An Elastomeric Energy Storage System to Improve Vehicle Efficiency.

Most regenerative braking systems studied hitherto have made use of batteries, tlywheels and hydraulic accumulators. The present study has investigated the use of elastomers for such systems. The ability of elastomers to store large amounts of energy, together with the fact that this energy can be recovered quickly, makes them attractive materials for propulsion devices and inherently simple to engineer. Theoretical and experimental research has shown that the development of an elastomeric regenerative braking system does appear to be technically feasible. The predicted rubber characteristics have been compared with the known characteristics of a conventional engine. The results show that the tractive effort produced by the elastomer is capable of matching the characteristics of the engine considered in this work. Rates of input and output energy have also been calculated to determine the process of energy storage and retrieval throughout a typical driving cycle. The energy store appears to be capable of reproducing many stages of the three driving cycles considered. When there is insufticient energy in the system, power boosts from the conventional engine are required. In order to increase the overall savings achieved by the system, the engine was 'replaced' by one which had force (and therefore power) characteristics of one half of the conventional engine initially considered. It was found that the reduced power engine was sufficient to supply the extra power boosts as required. In addition to reduced engine and brake wear, fuel consumption and emissions have been shown to be drastically reduced. If these values could be achieved in practice, the benefits of such a system are immediately apparent. The potential financial savings available to the car user corresponding to the decrease in fuel consumption would provide a strong incentive. Environmentally the benefits are two fold, firstly the reduction in pollution emissions means cleaner air and has an impact on global warming, and secondly reduced fuel consumption means that fossil fuel reserves may last considerably longer than currently predicted thus reducing the immediate need for alternatives sources

Performance of diagnosis‐based risk adjustment measures in a population of sick Australians

Abstract Objective: Australia is beginning to explore ‘managed competition’ as an organising framework for the health care system. This requires setting fair capitation rates, i.e. rates that adjust for the risk profile of covered lives. This paper tests two US‐developed risk adjustment approaches using Australian data. Methods: Data from the ‘co‐ordinated care’ dataset (which incorporates all service costs of 16,538 participants in a large health service research project conducted in 1996–99) were grouped into homogenous risk categories using risk adjustment ‘grouper software’. The grouper products yielded three sets of homogenous categories: Adjusted Clinical Groups, Ambulatory Diagnostic Groups and Diagnostic Cost Groups. A two‐stage analysis of predictive power was used: probability of any service use in the concurrent year, next year and the year after (logistic regression) and, for service users, a regression of logged cost of service use. The independent variables were age, gender, a SES variable and the diagnosis‐based risk adjusters. Results: Age, gender and diagnosis‐based risk adjustment measures explain around 40–45% of variation in costs of service use in the current year for untrimmed data (compared with around 15% for age and gender alone). Prediction of subsequent use is much poorer (around 20%). Using more information to assign people to risk categories generally improves prediction. Conclusions: Predictive power of diagnosis‐based risk adjusters on this Australian dataset is similar to that found in overseas studies. Implications: Low predictive power carries policy risks of cream skimming rather than managing population health and care. Competitive funding models with risk adjustment on prior year experience could reduce system efficiency if implemented with current risk adjustment technolog

Risk adjustment policy options for casemix funding: international lessons in financing reform

Risk adjustment, Casemix funding, Diagnosis-related groups, Hospital costs,

Discursive recontextualization in a public health setting

The authors discuss discursive recontextualization as a process of discursive change in which stable referents may be recombined. As such, discursive recontextualization recognizes the interplay of both stability and instability without necessarily privileging the latter. Drawing on intertextual document analysis of a series of public reports published in the wake of a major health policy initiative in Victoria, Australia&mdash; Health to 2050&mdash;the authors identify a discursive pattern in which descriptions of a disaggregation from large Health Care Networks to smaller Metropolitan Health Services echo those of an earlier aggregation of individual hospitals into the Health Care Networks. The authors suggest that future research into discourse and organizational change will benefit from greater attention to stabilization and such recontextualization as well as to fluidity and instability. They examine implications for change agents and for researchers in the field.<br /