Effects of Short-Term Uncertainties on the Revenue Estimation of PPP Sewage Treatment Projects

Many sewage treatment facilities in China have been developed and operated using the Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) model. However, a big challenge faced by these PPP projects is that the subsidy requested from the government during the operation is normally higher than what was estimated originally, thus often exceeding the budget that the government can afford. This leads to a high risk of project failure or insufficient operation. This problem is largely caused by the uncertainties exhibited in the existing models, such as the Black-Scholes (BS) model. While being used in the budget estimation, these models cannot sufficiently account for the short-term uncertainty that may be incurred during the operation of projects. In this study, a method to account for this short-term uncertainty has been proposed to improve the BS model. This allows for investigations to address issues related to how the real option value of a government subsidy is affected. A Monte Carlo simulation was performed to take into account the noise in the estimation. A sensitivity analysis further revealed that this discrepancy is largely affected by the values of the relevant parameters in the short-term uncertainty model. We found that the short-term uncertainty has a significant effect on private revenue and government subsidy and that the changes of the latter are more sensitive to the change of short-term uncertainty. The value of the relevant variables of short-term uncertainty determined the fluctuation of the revenue. The mean value and revenue had a positive correlation. The reverting speed and revenue showed a negative correlation. The short-term volatility had a positive correlation toward the fluctuation range of the revenue. The simulation results indicate that this enhanced method can produce more accurate information for a better assessment of the PPP project under a wide range of uncertainty scenarios, allowing for the best decision making by the government

Study on Antitumor Platinum(II) Complexes of Chiral Diamines with Dicyclic Species as Steric Hindrance

A series of platinum­(II) complexes, characteristic of chiral <i>trans</i>-bicyclo­[2.2.2]­octane-7,8-diamine as ligand possessing dicyclic steric hindrance, were designed and synthesized. Biological evaluation showed that almost all complexes had cytotoxic activity against the tested cancer cell lines, among which most of chiral (<i>R</i>,<i>R</i>)-enantiomeres had stronger cytotoxicity than their (<i>S</i>,<i>S</i>)-counterparts, and <b>2a</b>, [<i>trans</i>-bicyclo­[2.2.2]­octane-7<i>R</i>,8<i>R</i>-diamine]­(oxalato-<i>O</i>,<i>O</i>′)­platinum­(II), is the most effective agent. Significantly, its counterpart, <b>2b</b>, was much more sensitive to cisplatin resistant SGC7901/CDDP cancer cell line at a higher degree than <b>2a</b>. Docking study and agarose gel electrophoresis revealed that the interaction of <b>2a</b> with DNA was similar to that of oxaliplatin. Western blot analysis demonstrated that <b>2a</b> could induce a better effect than cisplatin on a mitochondrial-dependent apoptosis pathway. Kinetic study indicated that the dicyclic ligand can accelerate the reaction rate of the complex