Income shocks and HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa:

Poverty is commonly cited as a key driver of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, yet little causal evidence exists linking economic conditions to actual disease outcomes. Using data on more than 200,000 individuals across 19 Sub-Saharan African countries, we present evidence that negative income shocks can lead to substantial increases in HIV prevalence, particularly for women in rural areas. Building on recent work showing that income shortfalls can induce some women to engage in higher-risk sex, we match data on individuals' HIV status from the Demographic and Health Surveys to data on recent variation in local rainfall, a primary (and exogenous) source of variation in income for rural households in Africa. We find that infection rates for women (men) in HIV-endemic rural areas increase significantly by 14 percent (11 percent) for every drought event experienced in the previous 10 years. Further analysis suggests that women most affected by the shocks (that is, those engaged in agriculture) are driving the women's results; these women are partnering with men least affected (those employed outside agriculture). Our findings suggest a role for formal insurance and social safety nets in tackling the HIV/AIDS epidemic.HIV/AIDS, Income shocks,

RFID: The Up and Coming Technology

Abstract RFID has been the up and coming technology that many manufacturing and warehousing businesses has been delighted to use, while others still analyse the use and cost variables that come with such a technology. This document will serve as an analysis of the use of RFID and the variables that come along with this future of technology. Keywords RFID, variance, cost, technology, simulation

RFID Implementation and Enterprise Management in the Healthcare Sector

Abstract- This article presents our method of applying radio frequency identification (RFID) technology within healthcare organizations, with the key concept of treating it as a supply chain enterprise. We present past research relating to the pertinent elements, including RFID, supply chain reference model (SCOR model), healthcare supply chains. We then present our methodology for evaluating the supply chain, understanding where to possibly implement RFID, evaluate how it would impact the enterprise metrics and processes, evaluate the return on investment (ROI) of these, evaluate the cross-dependency, choose areas to proceed forward with implementation, and finally begin implementation. Additionally, we present the results of a recent company where this was implemented. Keywords- Enterprise management, SCOR model, RFID, healthcare, hospital

Hospital Supply Chain Management by Implementing RFID

Abstract- Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems have been successfully applied and shown its worth in many fields of manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, healthcare and supply chain just to name a few. The use of RFID in healthcare and hospital services has increased significantly over the years due to its credibility and accuracy. RFID technology is acting crucial in item level tracing and tracking systems in hospital scenarios. The aim of the paper is to express and display the role of RFID technology in maintaining the inventory level of medicines and surgical items in hospital warehouses and increase its impact in healthcare. One of the crucial points that should be noted in healthcare is that the medicines and surgical items should be made available at any point of time. The implementation of RFID technology in this area is to ensure patient safety and satisfaction by maintaining a perfect inventory of medicines and surgical items. Keywords- Enterprise management, SCOR model, RFID, healthcare, hospital

Multi-system optimization : intermittent production, flexible demand, emerging technologies

Modern life depends on cheap and reliable energy. The energy system powers just about every other major sector including buildings, transportation, food systems, and water systems. However, the energy production and consumption processes produce large amounts of pollution and greenhouse gases, they waste most of the energy they produces, and the negative externalities cascade to other systems. Furthermore, the environmental concerns, inefficiencies, and adjacent system effects have the largest impacts on the most vulnerable — those of us who live in areas with higher air pollution, have less efficient homes and cars, and as a result spend more of their income on energy while getting less out of it. New technologies and the purposeful integration of energy with other sectors via multi-systems optimization techniques can address some of these issues. Clean energy technologies like wind and solar can produce energy with no fuel costs and virtually zero negative environmental effects. However, these technologies are intermittent and the times they produce energy do not always align with when energy is needed. Furthermore, while the costs of these technologies are falling rapidly, they still require high up-front costs that investors and homeowners are hesitant to pay and that vulnerable populations simply cannot afford to pay. These drawbacks can be overcome by finding ways to use clean energy when it is available and sharing the costs of the technologies among larger groups. While there is a large body of research investigating clean energy adoption and costs, there is limited work examining how to match energy demand from different systems with the intermittent sources of energy or how community investment can drive down individual cost. The goal of this dissertation is to advance research related to multi-systems optimization by examining interdependencies between the energy sector and other systems. These interdependencies can encourage clean energy adoption by aligning the flexible loads of those systems with the intermittent supply of renewables. Furthermore, we investigate ways to minimize an individual or a community’s barrier of entry into the clean energy space. The projects in this dissertation investigate novel methods for decision-making on clean energy investment and dispatch using multi-system optimization techniques and case studies informed by real-world data. The three core chapters of this dissertation begin with development of an applied energy and transportation system optimization model to assess how autonomous vehicles could decarbonize electricity and transportation and then shift to how food, energy, and water are connected and could provide mutually reinforcing benefits at the community level and in an agricultural setting. Chapter 2 investigates the possible climate change impacts of the anticipated growth in shared autonomous vehicles (SAVs). The developed multi-system optimization model integrates the electricity and transport sectors, computes endogenous technology adoption, and distinguishes SAVs from privately owned vehicles (POVs) to explore the contributions of SAVs to climate change mitigation. Our results show that widespread SAV adoption lowers costs and emissions, and that these desirable outcomes remain true even if SAVs induce double the VMT of the POVs they replace. Furthermore, we find that SAVs dramatically accelerate the market penetration of electric vehicles, and the environmental and economic benefits of this electrification trend are larger if electric SAV charging can be optimally aligned with renewable electricity generation. We find that in the short to medium term, SAV adoption can be a more impactful lever than a carbon tax for decarbonizing vehicle travel. The multi-system optimization model in Chapter 2 investigated how energy decisions at the urban level impacted both the power and transportation sectors but did not look at how smaller scale decisions and investments could impact energy costs. Chapter 3 addresses smaller scale decisions and the interactions between energy and a different sector (water) by creating a more granular optimization model. We create a mixed-integer linear program for the optimal system design and dispatch of both the energy and water systems using data from a neighborhood in Austin, Texas. Using this model, we assess the ability of two system design concepts to improve the economics of distributed water and energy technologies, and ultimately encourage their broader adoption: (1) co-optimizing water and energy technology investments and operations, and (2) investing in community-scale rather than home-scale systems. Our results show that distributed electricity and water production increases, and total cost decreases, when resources and demands are pooled at larger community scales. Furthermore, the cost and carbon emissions reduction benefits of co-optimizing distributed water and energy investments are significant, especially at higher aggregation levels. These community-scale systems make a wider range of technologies economically viable and enable greater asset utilization due to systems integration. The project in Chapter 3 explored how distributed water and energy technologies could meet residential demand and Chapter 4 expands this assessment into the agricultural space. The project in this chapter investigates how a farm can use distributed energy and water technologies to mitigate the effects of intensifying water scarcity due to climate change and unsustainable withdrawals from conventional freshwater sources. It creates a two stage quadratically constrained linear programming framework to provide insights. Our results show that expected profit and realized profit are heavily dependent on a decision maker's given climate probabilities. Aggressively preparing for an extreme climate can cause significant losses if a more moderate climate is realized. Furthermore, year-to-year weather variability within a given climate scenario can also diminish the potential cost savings from investing in alternative resources. The framework we created in this work can help decision makers evaluate those uncertainties, decide to invest in alternative water and energy technologies, and how to appropriately size those investments given climate uncertainty. The three projects of this dissertation use a multi-system framework and employ operations research methods to model how investigating the community scale and integrating the design and operation of energy supply and end-use systems can lead to mutually reinforcing benefits. Each project offers insights on how a multi-system framework can improve emerging technology adoption, reduce GHG emissions, and/or lower individual costs. These insights can be used by decision makers to help create a more efficient and sustainable world.Operations Research and Industrial Engineerin

Evaluating the Impact of Sustainability and Pipeline Quality on Global Crude Oil Supply Chain Efficiency

In this paper, the efficiency Curve model shown in Modelling the Supply Chain (Author: Shapiro) is modified to compare Crude oil supply chain among Indonesia, Russia and Columbiabased on oil transportation distances and associated cost, refinery costs, and the costs associated with refinery sustainability and pipeline quality. However this model was originally used to determine the optimal locations of distribution centres based on transportation cost and the capacity of the distribution centres, this model was modified to allow the use of different costs associated with the quality condition of the pipeline and the costs of sustaining an environmentally friendly facility. This case used to optimize the total cost of oil supply chain for Indonesia, Russia and Columbia. We seek to extend our previous supply chain model, which represent the outbound oil supply chain. The outputs of this paper are efficiency curve that show how the costs of pipeline quality and facility sustainability affect the overall costs of the oil industry of Indonesia, Russia and Columbia. Keywords supply chain management, efficiency curve, quality, sustainability, optimization, crude oil supply chain, Russian Oil pipeline, and Oil refinery

Evaluating the Economic Impact of Water Regulation and Sustainability on Urban Supply Chain Facility Planning

Abstract Supply chain facilities, specifically manufacturing plants that are located near urban areas, are often regulated by distinct local municipalities, state ordinances and federal regulations. This transcript highlights one of the more heavily regulated type of facilities - a meat food processing plant that requires a special permit for its industrial use of sewer services as it meets one or more criteria of select discharge regulations. This type of facility is heavily regulated by a local municipality to avoid water shortages and is using penalties and taxes to encourage conservation and raise revenue. For scenario description purposes, we highlight sample data from a plant facility in the east coast in the lower southeastern part of the United States. We incorporate the tax and penalty scenario from a municipality in the state of Georgia. This research describes the steps and processes used by the plant facility to make certain that it complies with the rules and regulations of the sewer service permit, along with ensuring compliance with environmental regulations and policies, while providing evidence of the economic benefits for plant facilities to incorporate sustainable practices in the overall wastewater treatment process. Keywords supply chain facility, water regulation, wastewater treatment, sustainability, predictive modelling, cost benefit saving

Posseiros no médio São Francisco: planejamento estatal e mobilidade do trabalho

Este artigo trata dos aspectos recentes da mobilidade do trabalho dos posseiros e do planejamento estatal de perspectiva territorial no Médio São Francisco baiano, Território de Identidade do Velho Chico. As transformações atuais nessa área envolvem um processo no qual o Estado, munido da perspectiva territorial da ação planejada e por meio de outras ações (como a disposição de benefícios, incentivos, subsídios e regularizações de terra), dissemina e estimula uma série de programas cada vez mais determinantes na reprodução do trabalho dos posseiros, incluindo sua permanência transformada, mais monetarizada. Por outro lado, esses posseiros se veem tensionados, quando as ações estatais viabilizam também os meios facilitadores das ações empresariais, ameaçando constantemente os territórios dessas comunidades (impulsionando a mobilização do trabalho), voltados à produção de energia, mineração e agropecuária comercial. Ambas as formas de ação “elegem” o território como cerne da prática contraditória do Estado nessa área. Mostrar o desdobramento empírico dessa contradição torna-se o cerne desse artigo