The Potential of Servicizing as a Green Business Model

It has been argued that servicizing business models, under which a firm sells the use of a product rather than the product itself, are environmentally beneficial. The main arguments are: First, under servicizing the firm charges customers based on the product usage. Second, the quantity of products required to meet customer needs may be smaller because the firm may be able to pool customer needs. Third, the firm may have an incentive to offer products with higher efficiency. Motivated by these arguments, we investigate the economic and environmental potential of servicizing business models. We endogenize the firm's choice between a pure sales, a pure servicizing, and a hybrid model with both sales and servicizing options, the pricing decisions and, the resulting customer usage. We consider two extremes of pooling efficacy, viz., no versus strong pooling. We find that under no pooling servicizing leads to higher environmental impact due to production but lower environmental impact due to use. In contrast, under strong pooling, when a hybrid business model is more profitable, it is also environmentally superior. However, a pure servicizing model is environmentally inferior for high production costs as it leads to a larger production quantity even under strong pooling. We also examine the product efficiency choice and find that the firm offers higher efficiency products only under servicizing models with strong pooling

Economic Freedom and Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America: A Panel Gravity Model Approach

This paper employs a panel data gravity model to examine the impact of economic freedom (EF) on foreign direct investment (FDI) in the context of Latin American countries. Our results suggest that while FDI responds to many EF measures positively, such results cannot be generalised.Economic freedom, FDI, Latin America, panel gravity model.

To Sell and to Provide? The Economic and Environmental Implications of the Auto Manufacturer's Involvement in the Car Sharing Business

Motivated by the involvement of Daimler and BMW in the car sharing business we consider an OEM who contemplates introducing a car sharing program. The OEM designs its product line by accounting for the trade-off between driving performance and fuel efficiency. Customers have different valuations of driving performance and decide whether to buy, join car sharing, or rely on their outside option. Car sharing can increase the profit from selling. This happens when the OEM prefers to serve the lower-end customers through car sharing and the higher-end through selling. In this case, car sharing increases the efficiency of the vehicles used for the lower-end, and the price charged to the higher-end customers. This is more pronounced for higher-end OEMs, which may help explain Daimler's and BMW's involvement in car sharing. Despite the higher efficiency, car sharing may lower the OEM's Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) level even when it increases profit and decreases environmental impact. CAFE levels better reflect the environmental benefits of car sharing when they are based on the number of customers served and not the production volume. Finally, if anticipating aggressive CAFE standards, OEMs may include car sharing to better absorb the increase in the production cost

French as a Foreign Language: The Literary Enterprise of Antoine Volodine

Volodine’s fictions all resemble each other save for names and settings. They expose a world where the Revolution has failed and its protagonists are either dead, incarcerated, or holed up in the putrefying carcass of an abandoned building. Protagonists keep the memory of their political dreams alive by telling the stories of lost comrades, in works tapped out in code on the drainage pipes of a high-security prison or the asylum where they are held without charge, or else circulated, samizdat-style, among sympathizers. The authors of these narratives are themselves the subjects of others. So the characters created by Volodine become the authors of his work, such that Antoine Volodine is just one name among the many contributors to the literature of the post-exotic world. With formal roots in science fiction and thematic sources in France\u27s continuing nostalgia for the revolutionary road, Volodine\u27s dreamworld seems quite unrelated to the main trends of contemporary writing, yet it forms one of the most ambitious literary projects of our times. Couched in language of exquisite precision and grace, Volodine\u27s not entirely imaginary construction of a ruined world simultaneously denies individual authorship and reasserts human individuality through the memorializing function of storytelling

Water chemistry and algal phosphatase activity in zinc-contaminated streams

A study was carried out on algal phosphatase activity and water chemistry in zinc-contaminated streams in the Northern Pennine Orefield. Fourteen field sites were studied; They ranged from low contaminated to high-zinc sites (0.1 mg 1(^-1) to 19.4 mg 1(^-1) with 7 of the 14 above 1 mg 1(^-1) Zn). Phosphate concentrations were low in the majority of sites (2.2 µg 1(^-1) to 22.8 µg l(^-1) with 13 of the 14 sites below 7.7 µg l(^-1) TFP and 1.8 µg l(^-1) to 8.5 µg 1(^-1) with 13 of the 14 sites below 4.9 µg l(^-1) FRP). Phosphatase activity was tested over a broad pH range (3.0 -11.0) using at least two different buffers at each pH value. Phosphatase activity of samples tested showed different responses to pH. Most of the samples exhibited enzyme activity in the alkaline range. High phosphatase activity was observed in samples with Mougeotia and Stigeoclonium populations. Possible relationships between phosphatase activity and selected environmental variables were examined. Phosphatase activity was significantly correlated with Zn (+ve), TFP (-ve) and FRP (-ve) in the water. The role of phosphatases in these high-zinc environments is discussed

Controlling flexible structures with second order actuator dynamics

The control of flexible structures for those systems with actuators that are modeled by second order dynamics is examined. Two modeling approaches are investigated. First a stability and performance analysis is performed using a low order finite dimensional model of the structure. Secondly, a continuum model of the flexible structure to be controlled, coupled with lumped parameter second order dynamic models of the actuators performing the control is used. This model is appropriate in the modeling of the control of a flexible panel by proof-mass actuators as well as other beam, plate and shell like structural numbers. The model is verified with experimental measurements

Detecting simulated amnesia through the use of a battery of memory tests

In today\u27s society people\u27s locational residential preference is no longer dependent on the distance from the Central Business District. With the demise of the concept of the friction of distance other accessibility nodes, besides the central business district, such as and retail and suburban employment are necessary attributes towards the determination and influence of land rents. Where this is the case, the hedonic regression methods analysis to explain house prices should employ distance variables corresponding to each of the urban nodes. However, these distance measures may be highly intercorrelated, thereby posing a problem of spatial collinearity. Two authors have examined and attempted to reduce spatial collinearity from a purely contrived theoretical level. They found that problems arising from spatial collinearity can be avoided or substantially lessened by carefully selecting the geographic domain from which observations are drawn. This thesis explores the problems of spatial collinearity from an empirical perspective through the use of a data set containing housing characteristics and prices from the Kitchener-Waterloo area. A regression model was run, such that the calculated spatial collinearity could be compared to the theoretical findings from one of the above authors. It was found that the extent of collinearity is indeed influenced by the spatial configuration of nodes relative to the data range; however, a discrepancy occurred in the type of pattern that was needed to reduce this. Instead what was discovered was that the optimum spatial configuration of the data was not as relevant to the reduction of spatial collinearity as was the actual distances between the nodes

Illuminating Actionable Biology in Breast Cancer: Novel Predictive and Prognostic Biomarkers

Assessing hormone receptors (the estrogen and progesterone receptors) and the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) to guide clinical decision making revolutionized treatment for breast cancer patients. However, in the years since these biomarkers were first incorporated into routine clinical care, only a few others have been validated as clinically useful in guiding adjuvant chemotherapy decisions and are recommended by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) for patients with hormone-positive breast cancer. For patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), which lacks hormone and HER2 receptors, not any of these biomarkers are recommended by ASCO due to insufficient evidence that they meaningfully improve clinical outcomes. Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer-related death among women in the US, indicating an unmet need to improve treatments, which can be accomplished in part by identifying and validating novel predictive and prognostic biomarkers that yield actionable information about the clinical course of breast cancers, especially TNBCs. A major obstacle to improving outcomes for breast cancer patients is intratumor heterogeneity (ITH), which can be extensive in breast cancer and drives treatment resistance and relapse. I envision that assaying drivers of ITH can inform clinicians about which breast tumors may be intrinsically more aggressive and carry a greater risk of breast cancer-related morbidity and mortality. My research, presented here, primarily focuses on testing the impact of drivers of ITH (namely, centrosome amplification [CA], the clustering protein KIFC1, and mitotic propensity and its drivers) on clinical outcomes in breast cancer in multivariable models as well as the correlates of in vitro efficacy of centrosome declustering drugs (which can selectively eliminate cancer cells with CA). Collectively, these studies reveal gene signatures and immunohistochemical biomarkers that are independent predictors of aggressive breast cancer course and rational strategies to optimize targeted therapy to combat cancer cells exhibiting CA, thereby contributing to the literature on the development of precision medicine for breast cancer patients, including TNBC patients