference configurations. The free
energy is obtained as functions of the dihedral and the root-mean-square
distances from these two configurations. The latter allows one to identify the
transition state and to estimate its associated free energy barrier.Comment: 12 pages, (RevTeX), 14 figures, Phys. Rev. E, submitte
Alternative Bench Standards: Sample Production Report
The INL has prepared four standards representing krypton concentrations of 1.1X, 1.54X, 10X and 100X the reported atmospheric value of 70 dpm 85Kr per cubic centimeter of Kr gas at 25 degrees C (ie. 1.1X is 1.1 x 70, or 77 dpm 85Kr per cubic centimeter of Kr gas at 25 degrees C). A t-zero date and time of January 1, 2012 at 1200 Zulu was used for all standards. The Alternative Bench Standards (ABS) of 1.1X, 1.54X, 10X and 100X, are designated by titles of ABS-A, ABS-B, ABS C and ABS-D, respectively. The concentration of Kr in air is 1.14 ppm
Towards a Conceptual Framework for Social-Ecological Systems Integrating Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services with Resource Efficiency Indicators
Industrial Ecolog
Trapped electron coupled to superconducting devices
We propose to couple a trapped single electron to superconducting structures
located at a variable distance from the electron. The electron is captured in a
cryogenic Penning trap using electric fields and a static magnetic field in the
Tesla range. Measurements on the electron will allow investigating the
properties of the superconductor such as vortex structure, damping and
decoherence. We propose to couple a superconducting microwave resonator to the
electron in order to realize a circuit QED-like experiment, as well as to
couple superconducting Josephson junctions or superconducting quantum
interferometers (SQUIDs) to the electron. The electron may also be coupled to a
vortex which is situated in a double well potential, realized by nearby pinning
centers in the superconductor, acting as a quantum mechanical two level system
that can be controlled by a transport current tilting the double well
potential. When the vortex is trapped in the interferometer arms of a SQUID,
this would allow its detection both by the SQUID and by the electron.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure
MESSAGEix-Materials v1.0.0: Representation of Material Flows and Stocks in an Integrated Assessment Model
Extracting and processing raw materials into products in industry is a substantial source of CO2 emissions, which currently lacks process detail in many integrated assessment models (IAMs). To broaden the space of climate change mitigation options and to include circular economy and material efficiency measures in IAM scenario analysis, we developed MESSAGEix-Materials module representing material flows and stocks within the MESSAGEix-GLOBIOM IAM framework. With the development of MESSAGEix-Materials, we provide a fully open-source model that can assess different industry decarbonization options under various climate targets for the most energy and emissions-intensive industries: Aluminium, iron and steel, cement, and petrochemicals. We illustrate the model’s operation with a baseline and mitigation (2 degrees) scenario setup and validate base year results for 2020 against historical datasets. We also discuss the industry decarbonization pathways and material stocks of the electricity generation technologies resulting from the new model features
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