Optimizing placement of residential shelters for human trafficking survivors

Residential shelters play a critical role in the stabilization and eventual reintegration to society for trafficked persons and entail a large investment. In the United States, survivors of human trafficking live in every state. However, in 2018 a majority of states lack dedicated residential shelters for trafficking survivors. Even in states with shelters, data suggests that demand greatly exceeds capacity, and significant disparity exists between states with respect to the legislative environment and provision of auxiliary services for survivors. We present an optimization approach to evaluate the societal impact of locating dedicated shelters for trafficking survivors at a regional level. Using concepts from health and social welfare economics, we develop an optimization model that allocates a budget for locating residential shelters in a manner that maximizes a measure of societal impact while respecting budgetary constraints. For our case study, we measure this impact via a societal value quantified by a combination of labor productivity gained, reduction in juvenile arrests, disability-adjusted life years averted, and legislative environment, adjusted for the demand for shelters and the current number of shelters available, less construction and operating costs. We illustrate the utility of the model via our case study that allocates a budget among a candidate set of residential shelters for female sex trafficking survivors in the United States. Via sensitivity analyses on a robust set of uncertain parameters, we present policy implications of shelter placements to support this critical societal concern.     

Cost-effectiveness of add-on treatments to metformin in a Swedish setting: liraglutide vs sulphonylurea or sitagplitin

Objective:

To evaluate long-run cost-effectiveness in a Swedish setting for liraglutide compared with sulphonylureas (glimepiride) or sitagliptin, all as add-on to metformin for patients with type 2 diabetes insufficiently controlled with metformin in monotherapy.

Methods:

The IHE Cohort Model of Type 2 Diabetes was used to evaluate clinical and economic outcomes from a societal perspective. Model input data were obtained from two clinical trials, the Swedish National Diabetes Register and the literature. Cost data reflected year 2013 price level. The robustness of results was checked with one-way-sensitivity analysis and probability sensitivity analysis.

Results:

The cost per QALY gained for liraglutide (1.2?mg) compared to SU (glimepiride 4?mg), both as add-on to metformin, ranged from SEK 226,000 to SEK 255,000 in analyzed patient cohorts. The cost per QALY for liraglutide (1.2?mg) vs sitagliptin (100?mg) as second-line treatment was lower, ranging from SEK 149,000 to SEK 161,000. Costs of preventive treatment were driving costs, but there was also a cost offset from reduced costs of complications of ～20%. Notable cost differences were found for nephropathy, stroke, and heart failure. The predicted life expectancy with liraglutide increased the cost of net consumption for liraglutide.

Limitations:

The analysis was an ex-ante analysis using model input data from clinical trials which may not reflect effectiveness in real-world clinical practice in broader patient populations. This limitation was explored in the sensitivity analysis. The lack of specific data on loss of production due to diabetes complications implied that these costs may be under-estimated.

Conclusions:

Treatment strategies with liraglutide 1.2?mg improved the expected quality-of-life and increased costs when compared to SU and to sitagliptin for second-line add-on treatments. The cost per QALY for liraglutide was in the range considered medium by Swedish authorities.     

Urban Political Ecology Beyond Methodological Cityism

The concept of planetary urbanization has emerged in recent years amongst neo‐Lefebvrian urban scholars who see urbanization as a process taking place at all spatial scales. This article analyses recent critiques of the urban political ecology (UPE) literature which argue that much of the work in the field has been guilty of focusing exclusively on the traditional bounded city unit rather than urbanization as a process. In response, the article reviews various strands of the UPE literature which have (always) moved beyond ‘the city’ to consider the various metabolisms and circulations of humans and non‐humans connecting cities with places outside of their borders at a variety of scales. Furthermore, it suggests how these approaches can productively work with the insights of the planetary urbanization literature, in considering both the changing nature of urbanization and also the socio‐ecological and political implications of these changes. Finally, the article suggests how the methodological approach of the ‘site multiple’ and its focus on everyday practices and lived experiences can be useful for researching diverse urban phenomena and their more‐than‐urban connections.     

基于新陈代谢GM-Markov模型的股价预测

本文建立了新陈代谢GM-Markov模型。该模型很好地吸收了GM模型及Markov模型的优点,同时新陈代谢的作用保证了不断加入新信息而去除旧信息,从而提高了模型的预测精度,预测结果与实际状况基本相符,这说明用该模型来预测股票价格走势是可行的。     

A social procedurial approach to the Pareto optimization problematique

This article applies a variant of game theory to the Pareto multi-value problematique, that is situations where members of a group, community or society are faced with alternative allocations, institutional arrangements, or states of the world and may collectively choose an allocation, institutional arrangement or state of the world if they can agree on it. This type of multiple value decision situation is increasingly prevalent not only on the level of societal and political issues but on the level of many enterprises, particularly those advocating corporate social responsibility. Because actors hold and apply values from different perspectives, there are potential contradictory value judgments and incompatible equilibria. In a world of contradiction, incommensurability, and disequilibrium, to what extent can conflicts be resolved and social equilibrium accomplished? Force works but it is inherently unstable. Drawing on an extension of classical game theory, generalized game theory (GGT), this article addresses the multi-value problematique in terms of collective “resolution procedures.” These regulative procedures—or social algorithms—are applied to problems of conflict and suboptimality in a multiple value world such as Pareto envisioned. This paper (the first of two) outlines key elements of GGT, defines the Pareto multi-value problematique, pointing out several of the critical weaknesses, theoretical as well as empirical, of the Pareto approach. GGT is then applied in defining and analyzing several major procedures to realize improvements in a multi-value world characterized by conflict and sub-optimality. A second article conceptualizes a complex of societal games making up a social system with 2-phase multi-level game processes; it applies the conceptualization to the different societal procedures for multi-value choice under conditions of conflict. Procedures such as democratic voting, adjudication and administrative decision-making, and multi-lateral negotiation are capable of producing outcomes that in many cases are widely accepted as legitimate and become social equilibria (at least within some range of conditions). These procedures and the conditions for their activation and implementation are modelled and explicated through a generalized game approach.     

Stressful Integration

This paper considers the integration of economies as a merger of populations. The premise is that the merger of groups of people alters their social landscape and their comparators. The paper identifies the effect of the merger on aggregate distress. A merger is shown to increase aggregate distress, measured as aggregate relative deprivation: the social distress of a merged population is greater than the sum of the social distress of the constituent populations when apart. Physiological evidence from neighboring disciplines points to an increase in societal stress upon merger.     

Designing a Participatory Process for Stakeholder Involvement in a Societal Decision

For many societal decisions, governments and public bodies are beginning to involve stakeholders and the general public to a far greater extent than previously in the decision process. Stakeholder workshops, citizen juries, focus groups, electronic forums, web-polling and many other means of consultation are being used to draw citizens into the process of deciding between different options on the management of their communities. Politicians are drawn to such instruments because greater public involvement seems to achieve greater acceptance of the ultimate decision and, arguably in more objective terms, a better decision. Many academic studies have investigated participation and wider aspects of deliberative democracy and found that the politicians’ intuition is borne out in practice. However, while there have been many studies focused on specific instruments of participation, few have compared different ones. Moreover, there seems to be a dearth of advice on how to assemble a set of different instruments into a complete participatory decision making process. This paper offers a decision modelling framework which, firstly, provides a methodology which may be used to design participatory processes and, secondly, raises a number of questions which future comparative studies will need to address.     

矿产资源开发的物质流分析

在界定矿产资源开发物质代谢含义的基础上,从复杂性、可控性、连续性、差异性等方面分析了矿产资源开发物质代谢的特征.认为开展矿产资源开发的物质流分析可以为矿产资源开发环境压力分析提供依据、为矿业循环经济的发展提供支持.从矿产资源开发物质流分析原则出发,提出了矿产资源开发物质流分析的方法、构建了矿产资源开发物质流分析的账户体系及指标体系.