Extending Producer Responsibility: An Evaluation Framework for Product Take-Back Policies

Manufacturers are increasingly being required to adhere to product take-back regulations that require them to manage their products at the end of life. Such regulations seek to internalize products' entire life cycle costs into market prices, with the ultimate objective of reducing their environmental burden. This article provides a framework to evaluate the potential for take-back regulations to actually lead to reduced environmental impacts and to stimulate product design changes. It describes trade-offs associated with several major policy decisions, including whether to hold firms physically or financially responsible for the recovery of their products, when to impose recycling fees, whether to include disposal and hazardous substance bans, and whether to mandate product design features to foster reuse and recycling of components and materials. The framework also addresses policy elements that can significantly affect the cost efficiency and occupational safety hazards of end-of-life product recovery operations. The evaluation framework is illustrated with examples drawn from take-back regulations promulgated in Europe, Japan, and the United States governing waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE).

Exploring constrained quantum control landscapes

The broad success of optimally controlling quantum systems with external fields has been attributed to the favorable topology of the underlying control landscape, where the landscape is the physical observable as a function of the controls. The control landscape can be shown to contain no suboptimal trapping extrema upon satisfaction of reasonable physical assumptions, but this topological analysis does not hold when significant constraints are placed on the control resources. This work employs simulations to explore the topology and features of the control landscape for pure-state population transfer with a constrained class of control fields. The fields are parameterized in terms of a set of uniformly spaced spectral frequencies, with the associated phases acting as the controls. Optimization results reveal that the minimum number of phase controls necessary to assure a high yield in the target state has a special dependence on the number of accessible energy levels in the quantum system, revealed from an analysis of the first- and second-order variation of the yield with respect to the controls. When an insufficient number of controls and/or a weak control fluence are employed, trapping extrema and saddle points are observed on the landscape. When the control resources are sufficiently flexible, solutions producing the globally maximal yield are found to form connected `level sets' of continuously variable control fields that preserve the yield. These optimal yield level sets are found to shrink to isolated points on the top of the landscape as the control field fluence is decreased, and further reduction of the fluence turns these points into suboptimal trapping extrema on the landscape. Although constrained control fields can come in many forms beyond the cases explored here, the behavior found in this paper is illustrative of the impacts that constraints can introduce.Comment: 10 figure

The promise of the wild for families : factors of the Anasazi Foundation\u27s wilderness therapy program associated with positive parent-adolescent relationships : a project based upon an investigation at The Anasazi Foundation, Mesa, Arizona

The purpose of this study was to identify which aspects of The Anasazi Foundation\u27s wilderness therapy treatment are most strongly associated with positive parent-adolescent relationships after treatment. To this end, 59 parents and 36 adolescents completed surveys designed by the Anasazi Foundation to assess individual goal attainment, family relationships, continued connection to The Anasazi Foundation, aftercare follow-though, and physical and spiritual health after the adolescent had been discharged from the program, which lasted at least 49 days. Adolescent study participants ranged in age from 12 to 25 years, and parent study participants had children who ranged in age from 12 to 20 years. Findings show that parental goal attainment after the youth\u27s discharge, adolescent commitment to aftercare, and adolescent spiritual health after treatment are the most strongly correlated with positive parent-adolescent relationships after wilderness therapy treatment. Additional findings show that adolescent physical health post discharge, adolescent connection to Anasazi after treatment, and parental support in the adolescent\u27s aftercare plans are also positively correlated with positive parentadolescent relationships after wilderness therapy treatment

Strain-dependent solid surface stress and the stiffness of soft contacts

Surface stresses have recently emerged as a key player in the mechanics of highly compliant solids. The classic theories of contact mechanics describe adhesion with a compliant substrate as a competition between surface energies driving deformation to establish contact and bulk elasticity resisting this. However, it has recently been shown that surface stresses provide an additional restoring force that can compete with and even dominate over elasticity in highly compliant materials, especially when length scales are small compared to the ratio of the surface stress to the elastic modulus, $\Upsilon/E$. Here, we investigate experimentally the contribution of surface stresses to the force of adhesion. We find that the elastic and capillary contributions to the adhesive force are of similar magnitude, and that both are required to account for measured adhesive forces between rigid silica spheres and compliant, silicone gels. Notably, the strain-dependence of the solid surface stress contributes significantly to the stiffness of soft solid contacts.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Evaluating the State Basic Health Program in Connecticut

The federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) offers states many options and alternatives for tailoring national health reform to best meet their specific needs. The ACA’s State Basic Health Program (SBHP) option affords states an opportunity to design a program for low-income individuals that offers better continuity of care at a lower cost, while providing a financial benefit to the state. This issue brief examines the factors that Connecticut should take into account in assessing the potential benefits of a SBHP. This analysis relies on the parameters of a SBHP as described in the ACA. The federal government has not yet issued key regulations – delineating, for example, what is the minimum benefits package that must be covered in a SBHP, or exactly how funds will flow to states – that will affect the potential cost and coverage of the SBHP option. The analysis presented here is based on existing information, acknowledging that the federal guidance may narrow the range of options available to the state. This issue brief was presented to the Connecticut State Legislature on January 31, 2012. An update to this January 2012 Research Brief was published on April 4, 2012. Client/Partner: Legal Assistance Resource Center of Connecticu

The Basic Health Program: What would it mean for Connecticut?

This presentation provides highlights of a research brief released by the Legal Assistance Resource Center of Connecticut. The research brief includes more detail about the State Basic Health Program (SBHP), the analysis, and citations to data sources. Client/Partner: Legal Assistance Resource Center of Connecticu