Impact of an Ageing Society on Healthcare Expenditure of National Health Insurance in Taiwan

The increase in healthcare expenditure always becomes an issue considered by the National Health Insurance (NHI) program in Taiwan. Accordingly, analyzing the root cause is a significant first step in dealing with this issue. This study hypothesized that the greying population in Taiwan is the main reason that devours a vast health care expenditure. Samples of the population in Taiwans National Health Insurance databases together with age-expenditure profile analysis and decomposing approach of the components of healthcare expenditure will analyze the impact of population ageing and estimate the contributions of population ageing shifting to NHIs expenditure in Taiwan. The result could be considered for policymakers and the government to overcome this issue in Taiwan

Air passenger demand forecasting and passenger terminal capacity expansion: A system dynamics framework

This paper deals with how to develop a model to forecast air passenger demand and to evaluate some policy scenarios related with runway and passenger terminal capacity expansion to meet the future demand. System dynamics frameworks can be used to model, to analyze and to generate scenario to increase the system performance because of its capability of representing physical and information flows, based on information feedback control that are continuously converted into decisions and actions. We found that airfare impact, level of service impact, GDP, population, number of flights per day and dwell time play an important roles in determining the air passenger volume, runway utilization and total additional area needed for passenger terminal capacity expansion

Dynamic Simulation Of Air Cargo

This paper establishes an approach to forecast air cargo demand related to terminal capacity expansion. To balance capacity and demand, it is required to forecast the future demand based on optimistic and pessimistic projections to decide when and how much, the airport should expand the capacity. System dynamics simulation model can provide reliable forecast and generate scenarios to test alternative assumptions and decisions. It was found that GDP and FDI play an important role in fostering the demand. Terminal expansion would be required in 2014 and 2021 at the optimistic projection; meanwhile, based on pessimistic projection, capacity should be expanded in 2025

Demand scenario analysis and planned capacity expansion: A system dynamics framework

This paper establishes an approach to develop models for forecasting demand and evaluating policy scenarios related to planned capacity expansion for meeting optimistic and pessimistic future demand projections. A system dynamics framework is used to model and to generate scenarios because of their capability of representing physical and information flows, which will enable us to understand the nonlinear dynamics behavior in uncertain conditions. These models can provide important inputs such as construction growth, GDP growth, and investment growth to specific business decisions such as planned capacity expansion policies that will improve the system performance

Parallel Disassembly by Onion Peeling

For some assembly structures, parallel disassembly of components is necessary in order to reach a particular internal component. Due to the large number of possible combinations, the parallel disassembly problem is not easily solved in a general form. In order to reduce the time complexity of finding a disassembly sequence, this paper introduces a simplified mating graph and develops a data structure to facilitate an efficient parallel disassembly algorithm. This algorithm takes Max {O(N3 ), O(E)} time to find an efficient sequence to reach a particular component, where N is the number of components and E is the number of mating faces. Separability testing is incorporated to determine whether the query component can be disassembled and moved to infinity without obstruction

Parting directions for mould and die design

On the basis of the condition for demouldability, two levels of visibility, complete and partial visibility, are defined. The viewing directions from which a surface is completely visible can be represented as a convex region on the unit sphere called the visibility map of the surface. Algorithms are given for dividing a given object into pockets, for which visibility and demouldability can be determined independently, for constructing visibility maps, and for selecting an optimal pair of parting directions for a mould that minimizes the number of cores. An example illustrates the algorithms.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/30430/1/0000051.pd

Computing spanning line segments in three dimensions

A set of spanning line segments ℊ in a polyhedron P preserves the property of intersection; that is, a plane intersects P if and only if it also intersects ℊ. This paper gives a linear time algorithm for constructing ℊ for a polyhedron with N extreme vertices. If N is odd, the algorithm is optimal in yielding [ N /2] + 1 spanning line segments. If N is even, it gives ( N /2) + 1, which is optimal in some cases and nearly optimal in others.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/47136/1/371_2005_Article_BF01782320.pd

Scallop hull and its offset

A linear-time algorithm that computes the envelope of the offset of a monotone chain is presented. The scallop hull, an extended notion of the convex hull, of the monotone chain is first computed by using an approach similar to that of the convex-hull construction algorithm. The offset of the scallop hull, which yields the desired envelope, can then be computed in linear time from the scallop hull, giving a tool path.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/31482/1/0000404.pd

A Fuzzy MCDM Approach for Green Supplier Selection from the Economic and Environmental Aspects

Due to the challenge of rising public awareness of environmental issues and governmental regulations, green supply chain management (SCM) has become an important issue for companies to gain environmental sustainability. Supplier selection is one of the key operational tasks necessary to construct a green SCM. To select the most suitable suppliers, many economic and environmental criteria must be considered in the decision process. Although numerous studies have used economic criteria such as cost, quality, and lead time in the supplier selection process, only some studies have taken into account the environmental issues. This study proposes a comprehensive fuzzy multicriteria decision making (MCDM) approach for green supplier selection and evaluation, using both economic and environmental criteria. In the proposed approach, a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is employed to determine the important weights of criteria under vague environment. In addition, a fuzzy technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) is used to evaluate and rank the potential suppliers. Finally, a case study in Luminance Enhancement Film (LEF) industry is presented to illustrate the applicability and efficiency of the proposed method

Over-expression of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 3b protein induces both apoptosis and necrosis in Vero E6 cells

The genome of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus encodes for eight accessory viral proteins with no known homologues in other coronaviruses. One of these is the 3b protein, which is encoded by the second open reading frame in subgenomic RNA 3 and contains 154 amino acids. Here, a detailed time-course study was performed to compare the apoptosis and necrosis profiles induced by full-length 3b, a 3b mutant that was deleted by 30 amino acids from the C terminus (3b 124-154) and the classical apoptosis inducer, Bax. Our results showed that Vero E6 cells transfected with a construct for expressing 3b underwent necrosis as early as 6 h after transfection and underwent simultaneous necrosis and apoptosis at later time-points. At all the time-points analysed, the apoptosis induced by the expression of 3b was less than the level induced by Bax but the level of necrosis was comparable. The 3b 124-154 mutant behaves in a similar manner indicating that the localization of the 3b protein does not seems to be important for the cell-death pathways since full-length 3b is localized predominantly to the nucleolus, while the mutant is found to be concentrated in the peri-nuclear regions. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the induction of necrosis by a SARS-CoV protein.IS