Quality of life for carers of people with type 2 diabetes: A literature review

This scoping literature review explores the impact of type 2 diabetes (T2D) in adults on carers' quality of life (QoL) and emphasises the importance of improving carer support in order to achieve integrated care. The review was conducted in February 2015 and included articles published in English in the past 10 years exploring carers' QoL. Five articles satisfied the inclusion criteria and were critically/thematically analysed. Evidence suggests that emotional wellbeing is the QoL domain that is most affected by T2D, with depression and anxiety being reported as the most common issues. Additional domains were social functioning and economic burden. Sociodemographic and cultural differences were identified as variables that can influence carers' QoL. This literature review suggests that T2D in adults has a significant impact on carers' QoL; however, there is limited evidence to demonstrate how healthcare professionals can support carers, so further research is needed in this area to improve the provision of integrated care

Flight delays in Germany: a model for evaluation of future cost risk

Air traffic has been increasing in Germany over the last decades reaching in 2018 an all-time high with more than 3 million flights. This increase has led to a rise in delays, which generate different costs to airlines, passengers, and Air Navigation Service Providers. This paper focuses on understanding and predicting these costs. For this purpose, a stochastic modelling method is proposed to estimate future air traffic, delays and the cost of future delays. The model allows to better understand what the full distribution of the delay costs may look like. To that end, the paper analyses 1,826 daily items (from 1/1/2014 to 12/31/2018) with information of air traffic and delays for German airspace. Findings suggest that overall mean delay costs for 2019 may be up to 280 million €, while in the 5% worst cases this value could go up to an average of 319 million €. © 2022 Luis Mª Abadie, Ibon Galarraga, Itziar Ruiz-Gauna.This research is supported by the Basque Government through the BERC 2018-2021 program and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness MINECO through BC3 María de Maeztu excellence accreditation MDM-2017-0714

Promoting energy efficiency at household level: a literature review

The household sector is one of the most energy-intensive sectors in Europe, and thus a focal point for reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with energy consumption. Energy efficiency is considered a key measure to reduce household energy consumption, but several factors could lead to an underinvestment in energy efficiency. This is the so-called energy efficiency gap or paradox. The factors in question are grouped under market failures (including informational failures), behavioural failures and other factors. Various policies can be used to address these failures and promote the adoption of energy-efficient technologies, including energy standards and codes, economic incentives and information instruments. This paper reviews the empirical evidence to date on energy efficiency policies and discusses their effectiveness. On the one hand, command and control instruments seem to be effective policies, but they have to overcome several barriers. In the case of price instruments, subsidies and taxes do not seem to be effective while rebates present mixed results as they sometimes are effective and in other cases, they could present significant shortcomings. Finally, the effectiveness of informational policies is not always ensured as they depend on the country, sector and product category. Information feedback tools also seem to be effective as they work as a constant reminder of energy-efficient behaviour. Some limitations of energy efficiency policies are also identified, such as the difficulties of implementing codes and standards given that a minimum level need to be achieved, differences in the effectiveness of rebate programmes and non-conclusive results in regard to the effectiveness of monetary energy efficiency labels. © 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. part of Springer Nature.This study was conducted as part of the CONSumer Energy Efficiency Decision making (CONSEED) project, an EU-funded H2020 research project under grant agreement number 723741. This research is also supported by the Spanish State Research Agency through María de Maeztu Excellence Unit accreditation 2018-2022 (Ref. MDM-2017-0714). The project leading to these results has received funding from ‘la Caixa’ Foundation under the project SR0435 led by Ibon Galarraga. Amaya de Ayala also acknowledges the support of Fundación Ramon Areces under XVIII Concurso Nacional para la Adjudicación de Ayudas a la Investigación en Ciencias Sociales. Marta Escapa is grateful for financial support from the University of the Basque Country (Grant GIU18/136) and from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Grant RTI2018-093352-B-I00)

The Effect of Providing Monetary Information on Energy Savings for Household Appliances: A Field Trial in Spain

Energy labels are one of the most widely used policies in the European Union for increasing the energy efficiency of household appliances. However, their effectiveness in promoting energy-efficient purchases has sometimes been called into question. One of the reasons for this is that consumers may have difficulties in fully understanding the energy consumption information provided on labels (in kilowatt-hour per year). Some authors argue that to avoid this problem energy consumption information should be converted into monetary information. We analyse whether providing monetary information on lifetime energy savings can significantly increase purchases of energy-efficient appliances. To that end, a field experiment was carried out with small retailers in Spain. The experiment involved three types of appliances: washing machines, fridges and dishwashers. The impact of monetary information on actual purchases of appliances was tested in different ways: (i) by including a monetary label to display energy savings during the lifetime of the product; (ii) by the monetary information provided by sales staff; and (iii) by combining (i) and (ii). We find that the effectiveness of providing monetary information depends on the appliance and the specific way in which the information is provided. For washing machines, providing monetary information through a monetary label seems effective in promoting the purchase of highly energy-efficient appliances. However, for fridges, both monetary information provided by staff alone and the combination of the monetary label and information from sales staff seem to be effective in promoting purchases of A+++ fridges. Surprisingly, no effect is found for dishwashers. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.This study was conducted as part of the CONSumer Energy Efficiency Decision making (CONSEED) project, an EUfunded H2020 research project under grant agreement number 723741. This research is also supported by the Spanish State Research Agency through María de Maeztu Excellence Unit accreditation 2018-2022 (Ref. MDM-2017-0714). This study was conducted as part of the CONSumer Energy Efficiency Decision making (CONSEED) project, an EU-funded H2020 research project under grant agreement number 723741. This research is also supported by the Spanish State Research Agency through María de Maeztu Excellence Unit accreditation 2018-2022 (Ref. MDM-2017-0714). Financial support from the Government of Spain and the European Regional Development Fund through grant RTI2018-093692-B-I00 is gratefully acknowledged by Amaia de Ayala and Ibon Galarraga. Amaya de Ayala also acknowledges the support of Fundación Ramon Areces under XVIII Concurso Nacional para la Adjudicación de Ayudas a la Investigación en Ciencias Sociales

Telemonitoring systems interoperability challenge: an updated review of the applicability of ISO/IEEE 11073 standards for Interoperability in telemonitoring

Proceeding of: 29th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. EMBS 2007, Lyon, France, 22-26 August, 2007.Advances in Information and Communication Technologies, ICT, are bringing new opportunities and use cases in the field of systems and Personal Health Devices used for the telemonitoring of citizens in Home or Mobile scenarios. At a time of such challenges, this review arises from the need to identify robust technical telemonitoring solutions that are both open and interoperable. These systems demand standardized solutions to be cost effective and to take advantage of standardized operation and interoperability. Thus, the fundamental challenge is to design plug-&-play devices that, either as individual elements or as components, can be incorporated in a simple way into different Telecare systems, perhaps configuring a personal user network. Moreover, there is an increasing market pressure from companies not traditionally involved in medical markets, asking for a standard for Personal Health Devices, which foresee a vast demand for telemonitoring, wellness, Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) and ehealth applications. However, the newly emerging situations imply very strict requirements for the protocols involved in the communication. The ISO/IEEE 11073 family of standards is adapting and moving in order to face the challenge and might appear the best positioned international standards to reach this goal. This work presents an updated survey of these standards, trying to track the changes that are being fulfilled, and tries to serve as a starting-point for those who want to familiarize themselves with them.This research work has been partially supported by projects TSI2005-07068-C02-01 and TSI2004-04940-C02-01 from Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (Spanish Government), and a personal grant to M. Galarraga from Navarre Regional Government

The origins of economic growth and regional income inequality in South-West Europe 1870-1950

This study focuses on South-West Europe, an area comprising France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, to evaluate inequality in regional income between 1870 and 1950. To do this, information on a decadal basis on regional population and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 171 regions (84 French départements, 22 Italian regioni, 18 Portuguese distritos and 49 Spanish provincias) has been collected. Regional inequalities increased between 1870 and 1910 but subsequently tended to flatten out through until 1950. In the first period, regional disparities increased mainly driven by a handful of French and Spanish regions in northern France, such as the Paris basin, Catalonia, the Basque-Country and northern Italy. In the second period, inequality flattened out, driven by the incorporation of new regions on the path of modern economic growth. The study also shows the evolution towards a bimodal, polarized pattern of regional income distribution in 1910-1950 with two convergence clubs. The richest regions were clustering in northern France, the Paris basin and the north of Italy. Meanwhile, most of southern Italy and the vast majority of the Spanish and Portuguese regions already occupied the bottom positions in the income distribution ranking. This point to the emergence of the core-periphery pattern that characterizes much of South-West Europe today

Insights on the economic estimates of the climate costs of the aviation sector due to air management in 2018-19

Air navigation service providers ensure that aircrafts keep safely apart by prescribing vertical and horizontal distances to each other. In the European Union and its associated members, regulation is carried out via a performance scheme which measures and sets targets for the different key performance areas. For the environmental area, targets in terms of CO2 and other pollutants were set by assuming that there would be continuous improvements for the Key performance Environment indicator based on actual trajectory. However, although a higher Horizontal Flight Efficiency (HFE) measurement usually means a more direct flight trajectory, this does not necessarily translate into a climate optimal trajectory. Thus, vertical flight efficiency also needs to be considered. There is also an interdependency between airspace and Air Traffic Management Capacity and Environment: when the offered capacity falls short of the demand for flights, ground delays, holdings and traffic shifts to adjacent areas occur. This entails detours and a deterioration of the HFE-indicator. Results show that total climate costs for 2018 and 2019 may be as high as 1 bn EUR, of which about 34% is due to CO2 emissions. In particular, the climate costs of CO2 emissions due to capacity constraints range from 54 to 301 million EUR, depending on whether CO2 costs are measured in terms of avoidance costs or under the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). Following the first criterion and the short to medium run up to 2030, the estimated costs would amount to 112 million EUR. In the long run, from 2040 to 2060, these costs would amount to 301 Million EUR. With the estimates of the EU ETS, the cost by 2030 would be close to 54 million EUR and 153.5 million EUR for the long run. Volatility of carbon pricing may play a very significant role, but fortunately can be hedged. Therefore, a shortfall of capacity leads to delay costs and considerable environmental costs. As capacity is planned in the medium to long-term, traffic forecasts are a crucial element. This means that further research is warranted into the interdependency of traffic forecasts, capacity and environmental costs. © 2021 Publicaciones Dyna Sl. All rights reserved.This research is supported by the Basque Government through the BERC 2018-2021 programme and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) through BC3 María de Maeztu excellence accreditation MDM-2017-0714. Further support is provided by the project MINECO RTI 2018-093352-B-I00

Point of care medical device communication standars (ISO11073/IEEE1073) in patient telemonitoring

Proceeding of: European Medical and Biological Engineering and IFMBE Conference (EMBEC 2005). November 20-25, 2005. Prague, Czech Republic.This paper reviews the use of ISO11073/ IEEE1073 international standard in patient telemonitoring. The purpose of this family of standards is to allow interoperability between medical instrumentation devices and medical information systems. Its application in the field of telemonitoring can encourage telemedicine services and e-care, preventing failures and problems that are making difficult its spread (use problems, high costs of reconfigurations and actualizations). An application guide for the system engineer that want to apply them is proposed, showing the steps to follow, the benefits and handicaps in the standard implementation for different telemonitoring scenarios. The study also includes the conformity levels that have to be fulfilled, the main application points of the standard.This work was supported by projects G03/117 from Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias (Spanish Government) and 41/2003 from Departamento de Salud (Navarra Regional Government), and a personal grant to Miguel Galarraga from Departamento de Salud (Navarra Regional Government).No publicad

Implementación integrada de una plataforma telemática basada en estándares para monitorización de pacientes

Proceeding of: VI Jornadas de Ingeniería Telemática (JITEL 2007), Málaga, Spain, 17-19, SeptiembreThis paper presents a proof-of-concept design of an integrated solution of a telematic platform for home telemonitoring. It is end-to-end standards-based, using ISO/IEEE11073 in the client environment and EN13606 to send the information to an Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) server. This solution has been implemented to comply with the standards available versions and tested in a laboratory environment to demonstrate the feasibility of an end-to-end standards-based platform.Este trabajo ha recibido el apoyo de proyectos de la Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología (CICYT) y de los Fondos Europeos de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) TSI2004-04940-C02-01, del VI Programa Marco (Pulsers II IP) IST-27142, y del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (beca FPU AP-2004-3568).No publicad

The long-term relationship between economic development and regional inequality: South-West Europe, 1860-2010

This paper analyses the long-term relationship between regional inequality and economic development. Our data set includes information on national and regional per capita GDP for four countries: France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, compiled on a decadal basis for the period 1860–2010. Using parametric and semiparametric regressions, our results confirm the rise and fall of regional inequalities over time although in recent decades they are on the rise again. Finally, we identify structural change as being a significant transmission mechanism of the inverted-U relationship. The arrival of technological shocks, beginning during the onset of industrialization, and the transition from agrarian to industrial economies, would explain this result